ASCHA | Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art
B O A R D
RACHEL SMITH | President
Dr. Rachel Hostetter Smith is Gilkison Distinguished Professor of Art History at Taylor University. She worked in book publishing for many years and was a member of the graduate faculty of the School of Comparative Arts at Ohio University prior to joining the faculty of Taylor University. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome on two occasions, a participant in NEH Summer Seminars on Medieval Art in Paris and York, has been a seminar leader for artists and scholars in the US and abroad, and has taught in South Africa, China, Italy, and British Columbia.
The recipient of the Best Article of the Year Award from the journal Explorations in Renaissance Culture, Smith publishes on a wide range of topics in the arts. She has served in a number of editorial capacities, including co-editing special issues of the journal Religion and the Arts on Latin American Art and on Paradise in Nineteenth Century British and American Art. She currently serves as editor of “In the Study” for ARTS: The Arts in Religious and Theological Studies. She is Project Director and Curator of Charis: Boundary Crossings (Indonesia), Between the Shadow and the Light (South Africa), and Matter & Spirit: Contemporary Chinese Art and Society (China). Smith is the 2009–2010 recipient of the Franklin W. and Joan M. Forman Distinguished Faculty Scholar Award.
JAMES ROMAINE | Vice President
Dr. James Romaine is an Associate Professor of art history at Lander University. He is the co-founder of the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art (ASCHA). His books include Beholding Christ and Christianity in African American Art (Penn State University Press, 2018) and Art as Spiritual Perception: Essays in Honor of E. John Walford (Crossway, 2012).
He has an undergraduate degree from Wheaton College, an MA in art history from the University of South Carolina (thesis: “A Modern Devotion: The Faith and Art of Vincent van Gogh”), and a PhD in art history from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (dissertation: “Constructing a Beloved Community: The Methodological Development of Tim Rollins and K.O.S.”).
RONALD R. BERNIER | Secretary
Dr. Ronald R. Bernier is a Professor of Humanities in the School of Sciences and Humanities at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. In addition to a PhD and MA in Art History and Theory from Essex University in the UK, he holds advanced degrees in Theology and Religious Studies from the University of Scranton and Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary. He also holds an MS in Higher Education Administration, and an MBA from the Whittemore School of Business and Economics, University of New Hampshire. He earned his AB in Art History from Vassar College.
Dr. Bernier is the author of numerous exhibition catalogues and scholarly essays, including “The Economy of Salvation: Narrative and Liminality in Rembrandt's Death of the Virgin” (Religion and the Arts, 2005), the books The Unspeakable Art of Bill Viola: A Visual Theology (Wipf & Stock Press, 2014) and Monument, Moment, and Memory: Monet’s Rouen Cathedral and Fin-de-Siècle France (Bucknell University Press, 2007), and the edited volume, Beyond Belief: Theoaesthetics or Just Old-Time Religion?, a collection of essays on religion and contemporary art (Wipf & Stock Press, 2010).
LINDA STRATFORD | Treasurer
A historian of art and society, Dr. Linda Stratford (Ph.D, Stony Brook) addresses the ways in which the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion have impacted the reception of art. She has published several articles on French art in the 1950s, including her Millstone Prize article “American Art in France Following the Liberation” in The Journal of the Western Society for French History. She is founding director of Asbury University’s Paris Semester program where she teaches art history and French history. Her interests in the means by which artistic initiatives come to be viewed as belonging, or not belonging within the framework of a community have led her to question the largely secular methodologies in art history and criticism today. She is the co-editor with James Romaine, of ReVisioning: Critical Methods of Seeing Christianity in the History of Art and co-founder of the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art (ASCHA). Her publications and presentations address the intersection of art and religion in the works of modern artists including Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Alfred Manessier, Georges Rouault, and Jean Fautrier.
JONATHAN A. ANDERSON
Jonathan Anderson (PhD, King’s College London) is the Eugene and Jan Peterson Associate Professor of Theology and the Arts at Regent College (Vancouver, BC), prior to which he was Postdoctoral Associate of Theology and the Visual Arts at Duke University (Durham, NC). His research and writing focuses on modern and contemporary art, with a particular interest in exploring its relations to religious and theological studies. Anderson is the coauthor, with William Dyrness, of the book Modern Art and the Life of a Culture: The Religious Impulses of Modernism (IVP Academic, 2016), named one of the best books of 2016 by Image journal. His scholarly essays include “Modern Art” in The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion (2021), “The (In)visibility of Theology in Contemporary Art Criticism” (2014), and several other essays focusing on the work of Francis Alÿs, John Cage, Rachel Whiteread, Kris Martin, and others. For more, see jonathan-anderson.com.
HANNAH HEMPSTEAD
Hannah Hempstead is the College Communications Manager at St Peter’s College, University of Oxford. She holds an M.A. in Art History from SUNY Binghamton and an M.A. in Historical Theology from Wheaton College. She is especially interested in women and modern and contemporary art, activism and social engagement, and religion’s creative power in moments of crisis, resistance, and transformation. She has presented and published on eschatology and art in the twentieth century, including a chapter in The Inklings and Culture: A Harvest of New Scholarship from the Inklings Institute of Canada. Hannah also coordinates a fiber arts group for refugee women in her local community.
NED BUSTARD
Ned Bustard is an award-winning illustrator, author, printmaker, and graphic designer. He is the creative director for Square Halo Books as well as the curator of Square Halo Gallery. Some of his books include It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God, The Church History ABCs, Squalls Before War: His Majesty’s Schooner Sultana, Saint Nicholas the Giftgiver, A Book for Hearts & Minds: What You Should Read and Why, and Revealed: A Storybook Bible for Grown-Ups. Ned also created an art history curriculum for children called History of Art: Creation to Contemporary.