Robert Branner Forum for Medieval Art
Robert Branner (1927-1973) was an art historian specializing in Gothic architecture and manuscript illumination. Active as an excavator, he made important discoveries in the chronology and style of French cathedrals, incorporating cultural historical tools into the method of design analysis that had more traditionally dominated architectural history.
Branner is remembered through the Robert Branner Forum, a student-run symposium sponsoring lectures several times a year that are open to the public. The Forum originated as a series of visiting lectures organized by Branner's graduate students immediately after his death during the academic year as a way of continuing his courses. It has been supported by his family since that time.
For the 2020-2021 series, all lectures will be held remotely over Zoom. Those interested in attending the lectures are kindly asked to fill out this form.
Fall 2020 – Spring 2021
Paul Binski (University of Cambridge),
“Mood and Magniloquentia: The Emotional Lives of Gothic"
Tuesday, October 27, 11:00am
Roland Betancourt (University of California, Irvine)
"Queer Desire and the Senses in Byzantium"
Thursday, November 12, 6:00pm
Isabelle Dolezalek (Universität Greifswald)
"Showing Stolen Relics - Booty from the Fourth Crusade in Halberstadt"
Tuesday, December 15, 12:30pm
Michele Bacci (Universität Freiburg)
"Orographic Prominence and Iconicity: Zion, Sinai, Tabor, and Their Doubles in Eastern Christian Arts"
Friday, February 19, 2021, 12:00pm
Jennifer Ball (Graduate Center, City University of New York) and Thelma Thomas (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University)
“Collaborative Research on Byzantine Silk: Two Case-Studies from Aachen”
Thursday, March 11, 6:00pm
Elizabeth James (University of Sussex)
Thursday, April 1, 2021, 12:00pm
Fall 2019 – Spring 2020
Jerrilynn Dodds (Sarah Lawrence College),
“The Virgin as Colonial Agent: Fashioning the Subaltern in the Cantigas de Santa Maria"
February 27, 6:30pm
Schermerhorn 807
Christina Maranci (Tufts University)
"They Have Been Watching You All This Time: Newly Discovered Wall Paintings in Ani"
March 5, 6:30pm
Schermerhorn 612
Fall 2018 – Spring 2019
Jennifer Feltman (University of Alabama)
"When is Gothic Sculpture? Reims Cathedral as a Living Monument”
October 4, 6:30 pm
Helen Evans (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
“Armenia!”
October 25, 6:30 pm
Nina Rowe (Fordham University)
January 31, 6:30 pm
Cecily Hilsdale (McGill University)
April 18, 4 pm
Fall 2017 – Spring 2018
David Frankfurter
"The Magic of Craft: Workshops and the Materialization of Christianity in Late Antique Egypt"
Thursday, February 15, 6:30 pm
Eliza Garrison
"Motion and Time in the Egbert Psalter"
Thursday, March 29, 6:30 pm
Jill Caskey
"(Re)Birth of a Seal: Power and Pretense at San Nicola, Bari"
Thursday, April 5, 6:30 pm
Elina Gertsman
"The Matter of Nothing"
Thursday, October 20, 6:30 p.m.
Adam Cohen
"Shaping Medieval Art for the Twenty-First Century"
Thursday, January 26, 6:30 p.m.
Bissera Pentcheva
"Hagia Sophia: A Space In-between Heaven and Earth"
Friday, February 17, 6:30 p.m.
Professor Terryl Kinder
"Praxis at Pontigny: 900 years and counting"
Monday, October 5, 2015, 6:30 p.m.
Professor Ittai Weinryb
"Bronze and Conversion"
Monday, January 25, 2016, 6:30 p.m.
Professor Sonja Drimmer
"A City Full of Walls You Can Post Complaints at"
Wednesday, April 6, 2016, 6:30 p.m.
Professor Benjamin Anderson
"Monument and Narrative in Medieval Constantinople"
Thursday, April 28, 2016, 6:30 p.m.
Sasha Suda
"Marvels in Making: 16th-century Boxwood Carving"
Wednesday, November 12, 2014, 6:30 p.m.
Professor Caroline Bynum
"Crowned with Many Crowns: Nuns and Their Statues in Late Medieval Germany"
Tuesday, December 2, 2014, 6:30 p.m.
Professor Dale Kinney
"Architecture as Image: a Case Study, S. Maria in Trastevere"
Wednesday, January 28, 2015, 6:30 p.m.
Professor Robert Maxwell
"Prolegomena on Artistic Forgery in the Middle Ages”
Tuesday, May 5, 2015, 6:30 p.m.
612 Schermerhorn Hall
"of great size and ferocious appearance...": Medieval Monsters and Modern Monster Studies
Asa Mittman
Wednesday, November 28, 2012, 6:30 p.m.
Louis IX, Robert Branner, and the Wall Paintings of the Sainte-Chapelle
Emily Guerry
Tuesday, March 26, 2013, 6:30 p.m.
"In Its Extraordinary Arrangement": Hugh of Saint Victor, the History of Salvation, and the World Map of The Mystic Ark
Conrad Rudolph
Thursday, May 2, 2013, 6:30 p.m.
Building-in-Time: Thinking and Making Architecture in the Premodern Era
Marvin Trachtenberg, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Thursday, October 13, 2011, 6:30 p.m.
The Role of the Village Churches in Romanesque Architecture: Type,
Invention, and the Integrated Interior
James Addiss, Independent Scholar
Thursday, November 17, 2011, 6:30 p.m.
The Craft of Royal Virtue on the Reverse Facade of Reims Cathedral
Donna Sadler, Agnes Scott College
Thursday, March 1, 2012, 6:30 p.m.
"Nothing Compares to Paris": A Reassessment of the Rayonnant Capital
Meredith Cohen, University of California, Los Angeles
Thursday, April 26, 2012, 6:30 p.m.
Visualizing the Tomb of Christ: Images, Settings, and Modes of Seeing
Robert Ousterhout, University of Pennsylvania
Thursday, October 28, 2010, 6:30 p.m.
'The Rock of the Church Is Standing on a Rock': Paulinus of Nola's Letter 32 and the Materializing of Scriptural Metaphor in Medieval Art
Peter Low, Williams College
Thursday, January 20, 2011, 6:30 p.m.
Les portails sculptés de la cathédrale de Noyon et la sculpture du 13e siècle
Arnaud Timbert, Charles-de-Gaulle-Lille 3
Stephanie Diane Daussy, CNRS and l'Université Charles-de-Gaulle-Lille 3
Wednesday, March 30, 2011, 6:30 p.m.
Visual Pleasure and Patron Saints: Dress and Undress in the 'Belles Heures' of Jean, Duke of Berry
Martha Easton, Seton Hall University
Wednesday, April 27, 2011, 6:30 p.m. (Rescheduled date)
Mater Cathedra - Mater Ecclesia: Imitation Formelle et Signification Politique dans l'Architecture du XIIe Siecle
Arnaud Timbert
Thursday, December 10, 2009
What's the Plan? New Work at Cistercian Ourscamp
Sheila Bonde and Clark Maines
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Viollet-le-Duc's Interpolation of Judith at Vézelay: Fashioning History through Sculptural Restoration
Kirk Ambrose
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Communal Palaces of Northern Italy
Juergen Schulz
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Rereading Abbot Suger on Saint-Denis
William W. Clark and Thomas G. Waldman
Thursday, April 8, 2010
La Cathedrale de Bourges en 1313, 1842 et 2010 que « restaurer » veut dires?
Patrick Ponsot
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
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