Virginia Chieffo Raguin Professor of Art History  161A College of the Holy Cross  Worcester MA 01610-2395 Office: Fenwick 443 Phone: (508) 793-3480 Email: vraguin@holycross.edu Relaxing with Jim and Pattie Kirby, Irish relatives after conference on Medieval Pilgrimages University College, Cork

 

INTERESTS Both in teaching and scholarship, I am interested in religious art of all kinds, patterns of collecting, and intersections of the visual image and written culture. For example Sarah Stanbury, Department of English, and I photographed East Anglian churches and guild halls to explore the physical context of medieval literary figures such as Julian of Norwich (Revelations) William Langland (Piers Plowman) Margery Kempe (The Book of Margery Kempe) and John Lydgate (poetry). See Mapping Margery Kempe. I have team taught with many professors, including Thomas Lawler, John Wilson, and Sarah Stanbury (English) and am now teaching in the "Divine" cluster of the College's Monserrat program for entering students.

I have a growing collection of 19th-century religious art, predominantly prints, many in their original frames. They include Lutheran baptismal certificates (in German), Catholic marriage and communion certificates (in French, German, and English), devotional imagery, including a Currier and Ives Sacred Heart of Mary, an Italian (Naples) image of St. Rocco, patron of victims of the plague, an Hispanic image of Christ in Gethsemane, and Currier and Ives prints, such as The Mother's Dream, Looking unto Jesus, and Bed Time (a mother teaching her young children to say their prayers). Here is St. Patrick.

I am bilingual in English and French and have considerable German skills since a great deal of my recent research has been on German, Swiss, and Austrian stained glass of both the Middle Ages and the 19th century.

CURRICULUM VITAE (Summary)


CONFERENCES ORGANIZED

Religion Matters: Art, Piety, Destruction and the Politics of Display
Conference at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester MA, February 2006. In conjuntion with the exhibit Catholic Collecting, Catholic Reflection 1538-1850: Objects as a measure of reflection on a Catholic past and the construction of recusant identity in England and America

Sacred Spaces: Legacy And Responsibility: Conference at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester MA, April 5-7, 2002. Supported by the Lilly Fellows Program in the Humanities and Arts. Historical and practical presentation of art, architecture , and music; displays of building restorations, historic liturgical furnishings and vestments; concerts of sacred music; tours of places of worship

Mementos of Faith, at Preservation Worcester, May 5 - August 31, 2000, forty historical prints dating fom 1785-1920, including devotional images, religious messages, and certificates (personal collection). Local exhibition and conference with student participation.

International Seminar of 19th and Early 20th-Century Stained Glass
Philadelphia April 27-May 1 (The Census of Stained Glass Windows in America and Society of Architectural Historians, 1994). Twenty international scholars

Northern Renaissance Stained Glass: Continuity and Transformations, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, 1987. Fifteen scholarly presentations

SELF PUBLICATION and WEBSITES
Website, 1999, co-authored with Sarah Stanbury, Department of English, College of the Holy Cross, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Mapping Margery Kempe: A Guide to Late Medieval Material and Spiritual Life. There are now over 400 hundred of images of late medieval English architecture and stained glass set within contextual explanation of devotional imagery and the function of the parish church, medieval town, and cathedral.

Website, 1997, Copley Square Photo Project One hundred images with explanation of the Boston Public Library, Trinity Church, Old South Church, Hancock Tower and the original Museum of Fine Arts, profiling the architecture, mural decoration, sculpture, and stained glass one of the most significant public squares in the United States.

Proceedings of the International Seminar of 19th and Early 20th-Century Stained Glass
Philadelphia April 27-May (240 pages) (The Census of Stained Glass Windows in America and Society of Architectural Historians, 1994)

Videotape: Margery Kempe: A Medieval Woman (1994) 30 minutes
distributed to Departments of Religious Studies, English, History, Visual Arts, Experimental and Interdiscipinary Studies, Dinand Library, Women's Studies.

Seminar Papers: Sarah Wyman Whitman, 1842-1904: The Cultural Climate in Boston
(College of the Holy Cross, 1993). Dina Jones "A Feminist Re-viewing of Sarah Wyman Whitman"; Jennifer Fox, "The Dinner Party: Sarah Wyman Whitman through Fiction; Brian Jorgensen, "The Education of Men: Harvard's Influence on the Development of Boston's Culture and Artistic Taste"; Nora O'Connell, "The Education of Women: Radcliffe and Sarah Wyman Whitman" Joel Poudrier, "The Episcopal Church, Phillips Brooks, and Trinity Church: A Mural of Art with Sarah Wyman Whitman in its Center"; Stacy Treuber, "The Literary and Visual sources of the Brimmer Window at Harvard's Memorial Hall"; Virginia Raguin, "Opalescent stained glass and the Context of Sarah Wyman Whitman."
Copies distributed to Boston libraries and historic archives.