Sonja Drimmer

Sonja Drimmer is a scholar of medieval European art with expertise in illuminated manuscripts and early print. Before joining the department in 2013, she received her BA from Brown University and PhD from Columbia University. Her research is largely concerned with premodern notions of authorship and authority, the collaborative nature of artistic production, media theory, reproduction, and the aesthetics and material culture of politics. She maintains a strong interest in historiography and in particular how reproduction and restoration shape the reception of objects over time.

Drimmer’s monograph, The Art of Allusion: Illuminators and the Making of English Literature, 1403-1476 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), is the first art historical study dedicated to the emergence of the Middle English literary canon as an illustrated corpus, which argues for a revised notion of canonicity itself from the perspective of manuscript producers. It received High Commendation for Exemplary Scholarship in the pre-1600 Category of the Historians of British Art Book Prize and was supported by subventions from ICMA-Kress, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and the College Art Association Millard Meiss Publication Fund. It has been reviewed in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Speculum, The Medieval Review, Journal of British Studies, Medium Aevum, CAA Reviews, Journal of the Early Book Society, English Historical Review, The Antiquaries Journal, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, and Studies in Iconography.