Category Archives: Events 2008-2009

Oct. 17, 2009

Keynote: Diane Apostolos-Cappadona
Adjunct Professor of Religious Art and Cultural History, Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University; Adjunct Professor and Core Faculty of Visual Culture , Graduate Liberal Studies Program, Georgetown University; and Adjunct Professor of Religious Art and Cultural History, Catholic Studies Program, Georgetown University
Topic: TBA

Dr. Apostolos-Cappadona is the author of numerous monographs and other works including the Encyclopedia of Women in Religious Art (1996); Dictionary of Christian Art (1994); The Spirit and the Vision: The Influence of Christian Romanticism on the Development of 19th-century American Art (1995) etc. She is currently preparing two anthologies, Sources and Documents in the History of Christian Art, and Sources and Documents on 19th-century Religious Art in America; and with Lucinda Ebersole, a collected volume, The Legacy of Eve in Western Art and Culture; several monographs including Christianity and the Visual Arts in the Global Perspective (2009); The Magdalene’s Code: A Visual Guide, and A Companion Guide to Christian Art. She also serves as the Area Editor for the Cultural Reception of the Arts for Encyclopedia of the Bible, to be published in 30 volumes and online by Walter De Gruyter, Berlin (2006-2018).

One of the most outspoken scholars on the controversial subjects of Dan Brown’s novels, Dr. Apostolos-Cappadona was interviewed for the documentary movie Secrets of the Code, as well as a variety of television programs including CNN, the Today Show, A & E “MovieReal: The Da Vinci Code,” Secrets of Angels, Demons, & Masons, and Secrets of Mary Magdalene. She has recently taped another program for the History Channel on the upcoming movie version of Angels and Demons.

Robert Baum
Associate Professor, Department of Religious Studies, University of Missouri-Columbia; Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, University of Missouri-Columbia; Affiliate Faculty in Women and Gender Studies, University of Missouri-Columbia; Affiliate Faculty in Black Studies, University of Missouri-Columbia; Affiliate Faculty in the Afro-Romance Institute, University of Missouri-Columbia; and Associate Faculty in the Folklore Program, University of Missouri-Columbia
Topic: African female prophets

Dr. Baum is actively involved in the Ford Foundations Difficult Dialogues Initiatives, in which one of his roles is to provide a basic understanding of Islam and issues confronting Muslim students at the University of Missouri. He is the author of Shrines of the Slave Trade: Diola Religion and Society in Precolonial Senegambia (1999), and has written the “Indigenous Religions” chapter for Concise Introduction to World Religions. He has conducted research in Senegal, Egypt, Morocco, Uganda, Gambia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

Kristin Schwain
Associate Professor of American Art and Architecture, Department of Art History and Archaeology, University of Missouri-Columbia and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Art History and Archaeology, University of Missouri-Columbia
Topic: “modern Madonnas”

Dr. Schwain’s most recent publications include Signs of Grace: Religion and American Art in the Gilded Age (2008) and “F. Holland Day’s The Seven Last Words of Christ and the Religious Roots of American Modernism,” in American Art (Spring 2005). She explores conflicts and issues generated by cultural encounters, mass consumption, the politics of representation, and the visual culture of American religions (among others) through close analysis of fine art, material artifacts, and popular culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Kathy Gaca
Associate Professor of Classics, Vanderbilt University
Topic: Antipathy toward pagan goddesses by the early church; supplantation with the cult of the Virgin

Dr. Gaca’s publications include The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity (2004); “Early Christian Antipathy toward the Greek ‘Women Gods’,” in Finding Persephone: Women’s Rituals in the Ancient Mediterranean (2007); and “Girls, Women, and the Significance of Sexual Violence in Ancient Warfare,” in Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones (forthcoming 2009). Gaca’s research interests include Greek and Roman philosophy, and socially normative ideas in the Greek biblical traditions.

Karen Winstead
Associate Professor, Department of English, Ohio State University
Topic: the cult of virgin martyrs (with focus on Katherine of Alexandria)

Dr. Winstead is author of numerous publications including Virgin Martyrs: Legends of Sainthood in Late Medieval England (1997); “Saint Katherine’s Hair” in St Katherine of Alexandria: Texts and Contexts in Western Medieval Europe (2003); and “Fear in Late-Medieval Martyr Legends” in More than a Memory: The Discourse of Martyrdom and the Construction of Religious Identity in the History of Christianity (2005). Her research focuses on saints’ legends, one of the most popular literary forms of the Middle Ages, and on fifteenth-century English literature and culture. She is interested in the intersection of literature and the visual arts, how medieval authors treat issues such as orthodoxy, dissent, class conflict, and gender, and how medieval audiences responded to art and literature.

Alison Futrell
Associate Professor of Roman History, Department of History, University of Arizona
Topic: Cleopatra’s divinity

Dr. Futrell’s research is guided by her interest in the symbols and rituals of power in the Roman Empire, with particular focus on the deployment of gender and material culture in imperial politics. She is also intrigued by representations of ancient Rome in the modern world, in film, literature, and art. Her publications include Blood in the Arena: The Spectacle of Roman Power (1997); The Roman Games: A Sourcebook (2006); and Barbarian Queens: Paradoxes of Gender, Power and Identity (forthcoming), etc. Futrell has appeared regularly on a number of documentaries for the History Channel and A & E, including “Hannibal,” “The True Story of Gladiators,” “Cleopatra’s World: Alexandria Revealed,” and, most recently, “Boudica: Warrior Queen.”

Loriliai Biernacki
Associate Professor, Department of Religious Studies, University of Colorado at Boulder
Topic: the female role in Tantric sex ritual

Loriliai Biernacki’s research focuses on Indian religions, with an emphasis on Tantra, as well as gender, critical theory, and ethics. Her most recent publications include The Renowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex and Speech in Tantra, Oxford University Press (2007); “Sex Talk and Gender Rites: Women and Tantric Sex” in International Journal of Hindu Studies (August 2006); and “Shree Maa of Kamakkhya” in The Graceful Guru: Hindu Female Gurus in India and the US (2004).

Cathleen Fleck
Lecturer in the Jewish, Islamic and Near Eastern Studies Program, Washington University in St. Louis; Assistant Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis
Topic: Jerusalem through the eyes of a 13th-century female pilgrim

Dr. Fleck is author of “‘To exercise yourself in these things by continued contemplation’: visual and textual literacy in the frescoes at Santa Maria Donna Regina” in The Church of Santa Maria Donna Regina: Art, Iconography and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century Naples (2004) and “When a Bible is not a Bible: the meaning and movement of the Bible of Anti-Pope Clement VII” in Word and Image (July-September 2006), and she is a volume editor of Masterpieces of Italian Painting, The Walters Art Museum (2005). Her research interests encompass a number of areas of medieval art history, with a concentration on European and Islamic art of the Mediterranean.

Read Schuchardt
Assistant Professor of Media Ecology and Web Communication, Department of Communication, Wheaton College
Topic: the femme fatale in film

Dr. Schuchardt’s works include The Disappearance of Women: Technology, Pornography, and the Obsolescence of Gender (2008) and You Do Not Talk about Fight Club: I Am Jack’s Completely Unauthorized Essay Collection (2008), and he is a contributor to Mirror On America: Short Essays and Images from Popular Culture (1999, 2002, 2005). Dr. Schuchardt is the cofounder of Cleave: The Counter Agency, a content development company and communications think tank, and cofounder and publisher of Metaphilm, a website that
provides a venue for the review and interpretation of cinema.

For more information, see http://maa.missouri.edu.