Nancy Wicker

Nancy L. Wicker is professor of art history at the University of Mississippi. She was previously professor in the department of art at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Career

Wicker graduated BA with High Honors from Eastern Illinois University, majoring in art history and studio art, in 1975. She took her MA in art history from the University of Minnesota in 1979, followed by her Ph.D. also from Minnesota in 1990, with work on interdisciplinary art history, archaeology, and Germanic philology. In 1988 she was awarded the Aurora Borealis Prize of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study.

She was appointed an assistant professor in the department of art at Minnesota State University, Mankato, in 1990, promoted to associate professor in 1995, and then professor in 2000. Since 2003 she has been professor of art history at the University of Mississippi. She is visiting professor at Uppsala University.

Wicker is a specialist in the function of jewellery in the Early Medieval period in Europe and gender and archaeology about which she has edited three books, including Gender and the Archaeology of Death (2001).

She has been president of the Society of Historians of Scandinavia, an interest group within the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study.

Honors

Wicker is the first woman to have been elected to foreign membership in the philosophical-historical section of the Royal Society of the Humanities at Uppsala, Sweden. She was also the first American chosen for membership of the Internationales Sachsensymposion, an international society for the study of the Germanic Saxons. She has been elected to membership of The Royal Nordic Society of Antiquaries.

Selected publications

Books

• From the ground up: Beyond gender theory in archaeology: proceedings of the Fifth Gender and Archaeology Conference, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, October 1998. Archaeopress, Oxford, 1999. (Editor with Bettina Arnold) (British Archaeological Reports) ISBN 1841710253
• Gender and the archaeology of death. AltaMira Press, 2001. (Editor with Bettina Arnold) ISBN 0759101361

Articles and contributions to edited books

• “Context Analysis and Bracteate Inscriptions in the Light of Alternatives to Hauck’s Iconographic Interpretations,” Futhark: International Journal of Runic Studies 5, 2014 (2015): 25–43.
• “Inspiring the Barbarians? The Transformation from Roman Medallions to Scandinavian Bracteates,” pp. 105–120 in Rome Beyond the Imperial Frontiers: Imports, Attitudes, and Practices (Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 94), edited by Peter S. Wells. Portsmouth RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2013. ISBN 978-1-887829-94-6, ISBN 1-887829-94-6
• “Bracteates and Runes,” with Henrik Williams, Futhark: International Journal of Runic Studies 3, 2012 (2013): 151–213. ISSN 1892-0950
• “The Elusive Smith,” pp. 29–36 in Goldsmith Mysteries: Archaeological, Pictorial and Documentary Evidence from the 1st Millennium AD in Northern Europe (Schriften des Archäologischen Landesmuseums, Ergänzungsreihe 8), edited by Alexandra Pesch and Ruth Blankenfeldt. Neumünster: Wachholtz, 2012. ISBN 978 3 529 01878 7
• “Nimble-fingered Maidens in Scandinavia: Women as Artists and Patrons,” pp. 865–902 in Reassessing Women’s Roles as ‘Makers’ of Medieval Art and Architecture, vol. 2, edited by Therèse Martin. Leiden: Brill, 2012. ISBN 978 90 04 18555 5 (print), ISBN 978 90 04 22832 0 (e-book)
• “Christianization, Female Infanticide, and the Abundance of Female Burials at Viking Age Birka in Sweden,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 21:2 (2012): 245–262. ISSN 1043-4070
• “‘The Four Smiths’ and the Replication of Bracteate Techniques,” pp. 33–44 in Det 61. Internationale Sachsensymposion 2010 in Haderslev, Danmark(Arkæologi i Slesvig/Archäologie in Schleswig, Sonderband) edited by Linda Boye et al., Neumünster: Wachholtz, 2011. ISSN 0909-0533, ISBN 978-3-529-01899-2 (Wachholtz Verlag)
• “Would There Have Been Gothic Art without the Vikings? The Contribution of Scandinavian Medieval Art,” Medieval Encounters 17 (2011): 198–229. ISSN 1380-7854 (print), ISSN 1570-0674 (online). Reprinted as pp. 198–229 in Confronting the Borders of Medieval Art, edited by Jill Caskey, Adam S. Cohen, and Linda Safran. Leiden: Brill, 2011. ISBN 978 90 04 20749 3
• "The Scandinavian Animal Styles in Response to Mediterranean and Christian Narrative Art", at pp. 531–550 in The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, AD 300-1300, edited by Martin Carver. York: York Medieval Press, University of York, 2003, ISBN 978-0-631-22492-1