Lindsay Young Distinguished Visiting Senior Scholar Program

The Lindsay Young Distinguished Visiting Senior Scholar Program was created by the Marco Steering Committee in 2015, and Marco welcomed its inaugural Lindsay Young Visiting Scholar, James Palmer of St. Andrews, to campus in March of 2016. Designed to bring a distinguished scholar to campus for an extended visit of one to three weeks, this program is intended to enrich both faculty research and graduate/undergraduate education on campus. Candidates are nominated by Marco faculty members. During their residency, the Lindsay Young Visiting Scholar gives at least one public lecture, leads a seminar-style research colloquium, collaborates with Marco faculty, and attends at least one graduate class.

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Fall 2022 Distinguished Senior Scholar:
Thelma Thomas

Thelma K. Thomas is Associate Professor in the History of Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.  Her main teaching areas include Late Antique, Early Christian, Byzantine, and Eastern Christian art, architecture, and archaeology, and her primary research interests include material and visual culture, materiality, dress and identity, ancient and modern art commerce, the luxury arts, and visual rhetoric. She is  the author of Late Antique Funerary Sculpture: Images for this World and the Next (Princeton University Press) and she co-edited Reading Medieval Images: The Art Historian and the Object.

While here, she will deliver a public lecture entitled “Angelic Appearances and the Monastic Fathers.” Her talk will take place in the Lindsay Young Auditorium at the John C. Hodges Library on Thursday, Nov. 3, at 5:00pm.

Public Lecture:

“Angelic Appearances and the Monastic Fathers”

Thursday, Nov. 3, 2022, at 5pm

Lindsay Young Auditorium, Hodges Library

From the beginnings of the Christian monastic movement (third to fourth centuries CE), a wide range of written sources attested to angels among ascetics. Angelic companions conversed with adepts and rescued them from perilous spiritual battles and physical harm. Other angels watched monks and even took notes about their behavior. At the same time, monks were often compared to angels, and the monastic way of life came to be called the angelic life. In exploring some of the earliest painted images of angels among the monastic desert fathers of Egypt, Prof. Thomas considers the stakes of angelic appearances for monks’ future salvation.

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Past Distinguished Visiting Scholars:

Fall 2022	Sarah Salih Reader in English King’s College, London
Fall 2019	Elizabeth Pastan Professor of Art History Emory University
Spring 2019	Eric Palazzo Professor of Medieval Art History The University of Poitiers, France
Fall 2018	Theresa Coletti Professor of English The University of Maryland
Fall 2017	Brenda Bolton Professor Emerita University of London (Queen Mary & Westfield College)
Spring 2017	Martin Aurell Professor of Medieval History Director, Centre d’Etudes Supérieures de Civilisations Médievales University of Poitiers, France
Fall 2016	Sergio La Porta Professor of Armenian Studies California State University, Fresno
Spring 2016	James Palmer Reader in Medieval History University of St Andews, Scotland