Bissera Pentcheva

Professor

Professor of Classics by courtesy

Ph.D. Harvard University

B.A. Dartmouth College

Bissera V. Pentcheva's innovative work on acoustics, art, and music has redefined the field of Byzantine architecture and is now expanding into Western medieval art. Her new research "Enchanted Images" explores the visions of Ste. Foy at Conques developed in the interactions across art, music, poetry, and dance. The project is funded by Stanford's Cultivating the Humanities Grant, and has produced a major exhibition, a catalogue, a concert, a documentary film, and many scholarly publications, https://enchantedimages.stanford.edu

Pentcheva has published three books with Pennsylvania State University Press: Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium, 2006 (received the Nicholas Brown Prize of the Medieval Academy of America, 2010), The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium, 2010, and Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space and Spirit in Byzantium, 2017 (received the 2018 American Academy of Religion Award in excellence in historical studies). She has edited two volumes: Aural Architecture in Byzantium: Music, Acoustics, and Ritual, Ashgate 2018 and Icons of Sound: Architecture, Music and Imagination in Medieval Art, Routledge, Routledge 2020. Her work is informed by anthropology, music, and phenomenology, placing the attention on the changing appearance of objects and architectural spaces. She relies on film to capture this temporal animation stirred by candlelight. Another important strand of her work engages the sonic envelope of the visual--music and acoustics--and employs auralizations that digitally imprint the performance of chant with the acoustic signature of the specific interior for which it was composed. Her current book project explores the art and music of Ste. Foy at Conques. Pentcheva's research has been supported by a number of prestigious fellowships: Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2018-2019), J. S. Guggenheim (2017-2018), American Academy in Rome (2017-2018), Mellon New Directions (2010-2012), Humboldt (2006-2009) and a Dumbarton Oaks Junior Fellowship (2000-2001).

On sabbatical leave 2023-2024

Conques Project

Medieval Acadeny of America, Annual Meeting, March 15, 2024, plenary talk "AudioVision in the Arts of the Liturgy at Conques:"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xArKyVC8PQA

Selected Articles:

“Chiasm in Choros: The Dance of Inspirited Bodies” Postmedieval 14 (2023), DOI: 10.1057/s41280-023-00271-5

“The Virgin and Sainte-Foy: Chant and the Original Design of the West Façade at Conques.” Religions 13 (12): 1299. Available online at the MDPI website: https://mdpi.com/2077-1444/13/12/1299

“Audiovision: Image and Chant at Ste. Foy in Conques,” Musiktheorie (special issue: Virtuelle Klangräume der Vormoderne. Ein interdisziplinäres Forschungsfeld der Digital Humanities, edited by Tobias Weissmann) 37/1( 2022): 41–54.

“Imaging the Sacred in Virtuoso Chant and Dance: The Music of Ste. Foy and the Dancer/Singer of Almiphona (Paris, BnF, MS Lat. 1118),” Codex Aquilarensis 37 (2021): 335–56, https://www.romanicodigital.com/sites/default/files/2022-10/C37-16_Bissera.pdf

“Entwining Ephemeral with the Eternal: Locus, Conca, and Margarita at Conques.” In Routledge Companion to Literature and Art. Edited by Neil Murphy, W. Michelle Wang, and Cheryl Julia Lee. New York: Routledge, 2023), 276–301.

“Eternal Victory: Byzantine Territorial Expansion and Constantinopolitan Liturgical Splendor at Hosios Loukas (Steiris, Greece),” Journal of the International Society for Orthodox Christian Music 6/1 (2022): 1–68, DOI: https://doi.org/10.57050/jisocm.113301

“Hagia Sophia: Byzantine Alterity at the Core of Ottoman Identity,” Journal of Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 8/1 (2021): 223–33

“Performative Images and Cosmic Sound in the Exultet Liturgy of Southern Italy,” Speculum 95/2 (2020): 396–466, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/708002

“Optical and Acoustic Aura in Medieval Art: The Golden Retable of the Pentecost at Stavelot,”Material Religion16/1 (2020): 1–30, https://doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2019.1696558

with Jonathan Abel, “Icons of Sound: Auralizing the Lost Voice of Hagia Sophia,” Speculum 92/S1 (2017)online publication, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/693439

“Glittering Eyes: Animation in the Byzantine Eikōn and the Western Imago,” Codex Aqvilarensis 32 (2016): 209–26.

“Performing the Sacred in Byzantium: Image, Breath, and Sound,” PRI Performance Research International 19/3 (2014): 120–28.

“Hagia Sophia and Multisensory Aesthetics,” Gesta 50/2 (2011): 93–111.

“Moving Eyes: Surface and Shadow in the Byzantine Mixed-Media Relief Icon,” Res. Anthropology and Aesthetics 53 (2009): 223-34.

“The Performative Icon,” The Art Bulletin 88/4 (2006): 631-55.

Newspaper Articles, Radio, Podcasts, and Zoom Interviews

New York Times, July 30, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/arts/music/hagia-sophia-acoustics-music.html

NPR

Listen: The Sound Of The Hagia Sophia, More Than 500 Years Ago, February 20, 2020

https://www.npr.org/2020/02/22/808404928/listen-the-sound-of-the-hagia-sophia-more-than-500-years-ago

KQED