About

Dorothy Hoogland Verkerk is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specializing in early medieval art. Her research interests include the interplay between images and texts in early medieval manuscripts, with a focus on how images interpret textual meanings through visual references to extra-textual elements such as popular sermons, liturgical rites, political necessities, and catechisms. She is also interested in the diverse iconography found in early Christian catacombs and sarcophagi, particularly in relation to death rituals. Additionally, her work explores Irish high crosses as potential sculptural responses to pilgrimage to Rome. Professor Verkerk has contributed to the understanding of medieval art through her publications, including works on early medieval book illumination and the art of the Middle Ages. She has created an online catalog of Celtic art and has been recognized for her contributions to educational technology, receiving a Medal from EDUCAUSE in 1999. Her teaching includes courses on medieval and early Christian art, illuminated manuscripts, and Celtic art and cultures.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Art history
• Philosophy
• History
• Religious studies
• Aesthetics
• Law
• Art
• Literature

Selected publications

• “The Quiet Affection in Their Eyes”

  Religion and the Arts · 2020 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • History
  • Art

  Abstract Since the nineteenth century, Bernhard Plockhorst’s Jesus as the Good Shepherd has enjoyed great popularity and is reproduced in a wide variety of media, appearing in American homes, schools, and churches and even Hollywood sets. Jesus as a Good Shepherd is traced to the early Christian period through the fourth century when he disappears from the iconographic lexicon. He regains popularity during the Protestant Reformation as a didactic tool. Resurging once again in the nineteenth and twentieth century, this Good Shepherd is markedly different from his historical iterations. Tracking visual comparanda and textual sources, the Plockhorst Good Shepherd emerges as a figure that engenders strong emotions of love, protection, and community only possible in a post-agricultural society.

  PublisherDOI

• The font is a kind of grave:remembrance in the Via Latina catacombs

  2019-01-15

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  The Via Latina catacomb paintings and the illuminated Ashburnham Pentateuch are studied together since they provide a case study for analyzing how the story of Exodus was ‘retold’ visually. The Ashburnham Pentateuch’s Exodus illustrations transform the actions of past history through pictorial references to contemporary events, specifically the rituals surrounding baptism — the Christian’s first rite of passage. The Church reiterated Exodus stories, especially the Crossing of the Red Sea, during baptismal rituals to prefigure the Christian’s ritual experience of ‘crossing’ the waters of the baptismal font. The ideological relationship between baptism and death is important to the understanding of the funerary practices that took place in the Via Latina tomb. The Crossing of the Red Sea in the Via Latina tomb is a typological reference to baptism to remind the Christians visiting the tomb that they have passed from spiritual death into a spiritual rebirth. Exodus conceptually linked baptism and death.

  PublisherDOI

• Early Christian Illuminated Manuscripts

  2018-05-20 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Early Christian illuminated manuscripts show a remarkable range of formats in the relationship between text and image, indicating that this was a period of vigorous experimentation before standardization. The surviving books with illustrations also show that early Christians read, enjoyed and commissioned a diverse choice of literature from sacred texts to medicinal herbals and classical writings. An illustrated full Bible (called a Pandect) with both Old and New Testaments does not survive from the early Christian period, so the chapter is arranged to show the variety of books read and illustrated by early Christians. The tendency was to choose a selection of Biblical books, such as the Pentateuch and the Gospels, to illustrate, perhaps since these were books of history and the life and teachings of Christ. The extant illuminated manuscripts represent an elite group of codices created for a privileged audience.

  PublisherDOI

• Dorothy Hoogland Verkerk. Review of "Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art" by Benjamin Anderson.

  CAA Reviews · 2018-02-07

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Feed My Sheep: Pastoral Imagery and the Bishops’ Calling in Early Ireland

  Medieval church studies · 2014-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  The bishop wielded significant authority in religious, intellectual, and political spheres during the Middle Ages, but how was this influence articulated, and once articulated, how was it received? The essays in this volume represent a variety of disciplinary perspectives, each tuned to the production of images made by, for, and about the medieval episcopacy. They present the bishop as a model of piety and intellectual life as well as political and religious action. Considering material from Late Antiquity through the thirteenth century, the essays offer a series of case-studies demonstrating that crafting episcopal imagery was a complicated endeavour employing pictorial, historical, literary, and historiographic devices. Never a static institution, the episcopacy was formed and reformed making it visible to the bishop, to those with whom he interacted, and to broader communities. These efforts at making present the power and authorities of the office asserted the duties, expectations, and ideals of the bishop in ways often specific to time and place. The diverse perspectives on the episcopal image assembled here reveal the office, not as a singular contour, but as a succession of marks and erasures. Shaped by supporters and detractors alike, medieval images of the bishop engaged with historical models, responded to present realities, and considered the eschatological future.

  PublisherDOI

• Charles Doherty, Linda Doran, and Mary Kelly, eds., <i>Glendalough: City of God</i>. Dublin: Four Courts Press for the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 2011. Pp. xxx, 383; b&amp;w and color figs. $74.50. ISBN: 9781846821707.

  Speculum · 2013-04-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Rutgers' Collection of Children's Literature

  The Journal of the Rutgers University Libraries · 2012-06-12

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Although the emphasis is on New Jersey illustrators

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Christian Reponses to Roman Art and Architecture: The Second-Century Church Amid the Spaces of Empire. By Laura Salah Nasrallah. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. xvi + 334 pp. $99.00 cloth.

  Church History · 2011-03-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Christian Reponses to Roman Art and Architecture: The Second-Century Church Amid the Spaces of Empire. By Laura Salah Nasrallah. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. xvi + 334 pp. $99.00 cloth. - Volume 80 Issue 1

  PublisherDOI

• Ashburnham Pentateuch

  Oxford Art Online · 2010-09-16

  reference-entry1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Thomas F. X. Noble, <i>Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians</i>. (The Middle Ages Series.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Pp. vii, 488. $65.

  Speculum · 2010-07-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Awards & honors

• 1999 Medal Winner, EDUCAUSE in association with the College…