Profile

Professor Barber’s area of specialization is the history of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine art, with a particular focus on the history and theory of the icon. He has also worked extensively on Byzantine aesthetics and intellectual history and with Byzantine manuscripts. He has written and edited a number of books. These include two studies of the contested status of the icon in Byzantium: Figure and Likeness: On the Limits of Representation in Byzantine Iconoclasm (2002) and Contesting the Logic of Painting: Art and Understanding in Eleventh-Century Byzantium (2007). He has recently published a book on painting in late sixteenth-century Crete: Eccentric Renaissance: El Greco, Michaēl Damaskēnos, Geōrgios Klontzas (2024). A co-edited volume, The Icon: An Introduction will appear in 2025.

In addition to presenting papers at numerous domestic and international conferences and symposia, Professor Barber has co-organized several interdisciplinary workshops on Byzantine intellectual history. These have resulted in such publications as Reading Michael Psellos (2006), Medieval Greek Commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics (2009) and Michael Psellos on Literature and Art: A Byzantine Perspective on Aesthetics (2017).

Teaching Interests

Professor Barber teaches undergraduate lecture courses on all aspects of Early Christian, Byzantine, and Post-Byzantine art. Undergraduate and graduate seminars focus on current conversations in the field and will emphasize conceptual issues.

Current Research

Professor Barber is currently at work on a book about El Greco. Other current areas of research include the Byzantine garden and the work of fresco workshops in the sixteenth century. He is also overseeing a multivolume publication of translations of sources for the study of Byzantine art and aesthetics.