Christina Maranci grew up in a diasporan Armenian family in Westport, Connecticut. She earned a BA in art history at Vassar, and an M.A. and Ph. D at Princeton in the Department of Art and Archaeology. Her work explores the art and culture of Armenia in all aspects, but with special emphasis on the late antique and medieval periods. She is the author of four books and over 100 articles and essays on medieval Armenian art and architecture, including most recently, the Art of Armenia (Oxford UP, 2018). Her 2015 monograph, Vigilant Powers: Three Churches of Early Medieval Armenia (Brepols, 20215) won the Karen Gould Prize for Art History from the Medieval Academy of America and as well as the Sona Aronian Prize for best Armenian Studies monograph from the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR). She is co-founder of East of Byzantium, a workshop and lecture series designed to support graduate students working on the Christian East.
Maranci has worked on issues of cultural heritage for over a decade, with a focus on the at-risk Armenian churches and monasteries in what is now Eastern Turkey. She is the author of op.-eds. and essays in the Wall Street Journal, Apollo, The Conversation, and Hyperallergic. She has also been featured on National Public Radio’s Open Source with Christopher Lydon. At the moment, she is working on a book about the city of Ani during the tenth and eleventh centuries, exploring issues of art and architecture, epigraphy, landscape, theology, politics, and social roles.
