DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY

Congratulations to the AHRC-funded international working group “The Joust as Performance: Pas d’armes and Late Medieval Chivalry” for the launch of their new website.

Since 2020, an international, multidisciplinary working group led by Rosalind Brown-Grant and Mario Damen and funded by the UK AHRC has investigated one of the most iconic but least understood forms of late medieval spectacle: the pas d’armes. Part extreme sport and part theatrical pageant, pas d’armes created a fantastic chivalric world replete with noble knights, piteous damsels and innumerable unicorns, musical bears and other fantastic creatures. As a member of this multi-year initiative, Northwestern associate professor Christina Normore contributed to both the virtual exhibition and database featured on this website. 

The Department congratulates Professor Emerita Hollis Clayson, who has been named the Distinguished Scholar for the College Arts Association 2024 Annual Conference. A Distinguished Scholar Session illuminates and celebrates the contributions of the honoree. Not intended as a static honor, the session brings the scholar together with their colleagues, often times their former students. In this way, the session can be viewed as the equivalent of a living Festschrift: an occasion for applauding, examining, and extending a distinguished career in art history and an opportunity for encouraging dialogue between and among several generations of scholars.”

The Hooper Chair is a gift from Frances Hooper of Kenilworth. A year before her death, Miss Hooper made a gift to the college as part of the Campaign for Great Teachers with the explicit intent of supporting outstanding faculty members in the fields of the arts and humanities, more specifically teachers of literature, English and writing. The department extends a warm congratulations to Professor Kiaer for this honor.