Department of History of Art & Architecture Department Page
Jodi Cranston, Professor; Renaissance Art
Jodi Cranston is a Renaissance art historian whose current book project, “Animal Sightings: Art, Animals, and European Court Culture, 1400-1550” considers the following questions: How do the experiences of representing, viewing, and using nonhuman animals and animal products in artworks make the categories of ‘human’ and ‘animal’ meaningful in the Renaissance? How is the act of observation of the natural world defined, theorized, and visualized in the 15th and 16th centuries in Northern Italy, Austria, and Southern Germany?
Deborah Kahn, Associate Professor; Medieval Art, HAA Diversity & Inclusion Committee
Deborah Kahn is a specialist in European art and architecture of the Middle Ages with special interests in the historical context of monumental stone sculpture, its iconography, and the transmission of images. Her recent book, The Politics of Sanctity (Brepols, 2021) focuses on recently identified sculptures from around the year 1000 that depict the manufacturing of a new saint in conjunction with images of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim sentiment.
Michael Zell, Associate Professor; Baroque and Eighteenth-Century Art
Michael Zell is a scholar of seventeenth-century Dutch art, with a particular focus on Rembrandt and Vermeer, and teaches European art of the Baroque period, including Global Baroque. He also regularly teaches a graduate seminar at the MFA’s new Center for Netherlandish Art. He is the author and co-editor of four book and has published numerous articles and essays on a range of topics within early modern Dutch art.