Publications

2025

Patton, Pamela A., ed. Art, Power, and Resistance in the Middle Ages. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2025.

This volume addresses a vital point of intersection between images in the Middle Ages and those in the modern world: the potential of medieval works of art to convey messages of power and resistance. Provoked by the misuse of medieval imagery in modern discussions, the contributors to this volume assess how medieval images connect to discourses of power in both the past and the present.

The contributors each began with a single question: In the eyes of their makers and viewers, how were medieval images understood to assert or to resist forces of power? Their case studies come from a wide range of cultural, geographic, and historical contexts: the Byzantine, Ottonian, and Valois courts; the Umayyad and Castilian regimes of the Iberian Peninsula; the pluralistic military and commercial zones of the eastern Mediterranean; and the metaphorical as well as personal battlegrounds linked to medieval “courtly love” culture. Over eight chapters, the authors highlight patterns of visual rhetoric still evident in art today. They invite readers to contemplate how modern priorities and sensibilities might amplify, mute, or transform the discourses related to power and resistance that were threaded through the visual culture of the Middle Ages.

In addition to the editor, the contributors include Heather A. Badamo, Elena N. Boeck, Thomas E. A. Dale, Martha Easton, Eliza Garrison, Anne D. Hedeman, Tom Nickson, and Avinoam Shalem.

2023

Patton, Pamela A. “Sign, Soma, Stereotype: Ways of Seeing Jews.” The Lost Mirror: Jews and Conversos in Medieval Spain. Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2023. 95–109. Print.
Patton, Pamela A. “Going Outside the Lines: Convention and Improvisation in the Cantigas De Santa María.” Repenser l’art médiéval. Hommage à Xavier Barral I Altet. Motuvun: IRCLAMA, University of Zagreb, 2023. 515–522. Print.
(ed.), Pamela A. Patton, and Maria Alessia Rossi. Out of Bounds: Exploring the Limits of Medieval Art. Vol. 3. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2023. Print.

2022

Patton, Pamela A. “What Did Medieval Slavery Look Like? Color, Race, and Unfreedom in Later Medieval Iberia.” Speculum 97.3 (2022): 649–697. Print.
(ed.), Pamela A. Patton, and Catherine A. Fernandez (ed.). Iconography Beyond the Crossroads: Image, Method, and Meaning in Medieval Art. Vol. 2. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2022. Print.
Patton, Pamela A. “‘Iconography and Evolution at the Index of Medieval Art’ [Chinese].” World 3: Iconographic Archives. Beijing: OCAT Institute, 2022. 17–34. Print.

2021

(ed.), Pamela A. Patton, and Henry D. Schilb (ed.). The Lives and Afterlives of Medieval Iconography. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2021. Print.

2019

Patton, Pamela A. “Color, Culture, and the Making of Difference in the Vidal Mayor.” Towards a Global Middle Ages: Encountering the World Through Illuminated Manuscripts, Ed. By Bryan C. Keene. Malibu, CA: Getty Museum, 2019. Print.
Patton, Pamela A. “Blackness, Whiteness, and the Idea of Race in Medieval European Art.” Whose Middle Ages? Teachable Moments for an Ill-Used Past, Ed. By Andrew Albin Et Al. New York: Forham University Press, 2019. 154–165. Print.
Patton, Pamela A. “Demons and Diversity in León.” Medieval Encounters 25.1-2 (2019): 150–179. Print.

2017

Patton, Pamela A. “The Other in the Middle Ages: Difference, Identity, and Iconography.” The Routledge Companion to Medieval Iconography, Ed. By Colum P. Hourihane. London: Routledge, 2017. 492–503. Print.
Patton, Pamela A. (ed.), and Judith K. Golden (ed.). Tributes to Adelaide Bennett Hagens. Manuscripts, Iconography, and the Late Medieval Viewer. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017. Print.

2016

Patton, Pamela A. “An Ethiopian-Headed Serpent in the Cantigas De Santa María: Sin, Sex, and Color in Late Medieval Castile.” Gesta 55.2 (2016): 213–38. Print.
Patton, Pamela A. (ed.). Envisioning Others: Race, Color, and the Visual in Iberia and Latin America. Vol. 62. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Print.
Patton, Envisioning Others Intro (2016)

2014

Patton, Pamela A. “The Little Jewish Boy: Afterlife of a Byzantine Legend in Thirteenth-Century Spain.” Byzantine Images and Their Afterlives: Essays in Honor of Annemarie Weyl Carr, Ed. Lynn Jones. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014. 61–80. Print.
patton_jewish_boy_2014.pdf

2013

Patton, Pamela A. “Arts.” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies (Special Issue:Shards of Memory: Reflections on the Legacy of María Rosa Menocal) 5.3 (2013): 111–117. Print.
patton_arts_jmis_2013.pdf

2012

Patton, Pamela A. Art of Estrangement: Redefining Jews in Reconquest Spain. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2012. Print.

2008

Patton, Pamela A. “Constructing the Inimical Jew in the Cantigas De Santa María: Theophilus’ Magician in Text and Image.” Beyond the Yellow Badge: Anti-Judaism, Anti-Semitism and European Art Before 1800, Ed. By Mitchell Merback. Leiden: Brill, 2008. 233–256. Print.

2007

Patton, Pamela A. “An Islamic Envelope-Flap Binding in the Cloister of Tudela: Another ‘Muslim Connection’ for Iberian Jews?.” Spanish Medieval Art: Recent Studies, Ed. Colum P. Hourihane. Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 2007. 65–88. Print.
patton_flap_binding_2007.pdf

2005

Patton, Pamela A. “Cain’s Blade and the Question of Midrashic Sources in Medieval Spanish Art.” Church, State, Vellum and Stone: Essays in Honor of John Williams, Ed. By Julie Harris and Therese Martin. Leiden: Brill, 2005. 423–451. Print.

2004

Patton, Pamela A. Pictorial Narrative in the Romanesque Cloister: Cloister Imagery and Religious Life in Medieval Spain. New York: Peter Lang, 2004. Print.

2003

Patton, Pamela A. “The Cloister As Cultural Mirror: Anti-Jewish Imagery at Santa María La Mayor in Tudela.” Der Mittelalterliche Kreuzgang: Architectur, Funktion Und Programm, Ed. Peter Klein. Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2003. 317–332. Print.
patton_tudela_2003.pdf

2000

Patton, Pamela A., John Lunsford, and Kelly Chamblee. The Meadows Museum. A Handbook of Spanish Painting and Sculpture. Dallas, TX: Meadows Museum, 2000. Print.
Patton, Pamela A. “Catálogo.” La Colección Meadows. Exhibition Catalogue, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza and Museu Nacional d’Art Catalan, May-November, 2000. With John Lunsford and Kelly Chamblee. Madrid: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, 2000. Print.

1999

Patton, Pamela A., and Eric Marshall White. Faith in Conflict: Devotional Images and Forbidden Books from Spain’s Counter Reformation (exhibition Booklet). Dallas, TX: Meadows Museum, 1999. Print.
Patton, Pamela A. “The Capitals of San Juan De La Peña: Narrative Sequence and Monastic Spirituality in the Romanesque Cloister.” Studies in Iconography 20 (1999): 51–100. Print.
patton_capitals_1999.pdf

1997

Patton, Pamela A. “El Prado En La Pradera’: Arte español En El Museo Meadows (Dallas, Texas).” Goya. Revista de Arte 257 (1997): 258–266. Print.

1996

Patton, Pamela A. “A Late Gothic Painted Cabinet from Catalonia.” The Burlington Magazine (1996): 386–391. Print.

1994

Patton, Pamela A. “Et Partu Fontis Exceptum: The Typology of Birth and Baptism in an Unusual Spanish Image of Jesus Baptized in a Font.” Gesta 2 (1994): 79–92. Print.

Recent Publications

Art, Power, and Resistance in the Middle Ages
Sign, Soma, Stereotype: Ways of Seeing Jews
Going Outside the Lines: Convention and Improvisation in the Cantigas de Santa María
Out of Bounds: Exploring the Limits of Medieval Art
What Did Medieval Slavery Look Like? Color, Race, and Unfreedom in Later Medieval Iberia
Iconography Beyond the Crossroads: Image, Method, and Meaning in Medieval Art