Faculty and Members 2020–2021

Suzanne Conklin Akbari has expanded the range and methods of exploring texts from the Middle Ages, pushing the boundaries of traditional readings and exploring shared histories. Her research has traced the evolving relationship between sight and knowledge as manifested in a range of poetic texts, explored the relationship between Islam and Christianity, challenged the notion of medieval European literature’s insularity, and highlighted the influence of Arabic poetry, music, and philosophy. She is currently working on a survey of metaphor and metamorphosis as they were understood in England and France circa 1400, and an examination of how premodern people saw themselves situated in history.

Hassan Farhang Ansari focuses on the study of Islamic theology, philosophy, law, and legal theory.

The long-held narrative of an uncompromising sectarian division between the Sunni Ottoman and the Shia Safavid Empires emerged as a product of their escalated rivalry in the late fifteenth century. Ayse Baltacioglu-Brammer’s book project examines the surrounding historical period and the formation (and reformation) of sectarian narratives and their enmeshment with nonsectarian issues.

Björn Burkhardt Peter Bentlage’s research pertains to Arabic narratives of pilgrimage and religious visitation in the early modern period. Working from little-known manuscripts, Bentlage wants to shed light on the contexts in which it made sense to compose, write down, distribute, copy, buy, and read these texts.

A specialist in twentieth-century European and American art, Bois is recognized as an expert on a wide range of artists, from Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso to Piet Mondrian, Barnett Newman, and Ellsworth Kelly. He has curated and co-curated a number of influential exhibitions, including Piet Mondrian, A Retrospective (1994); L’informe, mode d’emploi (1996); Matisse and Picasso: A Gentle Rivalry (1999); and Picasso Harlequin 1917–1937 (2008). His books include Ellsworth Kelly: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Reliefs, and Sculpture: Vol. 1, 1940–1953 (2015); Matisse in the Barnes Foundation (2015); Art Since 1900 (with Benjamin Buchloh, Hal Foster, and Rosalind Krauss, 2004); Matisse and Picasso (1998); Formless: A User’s Guide (with Rosalind Krauss, 1997); and Painting as Model (1990). Bois is currently working on several long-term projects, foremost among them the catalogue raisonné of Ellsworth Kelly’s paintings and sculptures, the second volume (out of five) of which he plans to finish this year.

Anna Bokov’s research focuses on the history of modern architecture and design pedagogy.

Glen Bowersock is an authority on Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern history and culture as well as the classical tradition in modern literature. He uses his exceptional knowledge of classical texts in many languages, together with inscriptions, coins, mosaics, and archaeological remains, to illuminate the mingling of different cultures and to draw unexpected and revelatory conclusions. His research interests include the Greek East in the Roman Empire and late antiquity as well as pre-Islamic Arabia. He is the author of over 400 articles and a dozen books, including Augustus and the Greek World (1965), Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (1969), Julian the Apostate (1978), Roman Arabia (1983), Hellenism in Late Antiquity (1990), Fiction as History: Nero to Julian (1994), Martyrdom and Rome (1995), Mosaics as History: The Near East from Late Antiquity to Islam (2006), From Gibbon to Auden: Essays on the Classical Tradition (2009), The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam (2013), and The Crucible of Islam (2017).

Olga Bush is working on a study of zoos, gardens, and the simulations of mechanical sculpture that complicated the boundary between the animate and inanimate in the medieval Islamic Mediterranean. It forms part of a larger work on the visual culture of al-Andalus in light of the environmental turn.

Aaron Butts’s research is focused on the languages, literatures, and history of Christianity in the Near East, including especially Arabic, Ethiopic, and Syriac. His current book project investigates the so-called conversions of Ethiopia to Christianity.

Caroline Bynum’s work has been instrumental in introducing the concept of gender into the study of medieval Christianity. Her path-breaking books, Holy Feast and Holy Fast (1987) and The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christendom (1995), created the paradigm for the study of women’s piety that dominates the field today and helped propel the history of the body into a major area of premodern European Studies. Her essays “Why All the Fuss About the Body?” (1995), “Wonder” (1997), “Avoiding the Tyranny of Morphology” (2014), and “Interrogating ‘Likeness’” (2020) are widely cited in discussions of historical method. Her recent work, in Christian Materiality (2011) and Dissimilar Similitudes (2020), is a radical reinterpretation of the nature of Christianity on the eve of the reformations of the sixteenth century and an exploration of theoretical problems concerning questions of historical comparison. She is currently continuing to work on Christian devotional objects in comparative perspective.