Office: Dodd 247H
Phone: 310-206-8981
gerstel@humnet.ucla.edu

Sharon E. J. Gerstel received her Ph.D. in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts in 1993. After teaching Byzantine Art and Archaeology at the University of Maryland for a decade, she joined the UCLA faculty in 2005 as Associate Professor of Medieval Art. Trained in art history and religious studies, Gerstel's work focuses on the intersection of ritual and art. Her first book, Beholding the Sacred Mysteries, was published as a CAA Monograph. As an archaeologist, Gerstel has excavated and served as a pottery specialist at numerous sites in Greece. Her study of Panakton, a medieval village in Boeotia, recently appeared in Hesperia. At present, she is completing a Manuscript entitled Painting and Piety in the Byzantine Village. This volume, which will be published by Cambridge University Press, uses art historical, archaeological, demographic and ethnographic data to reconstruct how the poorest, unlettered members of late Byzantine society used paintings as devotional tools. Gerstel has edited several volumes and has published numerous articles and reviews in journals and collective volumes, including The Art Bulletin, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, and Cahiers archéologiques. She currently serves on the editorial board of the journal Hesperia and of the series Studies in the Visual Cultures of the Middle Ages.