Dr. Nancy L. Wicker is Distinguished Professor of Art History in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Mississippi.
Research Interests
A fundamental part of Dr. Nancy Wicker's scholarly life has been participation in archaeological excavations in the U.S., Germany, and Sweden, including at the Viking Age trading center of Birka, a UNESCO Heritage Site, where she was supported by an international grant.
Dr. Wicker's studies of Viking-Age art focus especially on patrons and clients who sponsored or purchased the art, artists and artisans who made the works, men and women who used and viewed the objects, and the humans and anthropomorphic deities who were the subjects depicted.
Dr. Wicker examines the reception of Roman art into Scandinavia by tracing the relationship of Late Roman medallions to Migration Period gold pendants known as bracteates, which were worn by elite women across northern and central Europe.
She challenges the traditional art history “canon,” highlighting the role that Scandinavian art plays in medieval Europe across the Viking diaspora from Iceland to Istanbul.
With a materials scientist at The University of Mississippi Medical Center, Dr. Wicker has studied metal breakage to differentiate objects that broke due to metal fatigue and those damaged by violence. She has also conducted experiments with contemporary metalsmiths to reconstruct the technology of how early medieval jewelry was made. Hands-on experiences are key to Dr. Wicker's research.
Biography
Dr. Nancy Wicker was awarded the B.A. with high honors from Eastern Illinois University, where she completed a double major in art history and art studio as a National Merit scholar. From the University of Minnesota, she received the M.A. in art history and the Ph.D. in interdisciplinary Ancient Studies, combining study of art history, archaeology, and Germanic philology. Before coming to The University of Mississippi, Dr. Wicker was Professor of art history at Minnesota State University, Mankato, where she served as Director of Scandinavian Studies. At The University of Mississippi, Dr. Wicker has been awarded the Hensley Family Senior Professor Research Award from the College of Liberal Arts and was named Distinguished Professor of the university in 2024. She has been a Visiting Professor at Uppsala University in Sweden, and she is the first woman elected to foreign membership in the Philosophical-historical Section of the Royal Society of Humanities at Uppsala, Sweden. Dr. Wicker's election to the International Sachsen Symposium, an international archaeological society, was also a first for an American.
Dr. Wicker's research has been supported by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, the Institute for Research in the Humanities (U. of Wisconsin), the National Humanities Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. She was invited to participate in a Getty Foundation Seminar on “The Arts of Rome’s Provinces” and in a project on “Reading and Interpreting Runic Inscriptions” at the Centre for Advanced Studies of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Grants from the American Philosophical Society, the American Numismatic Society, the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), and several Scandinavian sources have also been crucial to her research.
Dr. Wicker is a co-director of an international collaborative digital humanities Project Andvari to create an iconographic thesaurus of the visual language of early medieval art (4th–12th centuries) of northern Europe. It will provide create a digital portal to aggregate data from numerous museums. The project has been funded by a Samuel H. Kress Foundation Digital Art History Grant and two National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Start-Up Grants (Level 1 and Level 2).
Dr. Wicker is a member of the Runic Advisory Group for the International Symposium on Runes and Runic Inscriptions, and she serves on the Board of Directors of the International Center of Medieval Art. She previously served on the Executive Council of The Medieval Academy of America, as the Chair of the international working party Archaeology of Gender in Europe, as President of the Society of Historians of Scandinavia, and on the boards of the International Center of Medieval Art and the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study. Dr. Wicker has served as Associate Editor of Medieval Archaeology and as an Editorial Board member for Gesta, journal of the International Center of Medieval Art. She has reviewed applications for national and international grants and fellowships, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Narodow Centrum Nauki (Poland), and Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Sweden). She has reviewed article and book manuscripts for twenty-two different journals and eleven presses. Dr. Wicker has also served on Ph.D. committees for students at the University of California Los Angeles, the University of Pennsylvania, Rice University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Arizona State University, and the University of Granada (Spain).
Dr. Wicker co-edited three books on gender and archaeology, collaborating with European colleagues. She has published over forty articles in journals and edited volumes, and she has presented her research at over two hundred invited and refereed venues in twenty-one countries.
Publications
Publications:
Situating Gender in European Archaeologies
Gender and the Archaeology of Death
From the Ground Up: Beyond Gender Theory in Archaeology
Changes in Imagery and Artistic Techniques from the Early to Late Iron Age in Scandinavia
Dazzle Dangle and Jangle: Sensory Effects of Scandinavian Gold Bracteates
Courses Taught
- AH 201 History of Art I
- AH 332 Early Christian Byzantine & Islamic Art
- AH 334 Early Medieval Art and Archaeology
- AH 336 Viking Art and Archaeology
- AH 338 Romanesque and Gothic Art
- AH 401 Research and Writing in Art
- AH 532 Early Christian Byzantine & Islamic Art
- AH 534 Early Medieval Art and Archaeology,
- AH 536 Viking Art and Archaeology
- AH 538 Romanesque and Gothic Art,
- ANTH 332 Early Medieval Art and Archaeology
- ANTH 336 Viking Art and Archaeology
Education
B.A. Art History, Eastern Illinois University (1975)
M.A. Art History, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (1979)
Ph.D. Ancient Studies, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (1990)