Thomas E. A. Dale

Website

Curriculum Vitae

Additional Titles
Simona and Jerome Chazen Distinguished Chair of Art History (2022–2027); Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America; Affiliate of Italian Studies in the Department of French and Italian; Affiliate of Religious Studies, The Division of the Arts, and CREECA

Education
B.A. Trinity College, University of Toronto, 1984
M.A. The John Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1986
Ph.D. The John Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1990

Research Interests
Early Christian, Medieval and Byzantine art; Romanesque art (religious experience and the senses); San Marco in Venice; the cult of the saints; monsters; portraiture; cultural appropriation and hybridity.

Biography
A graduate of the University of Toronto and the Johns Hopkins University, Prof. Dale taught at Columbia University in New York before joining the Art History faculty at UW-Madison in 1999. In his research and teaching, he explores how medieval art and architecture of Europe and the Mediterranean basin offer primary sources for understanding religion, politics, rituals, and cultural interaction. An essential premise of his approach is the recognition that the efficacy of visual culture and architecture lie in their forms, materiality and engagement of the spectator. He firmly believes that the cultures of the Middle Ages offer crucial insights into current ideas and concerns, ranging from the power of material images (and iconoclastic destruction) to globalization and racism.

His current book project focuses on cultural exchange and race in medieval Venice.

Publications
“Cultural Encounter, Race, and a Humanist Ideology of Empire in the Art of Trecento Venice,” Speculum 98, no. 1 (2023): 1-48.

“Monastic Art, Sacred Space, and the Mediation of Religious Experience,” in Oxford Handbook of Christian Monasticism, ed.Bernice Kaczynski (Oxford, 2020) 349–371

Pygmalion’s Power: Romanesque Sculpture, the Senses, and Religious Experience (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019).

“The Monstrous,” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, 2d. ed., edited by Conrad Rudolph, 357–81 (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2019).

“Pictorial Narratives of the Holy Land and the Myth of Venice in the Atrium of San Marco” in The Atrium of San Marco in Venice: The Genesis and Medieval Reality of the Genesis Mosaics, edited by Martin Büchsel, Herbert L. Kessler, and Rebecca Müller, 247–69 (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2014).

“Transcending the Major/Minor Divide: Romanesque Mural Painting, Color, and Spiritual Seeing,” From Minor to Major: The Minor Arts and Their Current Status in Art History, edited by Column Hourihane, 23–42 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012).

“Cultural Hybridity in Medieval Venice: Re-inventing the East at San Marco after the Fourth Crusade” in San Marco, Byzantium, and the Myths of Venice, edited by Robert S. Nelson and Henry P. Maguire, 151–91 (Washington, D.C .: Dumbarton Oaks, 2010).

“The Nude at Moissac: Vision, Phantasia, and the Experience of Romanesque Sculpture,” in Current Directions in Eleventh- and Twelfth- Century Sculpture Studies, edited by Kirk Ambrose and Robert A. Maxwell, 61–76 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010).

“Romanesque Sculpted Portraits: Convention, Vision, and Real Presence,” Gesta 46, no. 2 (2007):101–19.

“The Monstrous,” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, edited by Conrad Rudolph, 253–73 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006).

Shaping Sacred Space and Institutional Identity in Romanesque Mural Painting: Essays in Honor of Otto Demus, contributor and editor with John Mitchell (London: Pindar Press, 2004).

“The Individual, the Resurrected Body, and Romanesque Portraiture: The Tomb of Rudolf von Schwaben in Merseburg,” Speculum 77 (2002):707–43.

“Monsters, Corporeal Deformities and Phantasms in the Romanesque Cloister of St-Michel de Cuxa,” Art Bulletin 83, no. 3 (2001):402–36.

Relics, Prayer and Politics in Medieval Venetia: Romanesque Painting in the Crypt of Aquileia Cathedral (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).

“Inventing a Sacred Past: Pictorial Narratives of Saint Mark the Evangelist at Aquileia and Venice, ca. 1000-1300,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 48 (1994):53–104.

Teaching
AH 103/RS200: Religion and Art
AH 201: History of Western Art I: From Pyramids to Cathedrals (Formerly Ancient and Medieval Art)
AH 310: Early Christian and Byzantine Art
AH 311: Medieval Art
AH 318: Romanesque and Gothic Art and Architecture
AH 415: Topics in Medieval Art
– Cultural Appropriation and Alterity in Medieval Art and Architecture
– Death and the Afterlife
– Image and Word in Medieval Manuscript Illumination
AH 515: Proseminar in Medieval Art
– Representing the Body in Medieval Art
– Pilgrimage and the Cult of the Saints
– Race, Alterity, and Cultural Appropriation in Medieval Art
AH 600: Special Topics in Art History:
– Civic Art, Architecture and Public Space in Medieval Italy
AH 701: Practicum in Art History: Bibliography, Historiography, Methods
AH 815: Seminar in Medieval Art
– Icon: The Holy Image in Eastern Orthodox Culture (exhibition course: https://www.chazen.wisc.edu/index.php?/events-calendar-demo/event/holy-image-sacred-presence-russian-icons-15001900/)
– The Body in Medieval Art
– Monasticism and the Art and Architecture of Medieval Christendom
– The Senses and Affect in Medieval Art and Culture
– Death and the Afterlife
– Mount Athos and Eastern Orthodox Culture  (exhibition course: https://holymountain.omeka.net/exhibits/show/holy-mountain)