Thresholds of Medieval Visual Culture: Liminal Spaces

Interdisciplinary approaches to the material culture of the middle ages, from illuminated manuscripts to church architecture.

This aptly-named book brings all manner of boundary-crossing into one provocative, material space in which we can view the riches of state-of-the-art scholarship on medieval and early modern visual culture. Gail McMurray Gibson, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English and Humanities, Davidson College

The essays in this collection explore the thresholds between the visual and verbal, the sensory and performative, the literal and metaphorical, the social and epistemological that shaped the cultural matrix of the Middle Ages. The contributors' interrelated interests in patronage, word-image relationships, reception theory, gender studies, close visual and textual analysis, and performance criticism make for a valuable interdisciplinary mix that highlights the importance of studying medieval material culture in its many manifestations and valences. The book benefits from the ambitious cross-disciplinary explorations and engagements with contemporary theory undertaken in the field of medieval studies in recent decades, especially those by Pamela Sheingorn, to whom the volume is dedicated.

Jill Stevenson is Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts, Marymount Manhattan College; Elina Gertsman is Assistant Professor of Medieval Art, Case Western Reserve University.

Contributors: Richard K. Emmerson, Kathryn A. Smith, Lucy Freeman Sandler, Marilynn Desmond, Adelaide Bennett, Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Diane Wolfthal, Corine Schleif, Rachel Dressler, Glenn Burger, Robert L. A. Clark, Jenna Soleo-Shanks, Glenn Ehrstine, Colum Hourihane