Joseph Kopta
Visiting Assistant Professor
Biography
Joseph Kopta, PhD (he/they) is Assistant Professor of Instruction at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University. He has taught Art History for the Pratt in Venice program since 2012, and is also a proud alum of the program (2007). As an art historian of the medieval world, Kopta has particular expertise in the visual and material culture of the Eastern Roman Empire. His intellectual interests are informed by issues of materiality, phenomenology of vision, pre-modern gender, and networks between Byzantium, Africa, Venice, and caliphal courts. As a manuscript specialist, their research engages with the intersections of traditional art history and new technologies of scientific investigation and conservation that permit the identification of precise materials in works of art and processes of manufacture.
Kopta actively adopts a transcultural approach to the study and application of the premodern world, offering courses and mentorship opportunities that cross geographic, thematic, and temporal boundaries. In 2024, he was the project director of the major collaborative exhibition The Art of the Book: Treasures at the Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, accompanied by an academic symposium, public programming, web resource, and publication. Kopta also directs the public program, A Look at a Book, featuring scholars virtually presenting rare books, manuscripts, and artist books in podcast-like 25-minute episodes. In their teaching, they regularly center digital humanities projects as a means of engaging close/slow looking in student learning.
Kopta’s research has been supported by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich, Germany, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as Tyler School of Art and Architecture and Temple University grants and fellowships. They are currently working on a book monograph considering the materiality of the Byzantine codex.
Kopta regularly presents work at conferences and symposia, including the International Medieval Congress in Leeds, UK; the Middle Atlantic Symposium on the History of Art at the National Gallery of Art; the International Byzantine Studies Congress; and the Byzantine Studies Conference of North America. They also co-organized the Pratt in Venice 35th Anniversary Research Symposium with Diana Gisolfi in 2020, celebrating 35 years of original art historical research conducted by Pratt students. Most recently, he has co-organized panels on “Breaking points: Reaction to Change in Byzantine art and Literature, 10th–13th c. CE” in 2024 at Leeds, and “Global Material Religion and Mobility in the Premodern World” at SECAC in 2023. He will participate in the Dumbarton Oaks Spring Symposium in 2026.
Prior to an academic career, Kopta was a museum professional, notably at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and the Museum of Biblical Art (MOBIA).
Education
Ph.D., Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University; Columbia University; Harvard Divinity School; B.F.A., M.S., Pratt Institute
Publications and Projects
Select works
- Kopta, J. R. The Materiality of the Byzantine Manuscript (forthcoming; in preparation)
- Kopta, J. R., ed. The Art of the Book: Treasures at the Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, (Philadelphia: Tyler School of Art and Architecture, 2024). ISBN 979-8-218-38322-0
- Kopta, J. R. “The Affective Byzantine Book: Reflections on Aesthetics of Gospel Lectionaries,” Arts 13, no. 3: 92 (Special Issue: Affective Art) (https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13030092)