Pamela A. Patton is director of the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University.
Her research examines the visual culture of medieval Iberia and its environs, especially the role of the visual in framing cultural identity and social dynamics among the multiethnic communities of the Iberian Peninsula. Central to her work is the exploration of how medieval images articulated the community ideologies, practices, and folkways that are critical to modern understanding of the medieval world. She has published two monographs: Pictorial Narrative in the Romanesque Cloister (Peter Lang, 2004) and Art of Estrangement: Redefining Jews in Reconquest Spain (Penn State University Press, 2012), the latter the winner of the 2014 Eleanor Tufts Book Award, and authored numerous edited volumes, book chapters, and articles. Her current research follows two main strands: the intersections of color and race in the visual traditions of medieval Iberia and the role of improvisation in the manuscripts of King Alfonso X of Castile.
Patton is coeditor of Studies in Iconography, series editor of Signa: Papers of the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University, and a field editor of Oxford Bibliographies in Art History. Her scholarship has been supported by fellowships from the Kress Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Spanish Ministry of Culture.