Medieval art is the uncommon choice, the road less traveled. A majority of college students come to Rome wanting to study Classical Antiquity or the Renaissance, which are certainly wonderful subjects. So does Game of Thrones.) You also learn about a crucial thousand years of European and Mediterranean history that for most people are a void.
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(Most fairytales wear medieval clothing for good reason. In studying medieval art, you not only immerse yourself in enchanting beauty. Think of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Baptistery of Florence, the mosaics of Santa Maria in Trastevere and St. Medieval Italy gave rise to astounding art and architecture, even though it is less famous and studied than, say, the Gothic cathedrals of France or of England. the civic governments) of Rome, Florence, Pisa, and Milan? The birth of the first universities in Europe? The building of the tallest structure on the skyline in the center of Rome today, the Torre delle Milizie? Those are all medieval achievements. What about the founding of the Communes (i.e. Most people know very little about the Middle Ages and wheel out the word ‘medieval’ only as a synonym for ‘backward,’ ‘benighted’, or ‘ignorant’ but that’s an ignorant usage. Why should one study anything else?! Okay, I’m kidding-but not entirely. Why should one still study Medieval Art History in the year 2017? Whatever stage they’re at, we continue to look after and help them however we can. They become our friends and colleagues. It’s thrilling to see students who only a few years ago were in our introductory classes now doing advanced work at such prestigious institutions and blossoming into brilliant researchers in their own right. The list is gratifying: the Courtauld Institute, Oxford, Cambridge, University College London, Columbia University, Goldsmiths, Birkbeck. Nearly all recent JCU art history graduates have gotten into the graduate programs of their choice. We love passing along our craft-and our love for it-to our students. Nearly all of us on the Art History faculty earned our academic stripes through direct research in Italian archives, excavations, and museums. Imagine learning to draw or to take photographs using a homemade pinhole camera in Capitoline Square.
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In the JCU Department of Art History and Studio Art, the professors-who, on the history side, specialize in everything from ancient Roman portraiture to catacomb painting to Baroque architecture and contemporary curating-know how to take full didactic advantage of the spectacular setting. Location alone would not be enough, though. Peter’s Basilica, the Pantheon, the Capitoline Museums, the Roman Forum, and hundreds of other lesser-known museums, palaces, churches, archaeological sites, and old, wonder-filled libraries that in any other city of the world would be the main attraction. With a very short, pleasant walk, you can be at St. Does any other American liberal arts college sit next door to the Villa Farnesina (home of Raphael’s Galatea), across the street from the National Gallery of Palazzo Corsini, a few blocks from Santa Maria in Trastevere, and right along the Aurelian Wall of the 270s AD, which borders our main courtyard? The concentration of historical material and beauty right around our campus is simply without peer. With so many liberal arts colleges in the US, why should one choose JCU? After I finished my dissertation, several universities in Rome asked me to teach for them on an adjunct basis and in 2013, JCU made me a member of the full-time faculty. That work helped me win a two-year Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome.
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I knocked on hidden doors in out-of-the-way monasteries and made friends with the monk-librarians, who let me time-travel in their virtually unknown manuscript collections. Those months were thrilling, like living in an adventure novel. After finishing most of the work for a PhD at UNC-Chapel Hill, I won a grant to spend a few months in Umbria studying illustrated Italian Giant Bibles-huge parchment manuscripts made nearly a thousand years ago. What brought you to Italy and to John Cabot? Yawn also serves as an Arts and Humanities Advisor at the American Academy in Rome, where she was a Rome Prize Fellow (1996-1998). She specializes in the history of medieval art in Italy and in perceptions of the Middle Ages today. Lila Yawn is Associate Professor of Art History at JCU and Director of the MA in Art History. Professor Lila Yawn, Director of the MA in Art History