Pamela Patton’s scholarship centers on the visual culture of medieval Spain and its environs, particularly the role of the image in articulating cultural identity and social dynamics among the multiethnic communities of the Iberian Peninsula.
Central to her work is the exploration of medieval iconographic traditions as uniquely expressive of community ideologies, practices, and folkways critical to modern understanding of the medieval world. She has published two monographs: Pictorial Narrative in the Romanesque Cloister (Peter Lang, 2004) and Art of Estrangement: Redefining Jews in Reconquest Spain (Penn State University Press, 2012), the latter the winner of the 2014 Eleanor Tufts Book Award. Her edited volume, Envisioning Others: Race, Color, and the Visual in Iberia and Latin America, was recently published by Brill.
Her scholarship has been supported by fellowships from the Kress Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Spanish Ministry of Culture. Before joining Princeton in 2015, Patton was professor and chair of art history at Southern Methodist University. She is a current board member of the International Center of Medieval Art and coeditor of Studies in Iconography. Her current research concerns the depiction and meanings of skin color in Iberia and the western Mediterranean.
