Ph.D. 1996 (Fine Arts), M. A. 1989 (Fine Arts), Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; B. A. 1982 (History of Art), Yale University.

Kathryn A. Smith
Professor of Art History
Early Christian and medieval art; illustrated Gothic manuscripts; image-text relationships in medieval art, especially illuminated manuscripts; the roles of imagery in lay religion; images and one-off illustrated books as expressive and constitutive of medieval notions of the self.
Series Editor, Studies in the Visual Cultures of the Middle Ages (Brepols) (2005 - present); Editorial Board, Manuscript Studies, Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies (University of Pennsylvania) (2015 - 20); Standing Editorial Board, Oxford Bibliographies Online, Medieval Studies (2015 - 2018); Co-editor, Studies in Iconography (2015 - 20); member, Early Book Society, Medieval Club of New York, Association for Manuscripts and Archives in Research Collections (AMARC), College Art Association, International Center of Medieval Art, Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship, American Association of University Professors
Fellow, Royal Historical Society (elected 2020); Councilor, Medieval Academy of America (2018-20); Fellow, Society of Antiquaries of London (elected 2015); 15 Notable Art Professors in New York City, The Art Career Project; Short-list, Historians of British Art Book Prize, Single Author, pre-circa 1800 category, for Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England: Three Women and Their Books of Hours(2005); Article of the Month (August 2000), in Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index, for "The Neville of Hornby Hours and the Design of Literate Devotion," Feminae Article of the Month; Golden Dozen Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, NYU (1999, 2009); Senior Fellowship, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art; Neil Ker Memorial Fund Grant, British Academy; Franklin Research Grant, American Philosophical Society; Sylvan C. Coleman and Pamela Coleman Memorial Fund Art History Fellowship, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (2001, 2022-23); Mary Davis Predoctoral Fellowship, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art; Fulbright Commission/IIE, Dissertation Fellowship for study in England.
“Responsive Books in Some Fourteenth-Century English Illustrated Manuscripts,” in The Medieval Book as Object, Idea and Symbol, ed. Julian Luxford, Proceedings of the 36th Annual Harlaxton Medieval Symposium (Donington, UK: Shaun Tyas, 2021), 105–28 + plates
“’A Lanterne of Lyght to the People’: English Narrative Alabaster Images of John the Baptist in their Visual, Religious, and Social Contexts,” Studies in Iconography 42 (2021): 53–94
"Found in Translation: Images Visionary and Visceral in the Welles-Ros Bible," Gesta 59, no. 2 (2020): 91-130.
"Moralizing the Mass in the Butler Hours," Manuscript Studies 4, no. 2 (2019): 187-230, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/738211
"'Specially English': Gothic Manuscript Illumination, c. 1190 - Early Fourteenth Century," in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, c. 1000-1300, ed. Conrad Rudolph, 2nd, rev. ed. (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2019), 569-600.
"Crafting the Old Testament in the Queen Mary Psalter," in Reading and Writing in Medieval England: Essays in Honor of Mary C. Erler, ed. Maryanne Kowaleski and Martin Chase (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2019), 100-29 + plates.
"St. Edward's Chair in the Queen Mary Psalter," Electronic British Library Journal, art. 10 (2017): 1-18; http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2017articles/pdf/ebljarticle102017.pdf
with Katherine L. French and Sarah Stanbury, “’An Honest Bed’: The Scene of Life and Death in Late Medieval England,” Fragments: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Ancient and Medieval Past 5 (2016): 61-95; http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.9772151.0005.003
“The Drawings of Rylands French 142: Technique, Creator, Date, Iconography and Relationship to the Text," in Denis Piramus, La Vie seint Edmund le rei, ed. D. W. Russell, Anglo-Norman Text Society, Annual Publications 71 (Oxford: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 2013/2014), 41-64
"A Viewing Community in Fourteenth-Century England," in The Social Life of Illumination: Manuscripts, Images, and Communities in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Joyce Coleman, Mark Cruse, and Kathryn A. Smith, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe 21 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 121-76
edited, with Joyce Coleman and Mark Cruse, The Social Life of Illumination: Manuscripts, Images, and Communities in the Late Middle Ages, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe 21 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013)
“The Monk Who Crucified Himself,” in Thresholds of Medieval Visual Culture: Liminal Spaces, ed. Elina Gertsman and Jill Stevenson (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2012), 44-72
The Taymouth Hours: Stories and the Construction of the Self in Late Medieval England (London: The British Library Publications and Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012)
“Margin,” in Medieval Art History Today: Critical Terms, special issue of Studies in Iconography, ed. Nina Rowe, 33 (2012): 29-44
edited, with Carol H. Krinsky, Tributes to Lucy Freeman Sandler: Studies in Illuminated Manuscripts (London and Turnhout: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2007)
“Accident, Play, and Invention: Three Infancy Miracles in the Holkham Bible Picture Book,” in Tributes to Jonathan J. G. Alexander: The Making and Meaning of Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts, Art & Architecture, ed. Gerald B. Guest and Susan L’Engle (Turnhout and London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2006), 357-69
“Books of Hours,” in Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, ed. Susan Mosher Stuard, Thomas Izbicki and Margaret Schaus (London: Routledge, 2006), 89-92
Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England: Three Women and their Books of Hours, The British Library Studies in Medieval Culture (London: The British Library Publications and Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 2003)
"Bibles" (essay), and eight catalogue entries, in Leaves of Gold: Manuscript Illumination from Philadelphia Collections, ed. James R. Tanis and Jenny A. Thompson (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001), 21-43
"The Neville of Hornby Hours and the Design of Literate Devotion," The Art Bulletin 81/1 (1999): 72-92
"The Destruction of Jerusalem Miniatures in the Neville of Hornby Hours and their Visual, Literary and Devotional Contexts," in The Real and Ideal Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Art, Journal of Jewish Art 23/24 (1998): 179-202
"History, Typology, and Homily: The Joseph Cycle in the Queen Mary Psalter." Gesta 32/2 (1993): 147-59
"Inventing Marital Chastity: The Iconography of Susanna and the Elders in Early Christian Art." Oxford Art Journal 16/1 (1993): 3-24
Contact Information
Kathryn A. Smith
Professor of Art History kathryn.smith@nyu.edu 303 Silver Center100 Washington Square E
New York, NY 10003
Phone: (212) 998-8195