Reed O’Mara

Ph.D. candidate, Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) (dir. Professor Elina Gertsman) and 2025–27 Samuel H. Kress Institutional Fellow in the History of Art at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (ZI)
In my research, I focus on the art of medieval Ashkenaz, with a special interest in Hebrew illuminated manuscripts and incunabula. My dissertation examines word and image relationships in manuscripts and printed works in order to better understand the ever-changing perceptions of the Hebrew language in the late Middle Ages, ca. 1200–1500, by Jewish and Christian communities alike. From examples of visual-verbal wordplay to the material splendor of word panels in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Mahzorim all the way to the weaponization of Hebrew in fifteenth-century broadsides and anti-Jewish polemics, my work aims to contribute to our appreciation of how language and art operated in tandem in medieval visual culture.