Kara Morrow

Kara Morrow completed her Ph.D. at Florida State University, composing a dissertation on the visual narratives of Saint Stephen in medieval architectural sculpture. After teaching through the course of her graduate studies at FSU, the University of South Florida, and Albion College, she joined The College of Wooster in 2010. She focuses her teaching and research on medieval and African art history, but also has broad teaching interests in the art of the ancient world. Professor Morrow’s classes often include opportunities for students to learn directly from the objects in the teaching collections of The College of Wooster Art Museum (CWAM) and have even featured student-curated exhibitions.

Professor Morrow’s topics of publication include narrative effect in medieval images of saints’ lives and Africanisms in visual culture. Her current research involves the artistic and religious traditions of the African American cemeteries of New Orleans, focusing on visual expression that enables meaningful contact between people and their “important deceased” at sites of power marking the intersection of the corporal and divine. Her medieval research concentrates on the visual narratives of saints’ lives (hagiography) within architectural contexts where the saint’s body resides in the form of relics. She investigates how the art in these sacred spaces directed worshipers, creating both meaning and even identity for various viewers. Similarly, Professor Morrow’s work on Africanisms in African-American art focuses on the interaction of the human and the spiritual within a sacred space, the grave or cemetery, where the relics of a loved-one provide an inlet to the powers of the spiritual realm. These closely related lines of inquiry depend on the same theoretical underpinnings linked to ephemera, race, gender, and reception theories.