GETTING TO KNOW YOUR PROFESSOR….

Dr. Sara N. James, Professor of Art History, holds a B.A. in Art from Mary Baldwin College, an M.A. in Humanities (Medieval Studies) from Old Dominion University, and a Ph.D. in Art History (Italian Renaissance) from the University of Virginia. She teaches art history and interdisciplinary courses in Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art and architecture. Recently she has expanded her research to include art in England. She serves  on the Honor Scholars Committee, as an advisor to Arts Management and Art History majors,  and is chief faculty marshal.

In addition to teaching, Dr. James is an active scholar. She has most recently received a grant from the Samuel Kress Foundation in New York to participate in “Making and Meaning in Renaissance Art,” a seminar at Oberlin College and the Cleveland Museum of Art, June 2012.  In late July 2011, she received a Kress grant to study at the Summer Teachers’ Institute  for Technical Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and Metropolitan Museum. She has received many requests for speaking  engagements, including the Hermitage Foundation in Norfolk, VA and the international Chief Executives Organization to serve as speaker in Florence, Italy in May 2008. She spent her sabbatical semesters, Spring 2007 and spring 2000, doing research in Italy. She lived in Orvieto and at the American Academy, where she was appointed a Visiting Scholar. She returned to Italy in June 2005 and 2007 to present her research at a Convegno Internazionale in Orvieto, Italy.

Dr. James has several publications. Her book, entitled Signorelli and Fra Angelico at Orvieto: Liturgy, Poetry and a Vision of the End-time, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing (2003) is available from the publisher, Amazon, and in museum bookstores internationally.  Two chapters she has written include  “Cardinal Wolsey: The English Cardinal Italianate,” in Renaissance Papers 2008 and in “Vasari on Signorelli: The Origins of the Grand Manner of Painting” in Reading Vasari (Philip Wilson, 2005). Her article “Penance and Redemption: The Role of the Roman Liturgy in Luca Signorelli’s Frescoes at Orvieto” was published in the fall 2001 issue of Artibus et Historiae.  She contributes regularly to the Sixteenth Century Journal, the Renaissance Quarterly, and newsletters for Association for Textual Scholarship in Art History and Historians of British Art as a book reviewer.

Highlights of recent scholarly publications and presentations include papers,  “The exceptional Presence of St. Joseph in Ugolino di Prete Ilario’s Frescoes at Orvieto,” at the Renaissance  Society of America, 2012 and “Art on the Margins: The Paradoxical Canon of British Art,” presented at the session sponsored by the Historians of British Art, College Art Association, Chicago, February 11, 2010. She has written several articles for the Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, Volume A, published by Walter de Gruyter in Berlin (Germany), including, “St. Francis,” “Jan van Eyck,”  “Antichrist in the Visual Arts” and “Apocalypse in the Visual Arts” In 2006,  she co-authored with Dr. Ulysse Desportes a biography of Horace Day, The Dictionary of Virginia Biography, the Virginia State Library.   In 2005, she presented a paper, “Cardinal Wolsey, his Court, His King, and the Italian Rhetoric of Magnificence,”  presented at the joint meeting of the Renaissance Society of America and the Society for Renaissance Studies (Britain) in Cambridge, England. She has given additional papers at the College Art Association, the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference and at the Southeast College Art Conference. She has enjoyed success as a photographer, especially of art, architecture, and gardens, . She has received a first place and several other awards from the Garden Club of America for her photographs of gardens. Many of the images she uses for teaching are her own, especially in her course on English art and architecture. Over 2100 of her images of English and Italian art and architecture are in the ArtStor database.

In her leisure time, Dr. James enjoys traveling, photography, gardening, touring gardens, reading, stargazing, working out, and most recently sledding and spoiling her six absolutely adorable, brilliant, talented grandchildren.

Web and digital image guru since 2000.