Megan R. Boomer
Assistant Professor of Art and Visual Culture
Associations
Art and Visual Culture
Classical and Medieval Studies
About
Megan Boomer is an architectural historian of the medieval Mediterranean. Her research explores how the design, decoration, and use of sacred space defined historical memories and communities. She teaches courses on medieval visual cultures, architectural history, pilgrimage, and urban space.
Their current book project, Reconstructing the Holy Land, uses extant architecture, lost iconography (including images and inscriptions), archaeological reports, and textual sources to investigate the reshaping of sacred sites in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099-1187). In addition to their research on “Crusader” art, they also study Fatimid shrines in eleventh- and twelfth-century Egypt and Palestine, the visual culture of Arabic-speaking Christian communities, and twentieth-century representations of the crusades.
Before coming to Bates, Megan held postdoctoral fellowships at the Getty Research Institute and Columbia University. She received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2019.
Expertise
Current Courses
Fall Semester 2025
The Art of Islam
What does it mean to call an object or monument a work of Islamic art? The term has been applied to a global geography of visual cultures and works made between the seventh century and the present day. In this introductory course, we will explore the question by analyzing key works ranging from the …
Medieval Architecture
The study of medieval churches enables us to address many historical questions: how people used architecture to define their communities and their places in the cosmos, how traditional building practices and technological revolutions shaped spaces in different cultural contexts, how a monument’s u…
Senior Thesis
Required of all majors, the thesis involves research and writing of an extended essay in classical and medieval studies, following the established practices of the field, under the guidance of a supervisor in the classical and medieval studies program. Students register for CMS 457 in the fall semes…
Winter Semester 2026
Art of the Middle Ages
This introductory course focuses on visual cultures of the European “Middle Ages” (c. 350-1450). We will explore how objects like illuminated manuscripts, precious metal reliquaries, painted icons, silk textiles, and funerary sculpture shaped medieval understandings of faith, community, and powe…
Sacred Travel/Shrines/Souvenirs
From antiquity to the present day, people have traveled to local or far-off sites to approach holy figures, to appeal for divine intervention, and to fulfill obligations. This course explores the material dimensions of these journeys, from the spaces entered and sites encountered to the things trave…