Benjamin C. Withers

Associate Professor and Chair

Office: 203 Fine Arts

Telephone: 859.257.4013

Email:bwithers@uky.edu

Education: University of Chicago, Ph.D.

Ben Withers joined the Art Department in 2004. He studied medieval art under Michael Camille at the University of Chicago, where he developed research interests in early medieval art, with a particular focus on Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. His work on the illustration of biblical texts, the construction and design of illustrated books and, more recently, issues of gender and monastic identity in the early Middle Ages has appeared in several leading scholarly periodicals, including the Art Bulletin, Anglo-Saxon England, and the Old English Newsletter. He has co-edited two volumes of essays, one devoted to the Old English Hexateuch (co-edited with Rebecca Barnhouse, Kalamazoo, 2000) and the other an examination of the attitudes toward gender and the human body in Anglo-Saxon England (Naked Before God, co-edited with Jonathan Wilcox, West Virginia, 2003). He is currently completing a monographic study, The Illustrated Old English Hexateuch, Cotton Ms. Claudius B.iv: The Frontier of Seeing and Reading in Anglo-Saxon England. His work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ameritech/SBC Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and Indiana University President’s Arts and Humanities Initiative, among others.

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