Paroma Chatterjee

Paroma Chatterjee’s research focuses on artistic encounters in the medieval Mediterranean, medieval image theories, ekphrasis, relics and icons, and Byzantine sculpture, among other subjects. She has articles published and/or forthcoming in various journals including Gesta, Art History, Word & Image, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, and Oxford Art Journal. Her first book, Living Icons: The ‘Vita’ Image in Byzantium and Italy, 11th-13th centuries (Cambridge University Press, 2014) investigated the emergence and functions of the portrait framed by narrative scenes of saints’ lives in the Byzantine Empire and among the Franciscans. A second book project on the historical, philosophical, and conceptual functions of sculpture in Byzantium, titled Between the Pagan Past and Christian Present in Byzantine Visual Culture, is also published by Cambridge University Press (CUP, 2022). A third monograph, The Bucolic Mode in Byzantine Art. Sound, Weather, Imperium, was published in 2026 by ARC Humanities Press. Chatterjee’s research has been supported by fellowships such as the Dumbarton Oaks Junior Fellowship, the Kress Travel Fellowship, the Penn Humanities Forum fellowship, a Millard Meiss Publication Fund Award from CAA, and a fellowship at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University. 

Most recently Chatterjee was offered the position of visiting scholar at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington D.C., and a fellowship at the Max Weber Kolleg, University of Erfurt, Germany.

Two different projects occupy her at the moment (along with her second book manuscript): 

1. The relationship of miraculous icons to time
2. The role of numeracy and numbers in ancient and Byzantine rhetoric (especially ekphraseis)

Fields of Study

• Byzantine icons

• Relics

• Medieval image theory

• Medieval/Byzantine sculpture

• Cross-cultural relations in the Mediterranean

• Word-Image relations

Recent and Forthcoming Articles

“Charisma and the Ideal Viewer in Nicetas Choniates’ De Signis,” in The Faces of Charisma, eds. Brigitte Bedos-Rezak and Martha Rust, Brill, forthcoming.

“Iconoclasm’s Legacy: Interpreting the Trier Ivory,” Art Bulletin, Fall 2018

“Viewing the Unknown in Eighth-Century Constantinople,” Gesta, Fall 2017

“The Gifts of the Gorgon: A Close Look at a Byzantine Inkpot,” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 65/66 (2014-15): 212-23.

“Vision, Transformation, and the Veroli Casket,” Oxford Art Journal 36:3 (2013): 325-44.