Few studies in medieval and Renaissance cartography focus on race, in part owing to the genealogical issues discussed above, and in part owing to the racist origins and practices of the disciple of art history that normalizes seeing whiteness as both default norm an universal ideal. Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the founder who gave the discipline…[Read more]

The Vercelli Map, one of the largest maps to survive from the Middle Ages, has not received the attention it merits (Plate IV). This is likely the result of its very poor state of preservation, which has been a constant theme in what little has been published on it.’ There are several studies that make brief mention of the map, and a few studies…[Read more]

This is the Vol – 2, SPECIAL ISSUE 4: VOL – 1, MARCH 2020 issue.

“The Other Close at Hand: Gerald of Wales and the ‘Marvels of the West,’” in The Monstrous Middle Ages, eds. Robert Mills and Bettina Bildhauer (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), 97-112

“Inconceivable Beasts: The Wonders of the East in the Beowulf Manuscript,” with Susan Kim, in Dark Reflections, Monstrous Reflections: Essays on the Monster in Culture, ed. Sorcha Ní Fhlainn (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press E-Book, 2008)

“The Exposed Body and the Gendered Blemmye: Reading the Wonders of the East,” with Susan Kim, Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, v. 3, The History of Sexuality in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. by Albrecht Classen and Marilyn Sandidge (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008)

“Digital Mappaemundi: Changing the Way We Work with Medieval World Maps,” Peregrinations: The Official Publication of the International Society for the Study of Pilgrimage Art, with Martin Foys, vol. 2:3 (Summer 2009)

The dominant literate culture of early medieval England – male, European, and Christian – often represented itself through comparison to exotic beings and monsters, in traditions developed from native mythologies, and Classical and Biblical sources. So pervasive was this reflexive identification that the language of the monstrous occurs not onl…[Read more]

“Ungefraegelicu deor: Monsters and Truth in the Wonders of the East,” Different Visions: A Journal of New Perspectives on Medieval Art, vol. 2 (2009), with Susan Kim

“Anglo-Saxon Frames of Reference: Spatial Relations on the Page and in the World,” Different Visions: A Journal of New Perspectives on Medieval Art, vol. 2 (2009), with Susan Kim

The dominant literate culture of early medieval England – male, European, and Christian – often represented itself through comparison to exotic beings and mon- sters, in traditions developed from native mythologies, and Classical and Biblical sources. So pervasive was this reflexive identification that the language of the mon- strous occurs not…[Read more]

The dominant literate culture of early medieval England – male, European, and Christian – often represented itself through comparison to exotic beings and monsters, in traditions developed from native mythologies, and Classical and Biblical sources. So pervasive was this reflexive identification that the language of the monstrous occurs not onl…[Read more]

“Answering the Call of the Severed Head,” Heads Will Roll: Decapitation Motifs in Medieval Literature, ed. Larissa Tracy (Leiden: Brill, 2012)

“Introduction: The Impact of Monsters and Monster Studies,” in Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. Asa Simon Mittman, with Peter Dendle (London: Ashgate, 2012), 1-14

Abstract: This essay attempts to draw connections between medieval maps and their
many monsters, digital cartographical interfaces, and modern experiences of the world.
Each impacts our understandings of the others. The medieval notion of speculum – the
metaphorical mirror that allows us to see our worlds and ourselves more clearly – dra…[Read more]

This essay considers the user experience of Google Earth, comparing the world it presents with other world views including static print maps, medieval mappaemundi, and Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. It also considers the scopic environment of Google Earth in relation to Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, a theoretical prison design int…[Read more]

“Introduction to Mappings,” with Dan Terkla, Peregrinations: The Official Publication of the International Society for the Study of Pilgrimage Art, vol. IV:I (2013): 134-160

“Forking Paths? Matthew Paris, Jorge Luis Borges, and Maps of the Labyrinth,” Peregrinations: The Official Publication of the International Society for the Study of Pilgrimage Art, vol. IV:I (2013): 134-160

Medieval Christian mapmakers represented a range of peoples, animals and monsters against which they defined their place what they believed to be God’s divine plan. Rooted in earlier anti-Semitic tropes, the detailed world maps of the thirteenth/early fourteenth centuries contain multiple problematic representations of Jews, perceived at once as d…[Read more]