BGC Fall Research Fellows Sean Leatherbury, Susannah Fisher, D. Graham Burnett, and Hannah Rogers will be giving presentations on their current research and participating in a panel discussion on Wednesday, September 11, 2013.

Sean Leatherbury will present “Late Antique Inscriptions as Images,” Susannah Fisher will discuss “The Word Made Gold: Medieval Treasury Bindings,” D. Graham Burnett will speak on “Money, Teeth, and Language,” and Hannah Rogers will explore “The Intersections of Art and Science.”

Sean Leatherbury is an Honorary Research Associate for the project “Late Antique Egypt and the Holy Land: Archaeology, History, and Religious Change” at the University of Oxford. He will be a Research Fellow at the Bard Graduate Center from September 2013 through March 2014. Leatherbury graduated cum laude with a B.A. in History of Art from Yale University and received an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in History (Late Antique and Byzantine Studies) from the University of Oxford. An art historian whose research combines an interdisciplinary approach to works of Roman, Late Antique, and Byzantine art with a focus on ancient understandings of the relationships between image, space, material, and text, he was recently a Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL) Visiting Research Fellow at the Kenyon Institute in Jerusalem (Summer 2013). While in residence at the BGC, Leatherbury will work on a book-length project entitled Late Antique Building Inscriptions between Reading and Seeing. This project will focus on the relationship between the visual and verbal functions of building inscriptions, especially the reception of inscriptions as both text and decoration. Expanding upon the primary material covered in his doctoral dissertation, Leatherbury’s current research will examine Late Antique building inscriptions in all mediums in their spatial, cultural, and religious contexts, including secular, pagan, and Jewish texts, returning Christian inscriptions to the wider multicultural and multilingual world in which they were produced and concentrating on the impact of medium and material on the production,reading, and interpretation of texts.

Susannah D. Fisher will be a Research Fellow at the Bard Graduate Center from September 2013 through March 2014. Fisher was previously an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at Hunter College and a Part-Time Lecturer in the Department of Art History at Rutgers University. She received her B.A. from Michigan State University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Fisher’s recent publications include “A Touching Image: Andrea Mantegna’s Engraving of the Virgin and Child,” Rutgers Art Review 29 (2013); “Formulating Viewer Response: Early Medieval Treasury Bindings,” in La Formule au Moyen Âge, Elise Louviot, ed.,(ARTeM 15; Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), pp. 295-313; and “’The Tabernacle of the Most High’: The Santa Maria Maggiore Madonna,” Arte Medievale 7:2 (2007): 75-85. While in residence at the BGC, Fisher will work on a book-length project entitled The Word Made Gold: The Imagery, Materiality, and Reception of Medieval Treasury Bindings (800-1200). This project, informed by art historical reception theory, liturgical studies, and findings from the fields of cognitive psychology and neuroscience, will examine treasury bindings, glittering with gold and gems, as tangible boundaries between viewers and scripture in liturgical rituals throughout the medieval West. Fisher’s cross-disciplinary exploration of the reception of manuscript covers will provide a new model for working with visually stunning and culturally resonant liturgical objects.

D. Graham Burnett is Professor of History at Princeton University and Editor of Cabinet, an award-winning magazine of arts and culture. He will be a Research Fellow at the Bard Graduate Center from September 2013 through June 2014. Burnett graduated summa cum laude with an A.B. in History from Princeton University and received a Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge. A historian of science, he has published extensively on the intersection of science, philosophy, and history. His 2007 book, Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007) was the recipient of the Hermalyn Prize in Urban History (Bronx Historical Society, 2007) and a New York City Book Award (New York Society Library, 2008). Burnett’s recent publications include a co-edited volume entitled Curiosity and Method: Ten Years of Cabinet Magazine (with Sina Najafi, et al., New York: Cabinet Books, 2012) and The Sounding of the Whale: Science and Cetaceans in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), which received a special commendation from the British Society for the History of Science. Burnett is also the recipient of a number of prestigious research fellowships. A multiyear Andrew W. Mellon Foundation “New Directions” fellowship (2009-2011) enabled Burnett to pursue connections between art, aesthetic theory, and science and ultimately led to two co-curated exhibitions in 2010—The Slice: Cutting to See at the Architectural Association in London and An Ordinal of Alchemy at Cabinet Space in Brooklyn. Currently, he is a 2013-2014 Guggenheim Foundation Humanities Fellow in the field of History of Science, Technology, and Economics for his current project “Minding the Eye,” which will explore the optical, physiological, and psychological phenomena of vision through an art historical and scientific perspective. While in residence at the BGC, Burnett will work on a book-length project about vision, broadly construed, as an optical, physiological, and psychological phenomenon.

Hannah Rogers will be a Research Fellow at the Bard Graduate Center from September through December 2013. She was previously an Instructor in the Department of Engineering and Society in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia and a First-Year Writing Seminar Instructor at Cornell University. Rogers received her A.B. with highest distinction in English and Public Policy from Duke University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Science & Technology Studies from Cornell University. Her recent publications include “Art or Science? The Practices of Tactical Media,” in in Science, Technology, and the Humanities: A New Synthesis, Lisa M. Dolling, ed., (Stevens Institute of Technology, 2011) and “Amateur Knowledge: Public Art and Citizen Science,” Configurations 19:1 (2011): 101-115. During her time at the University of Virginia, Rogers co-curated the exhibit “Making Science Visible: The Photography of Bernice Abbott” the Fralin Art Museum (Fall 2012). While in residence at the BGC, Rogers will work on a book-length project based on her doctoral dissertation,The Practices of Art and Science. As part of this project, she will utilize the archives of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) to conduct research on Edward Steichen’s 1936 exhibition of delphiniums at MoMA.

Light refreshments will be served at 5:45 pm. The presentations will begin at 6:00 pm.

RSVP is required.

PLEASE NOTE that our Lecture Hall can only accommodate a limited number of people, so please come early if you would like to have a seat in the main room. Registrants who arrive late may be seated in an overflow viewing area.