Megan R. Boomer
Assistant Professor of Art and Visual Culture and Classical and Medieval Studies
About
Megan Boomer is an architectural historian of the medieval Mediterranean. Boomer’s research explores how the design, decoration, and use of sacred space defined historical memories and communities. Boomer teaches courses on medieval visual cultures, architectural history, pilgrimage, and urban space.
Boomer’s 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 research on “Crusader” art, Boomer also studies 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, Boomer held postdoctoral fellowships at the Getty Research Institute and Columbia University and received a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2019.
Expertise
Current Courses
Fall Semester 2026
Senior Thesis: History and Criticism
Preparation of an essay in the history or criticism of art and visual culture, conducted under the guidance of a member of the department faculty. Students may conduct a thesis in either fall or winter semester. Students conducting a senior thesis in history and criticism do not meet as a class. Stu…
Winter Semester 2027
Islamic Visual Cultures
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: History and Criticism
Preparation of an essay in the history or criticism of art and visual culture, conducted under the guidance of a member of the department faculty. Students conducting a senior thesis in history and criticism do not meet as a class. Students undertaking a thesis in the winter semester take 458B.