In other essays on this site, I will place my research in its professional context. Here, I probe its earlier roots, beginning with my education and pastimes as a shy and strangely cerebral youngster with a compulsion for reading, observing, and collecting. I write this as a deliberately selective biographical sketch. I connect the dots of the personal intellectual journey that led me to the areas of research and teaching I share with you on my websites.
I invite you to join me as I chart this unlikely path from the ethnic neighborhoods of the Bronx through the academic rigors of a Jesuit education at Regis High School in Manhattan and the elite corridors of Reed College in Oregon and London's Courtauld Institute of Art. I describe the impact of European travel and of experiencing works of art during a high school summer program in Austria, sixteen months in southern Europe on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, and graduate study, fieldwork, and archival research. Finally, I reflect upon my return home to start a career in American academia as an art historian, Hispanist, and medievalist.
I intended this as a short piece. Like many a publication of mine, it got longer and took longer. I spread it, section-by-section, across the pages listed here.
Thank you for taking time to read it.
Copyright: James D'Emilio, who is the author of all texts and the author or owner of photographs, unless another source is acknowledged; last revised, April 17, 2025