About
The Textbook
Art and Architecture of the Middle Ages: Exploring a Connected World (Cornell University Press, 2022) is the first textbook to dismantle the religious, political, and geographical walls that have separated medieval art and architecture into three distinct categories. It treats not only western Europe, the focus of most surveys; it also considers the Byzantine Empire and nine hundred years of art in the Islamicate world, beginning with the emergence of the new faith in the seventh century. These three categories—Islamic, Byzantine, and western European—are not treated as separate entities, without connections or contemporaneity; they are interwoven in a single chronological framework. The book also addresses religious and ethnic groups who rarely appear in introductory texts. This expanded view establishes the wide scope of visual, artistic, and architectural experiences in the Middle Ages among disparate makers, users, and viewers.
Available in paperback and hardcover.
The Website
The website complements the book rather than duplicating it; it features galleries of medieval objects, buildings, and cities, selected for their relevance to contemporary interests and events, such as recent discoveries or interpretations. Each work is discussed and tagged in ways that will support classroom projects and student research, while also fostering interest in the field. Some features focus on pedagogy (plans, maps, timelines, glossary, translated primary sources), and others illuminate connections between medieval art and real-world professional practitioners (the podcast series Medieval Art Matters). This website will keep growing, so check back often!
Credits
Content curation and graphic design: Erika Loic
Writing: Erika Loic and Linda Safran
Web development: Monica Ung
Architectural plans and drawings: Navid Jamali
Maps: Jeff Allen
Podcast production: Cited Media Productions (Jason Cohanim, Gordon Katic, Polly Leger, David Tobiasz)
Other contributions to the website: Jill Caskey, Adam S. Cohen, Genevra Kornbluth, Emily Fu, Sasha Gorjeltchan, Esther Kim, and Shanny Tsai
Acknowledgments
We thank the institutions that helped fund our work: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; Dean Amrita Daniere and the Office of the Vice-Principal Academic and Dean at the University of Toronto Mississauga; the University of Toronto's ATLAS grant program in the Faculty of Arts & Science; the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto, St. George Campus; and the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.