Jacqueline Jung specializes in the art and architecture of medieval Europe, with an emphasis on the monumental figural sculpture of Gothic Germany and France. Her teaching encompasses the history of medieval sculpture, images of death and apocalypse, art and ritual in the Middle Ages, Gothic cathedrals and their accoutrements, medieval image-theory and memory practices, monumental narrative arts, the body as medium in medieval art and culture, interrelations between art and visionary experience, and representations of Others in medieval art. In fall 2019 she will be introducing a new course exploring the sacred art and architecture of diverse religious traditions across geography and time, with an emphasis on the uses of different media to create, shape, and express ideas of the divine.
Professor Jung’s first book, The Gothic Screen: Space, Sculpture, and Community in the Cathedrals of France and Germany, ca. 1200-1400 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013) was awarded the John Nicholas Brown Prize by the Medieval Academy of America, the PROSE Award for Art History and Criticism by the Association of American Publishers, and the Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Prize for an outstanding publication by a junior faculty member at Yale University, and was named a finalist for the 2014 Charles Rufus Morey book award from the College Art Association. An early article on choir screens, published in the Art Bulletin in 2000, won the Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize for an especially distinguished article by a younger scholar. In 2016 she received the annual prize of the Aby Warburg Foundation for her contributions to the fields of art history and cultural studies. (The lecture she gave upon accepting that award may be viewed here.)
Professor Jung’s new book, titled Eloquent Bodies: Movement, Expression, and the Human Figure in Gothic Sculpture, deals with the dynamic encounters between large-scale sculptured bodies and beholders in the carefully programmed spaces of Gothic churches. It includes close analyses of the thirteenth-century figural programs of the Strasbourg south transept (Ecclesia and Synagoga outside, Pillar of Angels inside), portals with Wise and Foolish Virgins (particularly at Magdeburg), and the cycle of donor figures in the west choir of Naumburg Cathedral, as well as discussions of famous portals at Chartres and Reims Cathedrals. It will be published by Yale University Press in spring 2020.
In addition to her own scholarship, Professor Jung has translated several seminal art-historical studies from German, most notably Aloïs Riegl’s Historical Grammar of the Visual Arts (Zone, 2004).
Much to her regret, Professor Jung is not related to the famous Carl. Less regrettably, she is also no relation to George.
