Michael Grillo

Dr. Michael Grillo is Associate Professor of History of Art in the Department of Art, and the Director of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies minor. His signature work with Italian fourteenth-century images investigates how they operate as primary sources that visually articulate ideas inexpressible in any other media, including written or oral speech.

Dr. Grillo received his PhD from Cornell University with a dissertation on Medieval History of Art. He continued this work with his 1997 book, "Symbolic Structures: The Role of Composition in Signalling Meaning in Italian Late Medieval Painting." He offers seminars on Fifteenth-Century Ways of Knowing, Renaissance New Media, and Theory and Practice in Photography, and lectures on Photography, Film Studies, and New Media. He is also a practicing photographer, and seeks to explore how aesthetic theories play out directly in application in our world, particularly how photography operates as a social process.