Alexandra Alvis
Alexandra “Allie” Alvis is the curator of special collections at the Winterthur Library, and is the pink-haired book historian behind @book_historia on various social media platforms. They have spoken and published on a variety of topics including the re-use of 17th century printers’ ornaments, arsenical pigments in bookbindings, and the presence of “old” books in the Magic: The Gathering card game. As @book_historia, Allie creates accessible content that centers the materiality of historic books, manuscripts, and everything in between.
Derrick Austin
Derrick Austin is the author of Tenderness (BOA Editions, 2021), winner of the 2020 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, and Trouble the Water (BOA Editions, 2016). His third collection, This Elegance, is forthcoming in Spring 2026. A Cave Canem fellow, he is the recipient of a Ron Wallace Poetry Fellowship, a Stegner Fellowship, and an Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship. He has had poems and essays commissioned by The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, The New Museum, Craft Contemporary, The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts, The Brick (formerly LAXART), and The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.
Emrys Brandt
Emrys Brandt is a trans-disciplinary artist and writer based in Chicago, IL, on the unceded land of the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa peoples. Working across digital and physical media – including browser art, physical computing, and text – he explores memory, queerness, and invisible phenomena, both digital and natural. He currently co-hosts the podcast Medievalism Today with Alan Perry.
Lindsay Cook
Lindsay S. Cook (she/her) is an architectural historian, medievalist, digital humanist, translator, and digital preservation advocate. A specialist in medieval European architecture, Lindsay’s current research addresses architectural and artistic responses to the Gothic cathedral Notre-Dame of Paris, medievalism in African American architecture, medieval architectural space, and digital and material approaches to the valorization, conservation, and restoration of cultural heritage.
Martha Easton
Martha Easton is Associate Professor of Art History and Program Director of Museum Studies at Saint Joseph’s University. Her research and publications have addressed various topics including illuminated manuscripts, hagiographic illustrations, gender issues in medieval art, violence and spirituality, courtly love and Gothic ivories, medievalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the collecting of medieval art during later periods. Her long-standing, ongoing book project centers on medievalism and the art and architecture of Hammond Castle, built in the 1920s in Gloucester, Massachusetts, one of the castles described in her essay in this issue.
Larisa Grollemond
Larisa Grollemond is Associate Curator of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Her research interests include late medieval and Renaissance French illuminated manuscripts and paintings, multimedia 15th–16th century visual culture, and medievalism. She was co-editor and contributor to Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World (Getty Publications, 2019), the co-author of The Fantasy of the Middle Ages (Getty Publications, 2022), was a contributing author to The Book of Marvels: A Medieval Guide to the Globe (Getty Publications, 2023), and has published research in the journals postmedieval and Digital Philology. Past exhibition projects include Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World (2019), Transcending Time: The Medieval Book of Hours (2021), The Fantasy of the Middle Ages (2022), Blood: Medieval/Modern (2024), and Rising Signs: The Medieval Science of Astrology (2024).
Christopher Herde
Chris Herde is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying medieval cultures of recreation and competition. His dissertation focuses specifically on the political and social utility of sports and games for the Mamluk elite of Egypt and Syria, but he is also fascinated by the proliferation of games around the Mediterranean world as well as the re-creation of medievalism in the modern day.
Mario Elías Jaroud
Mario Elías is a multidisciplinary artist of Cuban and Syrian descent based in Chicago. His book, Queering the Male Gaze, reimagined masterpieces of the classical and modern art historical canon through essays and self-portraiture, giving voice to the often-overlooked queer and female figures who shaped them. He is the founder of The KindaSuper Project, a philanthropic initiative providing photography and video services to underserved communities. His debut novel, Beloved Disciples, is forthcoming from Amble Press, summer 2026.
Mya Nicole Jones
Mya Nicole Jones is an award-winning multimedia artist and content creation professional whose impressive precocity has provided her the opportunity to work across a broad spectrum of creative and business forums nationally and internationally.
Bryan C. Keene
Dr. Bryan C. Keene (he/él/they/elle) is an internationally-recognized scholar, award-winning curator, student-centered educator, community mentor and activist, and a queer, non-binary parent. A published author or editor of seven books and over fifty articles, his research centers on global manuscript cultures, queer and trans representation in the visual arts, and policy change in museums. He teaches art history and theatre at Riverside City College, where he also serves as dramaturge for productions and advocates for LGBTQIA2+ student success as the Ally Training coordinator. He was previously an educator and curator at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles (2006-2009; 2010-2020) and serves as a leading voice in the International Council of Museums (ICOM), the International Center of Medieval Art, and the Medieval Academy of America. He received a PhD in Medieval Art History from The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.
Tania Kolarik
Dr. Tania Kolarik is a scholar of medieval textiles and their influence on the art and architecture of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italy. She is also the webmaster and a member of the board of directors for the Association Villard de Honnecourt for the Interdisciplinary Study of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art (AVISTA).
Janet T. Marquardt
Janet T. Marquardt holds the rank of Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Eastern Illinois University and is a Research Associate of Art History at Mount Holyoke College. She is author/curator of Objects of Personal Significance (1998); From Martyr to Monument: The Abbey of Cluny as Cultural Patrimony (2007) and Zodiaque: Making Medieval Modern 1951-2001 (2015); editor of Françoise Henry: The Inishkea Journals (2012); co-author of Frames of Reference: Art, History, and the World (2004); and co-editor of Medieval Art after the Middle Ages (2009). She has also written numerous articles in French and English on the historiography of medieval art, American missionaries in the Near East, and the contemporary art of American women. Marquardt was awarded an NEH senior fellowship 2002-2003, was a Visiting Professor at the Medieval Studies Center at the University of Poitiers in 2006, and a Humanities Fellow at Trinity College Dublin in 2011. She is currently working on how Zodiaque photographs of Romanesque art impacted regional cultural history in Europe as well as how the “hagiography of humanitarianism” of nineteenth-century New England Protestant missionary women affected attitudes about the Middle East in the United States.
Brinna Michael
Brinna Michael is the Visual Resources Metadata Librarian at Cornell University Library. Their work focuses on describing and providing access to the rich visual history documented in Cornell’s various collections. Brinna’s research interests include critical cataloging, reparative description, inclusive description, and descriptive metadata as a digital humanities tool. At their previous job, Brinna developed a deep interest (perhaps small obsession) with the correspondence and poetry of Sarah Wesley, daughter of Charles Wesley, famous Methodist hymnodist. It is their hope that one day, they can do Sarah justice and share her life story with the world.
Kelin Michael
Kelin Michael is the current Luce/Getty Fellow at the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Hammer Museum. Kelin earned her B.A. from Oberlin College and her M.A. and PhD from Emory University, with a major field of study in Medieval Art. Most recently, Kelin was a graduate curatorial intern and project manager at the Getty Museum in the Manuscripts Department, where she assisted with three exhibitions: Lumen: The Art and Science of Light, Marvels of the World: Wonder and Fear in the Middle Ages, and The Fantasy of the Middle Ages. Kelin has also held internships and research positions at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Michael C. Carlos Museum, Whitney Western Art Museum, Stuart A. Rose Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Book Library, and Emory University.
Liam Michael
Liam Michael is the Head Pressman at Full Scale, LLC – a custom packaging manufacturer based in Colorado. Liam’s interests outside of work include politics, history, video games, and spending time with his cat.
Tirumular (Drew) Narayanan
Tirumular (Drew) Narayanan is a Ph.D. Candidate in Art History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His dissertation project titled “Sultans of Babylon: Racialization and ‘Crypto-Visuality’ in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century European Latin Christian Manuscripts” moves away from considering the expected markers of racialization (such as particular types of skin color, physiognomy, costume, and accoutrements) and towards new vistas where text-image interaction, semiotics, materiality, topography, imposterism, accusations of appropriation, and visualized expropriation can serve as equally substantive and powerful indices when dealing critically with premodern formulations of racialization. As a voracious consumer of twentieth-century pulp fiction, he also works on the deployment of racist medievalism in Americana. In August 2025, Drew will be starting his new position as Assistant Professor of Art History at Appalachian State University.
Alan Perry
Alan Perry is an interdisciplinary artist who works with video, installation, artist’s books, computer animation, 3D printing, creative coding, and photography. His work questions the relationship between past and present, with a particular focus on communication technology. Questions around how technology takes on a magical or arcane aura permeates his work. He has participated in solo and group exhibitions in FortCollins, Denver, Portland, Seattle, and Chicago in the United States, and internationally in Gimpo, South Korea.
Mariah Proctor-Tiffany
Mariah Proctor-Tiffany is Professor of Art History at California State University, Long Beach, specializing in women and art in the late Middle Ages, medievalism, and digital art history. Her book Gothic Art in Motion: The Inventory and Gift Giving of Queen Clémence de Hongrie appeared through Pennsylvania State University Press, and the collection of essays she edited with Tracy Chapman Hamilton, Moving Women Moving Objects (400-1500), was published by Brill. She is at work on the second issue on medievalism for Different Visions, as well as another collection on women and material culture in late medieval Paris, co-edited with Tracy Chapman Hamilton and Kathleen Nolan. Mariah’s ongoing digital art history project with Tracy Chapman Hamilton MappingtheMedievalWoman.com puts medieval women on the map as makers and patrons of the arts in medieval Paris. Who knew tax records could be so exciting?
Alexa Sand
Alexa Sand is an art historian specializing in book illumination and small-scale works from about 1200-1500, mostly in the francophone world. Since 2004, she has been on the faculty at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, and since 2018 she has served as Associate Vice President for Research, with a focus on student research. Her most recent work focuses on puppetry and other ephemeral performing arts and play as featured in the marginal illuminations of fourteenth-century manuscripts. With Ian MacInnes, she is co-host and co-producer of the podcast, Real Fantastic Beasts. This is her first, but she hopes not her last, collaboration with her eldest child, Annika Wiebe.
Tory Schendel-Vyvoda
Tory Schendel-Vyvoda is a lecturer, curator, and artist-philosopher. She is earning her doctorate at the Institute of Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts and publishes on medieval mysticism, medieval art, community curation, photogrammetry, and cultural heritage. Furthermore, she is currently collaborating with a team of scholars to co-author The Origins of Prejudice: Dangerous Opinions and Beliefs by Berghahn Books.
Emily Shartrand
Emily Shartrand is an instructor of premodern Art History at Glendale Community College in Los Angeles, California. Her research interests include issues of gender and sexuality in medieval marginalia, as well as medievalism in contemporary book art directed at female, youth, and queer audiences. In 2021 she guest curated an exhibition for the Delaware Art Museum entitled Fantasy and the Medieval Past, which explored how American fantasy authors and illustrators have reinterpreted and reused the medieval past to populate their own fantasy worlds. Emily is currently working on a book project inspired by this exhibition.
Annika Wiebe
Annika is an illustrator, outdoor educator, barista, and musician based in Berkeley, California. They graduated with a bachelor’s degree in multimedia art from Western Washington University in 2022. They enjoy reading, rock climbing, the music and writing of Neil Young, and cookery. They have been illustrating stories since age three, but this is their first collaboration with their mother.