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Wheaton College
26 East Main Street
Wheaton College
Norton, MA 02766-2322

Office: Watson A108
Phone: 508-286-3580
Fax: 508-286-3565
Email: staudinger_evelyn@wheatoncollege.edu

Degrees

Ph.D., Brown University
M.A., Tufts University
B.A., Wellesley College

Main Interests

I have a passion for medieval buildings, particularly Romanesque monastic churches and Gothic cathedrals in France. I see these structures as integral to the cities and communities that once enveloped them rather than as isolated behemoths from the past. My interests lie in how these buildings were constructed, not only with respect to the actual "bricks and mortar" used and the design or series of designs chosen, but to the people who might have "foot the bill" and those who carried out the construction. How the social and political events of the time affected the speed with which these buildings were erected is of interest to me as are the encoded messages, political and spiritual, that were deeply embedded within them. They inspired and edified, but they also proclaimed the power of their patrons and their pride of place in medieval society.

In keeping with this multivalent view of medieval buildings, I am also fascinated by decoration as an integral feature of a building's design and its signification, specifically, the sculpture and stained glass that adorned these monuments. Other areas of interest include: the creation of "women's space" as unique from its male counterpart's in medieval architecture; medieval archaeology; the relationship between prints and painting (particularly in the work of Dürer, Rembrandt and Goya); the work of Jan van Eyck, Hieronymus Bosch and Matthias Grünewald; and the art of caricature in medieval gargoyles.

I have also led two trips to France, in 2002 and 2006. My fellow travelers were students enrolled in a senior seminar that focused on four major churches in and near Paris: St. Denis, Notre-Dame in Paris, Chartres and Ste.-Chapelle. After studying each building and its decoration for the first 6 weeks of the semester, we traveled to analyze the works in person. As I always tell my students, "Medieval Art is Cool!"

Student Trip to France

Research Interests

My research is on thirteenth-century architecture, sculpture and stained glass in France. I have worked on Notre-Dame de Donnemarie-en-Montois, a collegiate church located near the city of Provins, once one of the most powerful economic centers in medieval France. Aside from the more traditional methods of research, I have used medieval archaeological techniques to identify building practices at Donnemarie and neutron activation analysis, carried out by the Brookhaven Laboratories in Upton, NY, to assess the relationship between the portal sculpture and its setting. I am currently working on eight panels of stained glass depicting the Last Judgment that are still in situ and their relationship to the panel from Donnemarie now in the Pitcairn Collection in the Glencairn Museum, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania.

During my sabbatical year (2006-2007), I have begun a major research project on the architecture and stained glass of the Burgundian Gothic church of St. Julien-du-Sault in France. My work is being supported by four grants/fellowships:

--Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation Fellowship
--Mellon Summer Research Grant
--A grant from the Cesare Barbieri Endowment for Italian Culture at Trinity College, Hartford, CT.
--Wheaton College Faculty Summer Research Grant

Teaching Interests

I particularly enjoy teaching courses pertaining to Romanesque and Gothic as well as Early Medieval and Northern Renaissance Art. My goal is to help each student come closer to analyzing objects and monuments through the lens of medieval Europe rather than contemporary America. In an age when skyscrapers were non-existent and images were hardly ubiquitous, the dizzying height of a Gothic cathedral or the intricate lines of an Irish manuscript page were truly breathtaking. To this end my students "build" Chartres Cathedral, create a manuscript illumination, debate as iconoclasts and iconodules, and imagine themselves as characters and audience in the late medieval panel painting, The Isenheim Altarpiece, by Grünewald.

I am a print-lover who champions this extraordinary medium in a history of prints class I teach. I encourage my students to become print-lovers through an assignment called Buy-A-Print in which they become collectors. In a seminar for art history majors in 2000, I was privileged to direct the organization of an exhibition and the publication of a 140-page catalogue written by my students in one semester on the history and techniques of printmaking called "Impressions: The Art of the Print." Since that time, I have directed two other exhibitions curated by our students and drawn from our fine print collection: "The Power of the Print: Dürer, Rembrandt and Goya" (2003) and "Faces: Selections from the Wheaton College Print Collection" (2005).

I have also enjoyed teaching Roman Art and Architecture and had the great pleasure of returning to Italy for the first time since I spent my junior semester abroad in Rome. Every day was like visiting an old friend!

This year I will return to teach a First Year Seminar called "Cracking the Codes: Mysteries and Imagery." This course includes such controversies as the restoration of the Sistine Chapel, the Vermeer forgeries by Hans van Meegeren and the emergence of controversies that center on art (the ubiquitous Da Vinci Code and Leonardo's Last Supper).

Classes taught:
Early Medieval Art and Culture
From the Holy Land to Graceland: The Art of Pilgrimage
Castles and Cathedrals
Italian Medieval Art
The History of Prints
Northern Renaissance Art
Roman Art and Architecture
Seminars in: The Radiance of Light, The Brilliance of Color: Stained Glass: from its Origins to the Twentieth Century; The Gothic Cathedral: Chartres as Treasure and Marvel; Impressions: The Art of the Print; The Art of the Gothic Age.

Other Interests

The positions I currently hold in scholarly organizations are as follows:

-Member of the Board of Directors serving a three year term (2007-2010) for the International Center of Medieval Art, the major organization in the US for medieval art historians. I served on the Development Committee in 2005/2006 and currently am serving on the Finance Committee (2007-2010).

-Treasurer, AVISTA, (since 2002) a scholarly organization founded in 1984, which is dedicated to the promotion of medieval topics that relate to the practical sciences and to technology. The society publishes Avista Forum, the Journal of The Association Villard de Honnecourt for the Interdisciplinary Study of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art annually.

-Vice-Treasurer and member of the American author team of the Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi (member since 1998, Vice-Treasurer since 2006), an international organization that is dedicated to publishing all surviving stained-glass windows of European origin that date from before the Industrial Revolution.

Student Projects

During the summer of 2007, one of my students, Alicia La Tores '08, will be accompanying me to France to help measure a 13th-century church. This building located in northern Burgundy is the focus of my most recent research project entitled "Creating Sacred Space: The Intersection of Architecture and Glass in The Gothic Church of St. Julien-Du-Sault."

In addition, I have worked yearly with a Wheaton Research Partner, a student who assists me in my scholarly pursuits throughout the academic year. Alicia LaTores '08, my current WRP, has been helping me on several projects: The first is the copy-editing of my book, THE FOUR MODES OF SEEING: APPROACHES TO MEDIEVAL IMAGERY. The second involves the research of approximately 50 Medieval and Renaissance stained-glass panels that are located in Baltimore, Maryland with the goal of completing the following book, CORPUS VITREARUM UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; STAINED GLASS BEFORE 1700 IN BALTIMORE, MARYLAND. The third project is on the stained glass and architecture of the thirteenth-century church of St. Julien-de-Sault as noted above. I have been analyzing this building, begun in the mid-13th century in a style called Rayonnant with respect to its connections with Paris, in particular, Ste.-Chapelle and the art of Saint-Louis. Alicia helped work up a bibliography on the building, and will assist me during the 2007-2008 academic year in my analysis of the site. Her work with me this summer in France will be invaluable as the early phases of on-site research are completed.

I have also directed numerous student honors theses: the most recent were by Alexandra Mann '06 on the spiritual content of the color blue in art throughout eastern and western cultures, and by Marie Stewart '06 on the conservation of medieval stained glass.

Aside from the collaborative project on prints noted above, two students, Laura Yorkis '00 and Sarah Kozlowski '00 assisted me during January, 2000 in editing the catalogue, IMPRESSIONS: THE ART OF THE PRINT.

Selected Publications, Creative Work or Performances

Co-editor and contributor with Ellen Shortell and Elizabeth Pastan, THE FOUR MODES OF SEEING: APPROACHES TO MEDIEVAL IMAGERY IN HONOR OF MADELINE CAVINESS, Ashgate, 2007 (in press).

"The Integration of a Twelfth-Century Tower into a Thirteenth-Century Church: The Case of Notre-Dame de Donnemarie-en-Montois," JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIANS, 2005, 64/1, 74-99.

IMPRESSIONS: THE ART OF THE PRINT, SELECTIONS FROM THE WHEATON COLLEGE COLLECTION, ed. by Evelyn Staudinger Lane, exh. cat., Wheaton College: Norton, Massachusetts, 2000.

"Stained Glass in Notre-Dame de Noyon: the Textual Evidence," in Proceedings of the XIXth International Colloquium Kraków 1998, 14-16 May, Stained Glass as Monumental Painting, Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi, ed. by Lech Kalinowki, Helena Malkiewicz and Pawel Karaszkiewicz, Kraków, 1999, pp. 165-179.