Megan R. Boomer

Assistant Professor of Art and Visual Culture

Associations

Art and Visual Culture

Olin Arts Center, Room 314

Classical and Medieval Studies

207-786-6258mboomer@bates.edu

About

Megan Boomer is an architectural historian of the medieval Mediterranean. Her research explores how the design, decoration, and use of sacred space defined historical memories and communities. She teaches courses on medieval visual cultures, architectural history, pilgrimage, and urban space.

Her current book project, Reconstructing the Holy Land, uses extant architecture, lost iconography (including images and inscriptions), archaeological reports, and textual sources to investigate the reshaping of sacred sites in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099-1187). In addition to her research on “Crusader” art, she also studies Fatimid shrines in eleventh- and twelfth-century Egypt and Palestine, the visual culture of Arabic-speaking Christian communities, and twentieth-century representations of the crusades.

Before coming to Bates, Megan held postdoctoral fellowships at the Getty Research Institute and Columbia University. She received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2019.

Current Courses

Fall Semester 2024

AVC 241 / CMS 241
The Art of Islam

FYS 569
Medieval/Modern

Winter Semester 2025

AVC 252 / CMS 252
Art of the Middle Ages

AVC 254 / CMS 254 / REL 254
Sacred Travel/Shrines/Souvenir