Elizabeth Carson PastanProfessor
Education
- Ph.D., Brown University, 1986
- M.A., Columbia University, 1979
Research Interests
- Medieval art and architecture
- Medieval stained glass
- Monumental pictorial cycles: issues of text and image
- The Cult of Relics
- Medievalism
Books
 | Quid Est Sacramentum?: Visual Representation of Sacred Mysteries in Early Modern Europe, 1400-1700, eds. Walter S. Melion, Elizabeth Carson Pastan, and Lee Palmer Wandell (Leiden: Brill, 2020) |
 | Investigations in Medieval Stained Glass, eds. Elizabeth Carson Pastan and Brigitte Kurmann-Schwarz (Leiden: Brill, 2019) |
 | The Bayeux Tapestry and its Contexts: A Reassessment, with Stephen D. White and Kate Gilbert (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2014) |
 | Elizabeth Carson Pastan and Mary B. Shepard, co-editors, special section, "Stained Glass: Collaborations, Analogies, and Investigations," Journal of Glass Studies, vol. 56 (2014): 229-350. |
 | Co-organizer, Foreword, and “Imagined Patronage: the Bayeux Embroidery and its Interpretive History,” in Medieval Patronage: Power & Agency in Medieval Art, ed. Colum Hourihane, Index of Christian Art, Princeton, Occasional Papers XV (Princeton: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013), xi-xii, and 54-75. |
 | The Four Modes of Seeing: Approaches to Medieval Imagery in honor of Madeline Harrison Caviness, eds. Evelyn Staudinger Lane, Elizabeth Carson Pastan, and Ellen Shortell eds (Oxford: Ashgate Publishers, 2009) |
 | Les vitraux du choeur de la cathédrale de Troyes (XIIIe siècle), co-authored with Sylvie Balcon, Corpus Vitrearum France, vol. II (Paris: Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques [CTHS], 2006) |
Recent Articles
"Illuminating the Northern Rose Window of Troyes Cathedral," for Gothic Space: Studies in Celebration of Stephen Murray, eds. Katherine Boivin, Lindsay Cook, and Zachary Stewart (Leiden: AVISTA/Brill, 2026), Chapter 8, pp. 209-232
"Fuga sacra: Inventory & Legacy at Bayeux Cathedral," Une fresque brodée en l'honneur de Shirley Ann Brown. La Tapisserie de Bayeux vue par ses collègues et amis / A collaborative tapestry in honour of Shirley Ann Brown: the Bayeux Tapestry seen by her colleagues and friends, eds. Sylvette Lemagnen and Gale R. Owen-Crocker (Brepols, in press, anticipated April 2026)
"Building the Rose," with Ellen Shortell for A Cultural History of Craft in the Medieval Age, vol. 2, ed. Heidi Gearhart, in A Cultural History of Craft series ed. Clive Edwards (London: Bloomsbury Academic, in press, anticipated July 2026)
“Seeing and Not Seeing the Rose Window of Lausanne Cathedral,” co-authored with Brigitte Kurmann-Schwarz, Chapter 1 in Unfolding Narratives: Art, Architecture, and the Moving Viewer, circa 300-1500 CE, eds. Anne Heath and Gillian Elliott (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 19-55
“It ought to be Mary: on themes in the western rose window of Notre-Dame of Paris,” Different Visions: Visualizing Gender and Sexuality in the Middle Ages in honor of Rachel Dressler, eds. Virginia Blanton, Jennifer Borland, Karen Overbey, Ben Tilghman, and Nancy Thompson 8 (2022)
Work in Progress
"Patronage and Display," The Bayeux Tapestry (London: The British Museum, 2026), pp. 159-170
"When the Bloom is off the Rose: Managing the Collapse of a Rose Window," Reading Communal Crises through Objects in pre-modern Europe, eds. Julie Hotchin and Donna Sadler (Turnhout: Brepols, anticipated 2026, in press)
"Let stond the wyndow glasid: writings about windows," Architecture and the Literary Imagine, eds. Fabio Barry and Paul Gwynne (London: Bloomsbury, anticipated 2027, in press)
Selected Seminars
The Luminous Image: Investigations into Medieval Stained Glass; Materials & Materiality in Medieval Art; Embodiment: Investigating the Body in Medieval Art; Medieval Art as a Text for the Illiterate; The Medieval Bestiary: Representing the Other in Medieval Art; Visualizing the Medieval Cult of Saints.
