Samuel Barber's research and teaching focus on the art and architecture of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (ca. 300–ca. 1000 CE). His current book project, The Early Medieval Palace: Architectures of Authority, ca. 350–850 CE, offers a new perspective on the relationships between elite architecture, politics, and society in the centuries following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Sam is also interested in cross-cultural encounters and the distinctive visual cultures that arose on the periphery of hegemonic polities in the Early Middle Ages. To that end, his next project, tentatively entitled Empire’s Edge: Mobility and Exchange in the Art of Asturias, seeks to re-evaluate the monuments of the kingdom of Asturias (northern Spain) in terms of the movement of people, objects, and ideas in the Mediterranean basin.
Areas of Expertise
Early medieval art and architecture