BIO

Diliana Angelova grew up in Sofia (Bulgaria). She has a BA degree in History and Southeastern European Studies from the American University in Bulgaria (1995), an MA in Art History from Southern Methodist University (1998), and an MA (2002) and PhD in Early Christian and Byzantine Art from Harvard University (2005).

Professor Angelova’s main research focus is Early Christian and Byzantine art. Her scholarship to date and the work she anticipates pursing in the future are situated at the intersection of two basic issues: continuity and change in the realm of ideas, and the role of women in ancient societies. By taking gender and material culture seriously she seek to reframe the traditional male- and literary-centered way in which fundamental topics such as Roman imperial power, early Christian art, or romantic love have been defined in art historical and scholarship. Ultimately, her major objective is to present a richer and more nuanced understanding of the role of gender in the ancient, and the medieval worlds.

This year Professor Angelova is finishing her first book, “The Empress and the Cross: Gendered Imperium and Divine Authority, First to Sixth Centuries.” The book recovers the dynamic yet central role women played in the ideology and practice of Roman imperial rule (the imperium) between the first and the sixth centuries. Currently under review is an article on Helena and the True Cross. She has begun a project on notions of romantic love in Antiquity and Medieval Byzantium.

Professor Angelova has published exhibition catalogue entries and written encyclopedia essayson various topics in Early Christian art. Her 2004 Gesta article on the iconography of early Byzantine empresses won the 2006 Van Courtlandt Elliott Prize from the Medieval Academy of America. She has taught classeson art and society in Late Antiquity, the topography of Constantinople, Early Christian women in art and text, narrative in Greek and Roman art, Greek sculpture, Greek art and archaeology, love in the art and literature of the ancient world, and Byzantine art.

“Special Report: The Serbian Medieval Monuments of Kosovo and Metohija,” International Center of Medieval Art Newsletter 2 (2007): 4.

“The Ivories of Ariadne and Ideas about Female Imperial Ideology in Early Byzantium,” Gesta 43/1 (2004): 1-15.

In Ioli Kalavrezou, ed., Byzantine Women and Their World, exhibition catalogue, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003:
“Five Steelyard Weights,” 52-56.  
“Medicine Box with Hygieia,” (with Ioli Kalavrezou), 282-283.
“Textile Roundel with Apollo and a Muse,” 178-179.
“Earring in the Shape of Female Nude,” 248.
“Two Tunics,” 265-268.
“Ivory Pyxis with the Judgment of Paris,” 256-257.

In Paul C. Finney, ed., Encyclopedia of Early Christian Art, accepted and in press:
“Mythological Subjects on Ivories”
“The Trier Ivory”
“Early Christian Textiles.”