Medieval Monsters

Asa Simon Mittman is professor and chair of Art and Art History at California State University in Chico of Art History at California State University, Chico, where he teaches Ancient and Medieval Art. He is the author of Maps and Monsters in Medieval England (2006), co-author with Susan Kim of Inconceivable Beasts: The Wonders of the East in the Beowulf Manuscript (2013, awarded a Millard Meiss Publication Grant from the College Art Association and an ISAS Best Book Prize), and author and co-author of a number of articles on monstrosity and marginality in the Middle Ages, including pieces on Satan in the Junius 11 manuscript (Gesta, with Kim) and race in the Middle Ages (postmedieval). He coedited with Peter Dendle the Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous (2012), and is the founding president of MEARCSTAPA (Monsters: the Experimental Association for the Research of Cryptozoology through Scholarly Theory And Practical Application). Mittman is co-director of Virtual Mappa, with Martin Foys, an interface to allow searching and linking among medieval maps and geographical texts. His research has been supported by CAA, ICMA, Kress, Mellon, American Philosophical Society, and NEH grants. He edits book series with Boydell and Brill. Current research interests include the Franks Casket and images of Jews on medieval maps. Mittman is an active (and founding) member of the Material Collective, and a regular contributor to the MC group blog.