CHRISTINE HAVICE , Director of the School of Art at Kent State University since
August, 2003, is also a faculty member who teaches what the Car Guys on NPR have suggested is the world’s most useless discipline, art history. She came to KSU from the
University of Kentucky, where she was Associate Dean of the College of Fine Arts after serving for many years as Director of the University Honors Program. Her graduate degrees in art history (Ph.D., M.A.) were vetted by the Pennsylvania State University, which also awarded her an alumni achievement award in 1999.
Growing up in northern Ohio in the immediate post-Sputnik generation, Christine Havice was headed for a career in the sciences until she spent a year as an American Field
Service exchange student in southern Italy, where she began to understand history, art, languages, and culture in a completely new way. Being somewhat slow on the uptake, it wasn’t until several years later, at the end of her sophomore year at Ohio University, that she renounced a major in chemistry in order to go over to the dark (art history) side, much to the puzzlement of her electrical engineer father. The only further adjustments to that path have been the focusing in on the art of the Middle Ages (ever the hot and timely topic) which has given her ample room to practice language skills, to travel to (relatively) remote locales, and to work in some of the world’s most beautiful libraries in pursuit of research in manuscript illumination. She is now the world’s expert on three illuminated manuscripts (Byzantine books in Berlin and Madrid and an Italian book in Lexington,
KY) on which she’s written numerous articles and has a book in progress. She has additional scholarly interest in Orthodox icons and contemporary art by women.
Along the way, Christine Havice has been a summer Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks in
Washington DC and a Fellow of the American Council on Education (1990-91), as well as having served as President of the Women’s Caucus for Art (1988-90). Among her proudest accomplishments are two decades of introducing graduate and undergraduate students to the wonders and challenges of medieval art. Havice’s hobbies include gardening, reading, walking, yoga, and travel to visit her daughter, an architect working in Munich.
Selected Publications
Catalogue essay, Ann Stewart Anderson: Looking Back, Moving Forward , retrospective, PYRO Gallery, Louisville, KY, February, 2009.
Review of The Metropolitan Museum, Hatshepsut from Queen to Pharaoh (2005), for The Woman's Art Journal , XXVIII, 2 (Fall/Winter 2007), 61-64.
Review of B. Pentcheva, Icons and Power: the Mother of God in Byzantium for The
Journal of Early Christian Studies - winter 2007.
"Approaching Women through Medieval Art," invited essay for anthology of essays on medieval women, ed. Linda E. Mitchell (Garland, 1999), 345-373.
"Recent Paintings by Gaela Erwin," foreword to artist's catalogue, funded by the
Kentucky Foundation for Women (Fall, 1996).
Introduction to Russian Icons from the Humble Collection, University of
Kentucky Art Museum (Lexington, KY, 1995), 1-4 (organized and edited student-produced catalogue entries).

"Women and the Production of Art in the Middle Ages: the Importance of
Context," chapter in Double Vision: Perspectives on Gender and the
Visual Arts, ed. Natalie Harris Bluestone (Associated University Presses,
1995), 67-94.
"The Dormition of the Virgin Icon," Four Icons in the Menil Collection (= The
Menil Collection Monographs, 1; Houston, 1992), 24-45
"Disputation bella agitata fra tre gentildonne," in Miniatura veronese del
Rinascimento, Verona, 1986, 163-167.
"The Marginal Miniatures in the Hamilton Psalter," Jahrbuch der Berliner
Museen, XXVI (1984) 79-142.
"The Artist in Her Own Words," The Woman's Art Journal, II, 2 (1981-82), 1-7.
Selected Scholarly Presentations
"Serial and Differential: Evidence for Production Processes in/of the Madrid
Skylitzes," International Medieval Congress, 2004, Leeds (England), July,
2004.
"Iconography and the Question of a Model for the Madrid Skylitzes," XXVIIIth annual Byzantine Studies Conference, Columbus, OH, October, 2002.
"(Self-)Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman: Christine de Pizan's Retelling of
Ancient Art History," The Pennsylvania State University, guest lecture,
April, 1999.
"Christine's Women Artists in the Cité des Dames: Modifying Tradition,"
Christine de Pizan: Texts/Intertexts/Contexts, 29th Annual Conference, the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, Binghamton
University, October. 20-21, 1995.
"'That was no Lady': Women in Action in Illustrated Greek Chronicles," XIXth
Byzantine Studies Conference, Princeton, NJ, November, 1993 (published in BSC Abstracts, 1993).