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Jeffrey F. Hamburger

Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and Culture at Harvard University

Harvard University

Areas of expertise

  • - Medieval manuscript illumination
  • - The history of attitudes towards images
  • - Art, mysticism and theology
  • - Devotional imagery
  • - Late medieval German religious literature

Major works

Liturgical Life and Latin Learning at Paradies bei Soest, 1300-1425: Inscription and Illumination in the Choir Books of a North German Dominican Convent (Münster: Aschendorff, 2016), co-authored with Margot Fassler, Susan Marti & Eva Schlotheuber; Unter Druck: Deutsche Buchmalerei im Zeitalter Gutenbergs (Vienna/Luzern: Quaternio Verlag, 2015), co-authored with Robert Suckale and Gude Suckale-Redlefsen, with a contribution from Eberhard König; The Prayer Book of Ursula Begerin (Bern: Urs Graf Verlag, 2015), co-authored with Nigel Palmer; Sign and Design: Script as Image in a Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. Jeffrey F. Hamburger & Brigitte Bedos-Rezak (Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C., 2015); Script as Image, Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts 21 (Leuven: Peeters, 2014); Catharine of Siena: The Creation of a Cult, ed. Jeffrey F. Hamburger & Gabriela Signori, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013); ‘Haec figura demonstrat’. Diagramme in einem Pariser Exemplar von Lothars von Segni ,De missarum mysteriis’ aus dem frühen 13. Jahrhundert, Wolfgang Stammler Gastprofessur für Germanische Philologie: Vorträge 19 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013); The Iconicity of Script: Writing as Image in the Middle Ages, special issue of Word & Image 23/3 (2011); Leaves from Paradise: The Cult of John the Evangelist at the Dominican Convent of Paradies bei Soest, Houghton Library Studies, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Houghton Library, distributed by Harvard University Press), 2008; Crown and Veil: The Art of Female Monasticism in the Middle Ages, co-edited with Susan Marti (translation of essays from the catalogue Krone und Schleier. Kunst aus mittelalterlichen Frauenklöster), forward by Caroline Walker Bynum, trans. Dietlinde Hamburger (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008); Frauen - Kloster - Kunst: Neue Forschungen zur Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters. Internationales Kolloquium im Zusammenhang mit Krone und Schleier: Kunst aus mittelalterlichen Frauenklöster, Die Wolfsburg, Mülheim/Ruhr, co-edited with Carola Jäggi, Susan Marti, Hedwig Röckelein, (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007); Krone und Schleier: Kunst aus mittelalterlichen Frauenklöstern (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2005). International loan exhibition, Kunst- und Austellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, and Ruhrland Museum, Essen, March 17-July 3, 2005, co-conceived with Jan Gerchow and Robert Suckale; The Mind’s Eye: Art and Theological Argument in the Medieval West (Princeton: Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University, Princeton University Press, 2005), co-edited with Anne-Marie Bouché; Die Ottheinrich-Bibel. Kommentar zur Faksimile-Ausgabe der Handchrift Cgm 8010/1.2 der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München (Luzern: Faksimile-Verlag, 2002), co-authored with Brigitte Gullath, Karin Schneider, & Robert Suckale; St. John the Divine: The Deified Evangelist in Medieval Art and Theology (Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002). College Art Association, Millard Meiss Publication Grant, 2000; The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998); Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); The Rothschild Canticles: Art and Mysticism in Flanders and the Rhineland ca. 1300 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).

Social links

About me

Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Kuno Francke Professor of German Art & Culture in the Department of the History of Art & Architecture at Harvard University, is a specialist in the history of the book in the European Middle Ages. Having received his B.A. and Ph.D. at Yale University, he taught at Oberlin College and the University of Toronto before coming to Harvard University in 2000. Prof. Hamburger is a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences as well as the American Philosophical Society.