Rate My Professor Benjamin Tilghman

Benjamin Tilghman is Associate Professor of Art History and Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at Washington College, where he also serves as Director of the Arts Management and Entrepreneurship Minor. He holds a Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University (2009), an M.A. from Williams College (2003), and a B.A. from Lawrence University (1999). His career includes positions as Assistant Professor of Art History at Washington College from 2017 to 2021 and at Lawrence University from 2012 to 2017. From 2007 to 2009, he was Zanvyl Krieger Curatorial Fellow in the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books at the Walters Art Museum. Tilghman chairs the Chestertown Public Arts Committee.

Tilghman's academic expertise encompasses medieval and Renaissance art, Islamic art, environmental humanities, and public art, with a focus on early medieval Europe, calligraphy, ornament, codicology, and thing theory. He is a founding member of the Material Collective, a group advancing feminist and anti-racist materialisms in art history. Key publications include “Kufa and Kells: The Illuminated Word as Sign and Presence in the 7th-9th Centuries” in Empires of Faith (British Museum Press, 2021), “Script, Pseudoscript, and Pseudo-pseudoscript in the work of Filippo Lippi” in Hidden Script (Cambridge University Press, 2021), “Pattern, Process, and the Creation of Meaning in Insular Carpet Pages” (West 86th 24, no. 1, 2017), “On the Enigmatic Nature of Things in Anglo-Saxon Art” (Different Visions 4, 2014), and “The Shape of the Word: Extra-linguistic Meaning in Insular Display Lettering” (Word & Image 27, no. 3, 2011). He has co-edited special issues on active objects and contributed to volumes on graphic devices in early decorated books. Notable honors include Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh (Fall 2024), International Center for Medieval Art-Samuel H. Kress Research Grant (2019), Excellent Teaching by an Early Career Faculty Member from Lawrence University (2016), “Best Lecture Series” from Baltimore City Paper (2007), and election to Phi Beta Kappa (1999).