Distinguished History

Bryn Mawr has a distinguished tradition in the study of the visual arts. The College has been cited as one of a few influential institutions that helped establish art history's place in the American academy. Erwin Panofsky produced his Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance during his time at the College in 1937-38 on a Mary Flexner Lectureship.

Graduate faculty members cover the history of art in Europe and the Americas from early Byzantium through contemporary film. Particular emphases are the medieval afterlife of classical art and artifacts (Alicia Walker), the Italian Renaissance and its historiography (David Cast), the global early modern and South Asian textiles (Sylvia Houghteling), 19th-century France (Steven Levine), and post-World-War II art, theory, photography and film (Lisa Saltzman, Homay King).

In their scholarship and teaching, the faculty represent a range of critical and interpretive positions from art history in the tradition of Erwin Panofsky through its post-structural critique, including feminist and gender theory, social art history, psychoanalytic theory, reception theory, semiotics, and post-colonial theory.