Stephen Clancy

The seeds of my interest in art and architecture were planted in travel -- when I was a child, my parents twice took me for extended stays to Europe, and I have vague recollections of being coaxed through some of the same buildings I teach today.  I studied Classics as an undergraduate at Cornell University, and followed that with a law degree, also from Cornell.  Four years of practicing law in Los Angeles and Montepelier, VT, taught me two things: I had learned to think like a lawyer, but not to enjoy being a lawyer!  So it was back to grad school for a Ph.D (Cornell, again), with a focus on medieval art and architecture (particularly 15th-century manuscript illumination).  As a teacher, I range widely through the art and architecture of the Middle Ages and Northern Renaissance. I've also developed teaching interests in visual culture, where I explore how images powerfully impact our lives on a daily basis, serving as powerful tools of manipulation. Most recently I created a cross-cultural course entitled "Muslims, Jews, and Christians in Medieval Iberia," which explores the rich cultural interactions that took place on the Iberian peninsula during the Middle Ages, and their implications for the modern era.  I've also become immersed in a humanities technology project entitled "Virtual Chartres Cathedral," which seeks (1) to erase the barriers between students and the 21st-century cathedral and town, by providing a digital "bridge" by which they can explore and interact with the cathedral and its surroundings; and (2) to immerse students in a hypothetical 13th-century reconstruction of the cathedral and town. I will soon be revamping the project's online presence, updating it to "Chartres 2.0," as a colleague put it!  I hope to give students a chance to work with me on integrating class-based knowledge with practical ways of experiencing architecture and history virtually.

And I've discovered a wonderful perk of being an art historian: regularly acting as a Study Leader on tours organized by the American Museum of Natural History ("AMNH Expeditions"). Most recently, I served as Study Leader on AMNH's "Family Greece" expedition, and have also acted as a lecturer on trips to Sicily, the Italian mainland, Malta, Turkey, and southern France.