Middlebury Magazine

  • Recent Stories
  • Menu
    • Features
    • Essays
    • Q&A
    • Podcasts
    • Review
    • Videos
    • About
    • Advertising
    • Contact
    • Support
    • Writers’ Guidelines
  • Search

Dispatches

A Close Study

How an art history course dedicated to an 11th-century masterpiece concluded with an unusual assignment.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Photograph by Andrew Cassel
June 30, 2021
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • Email icon

This past May, while students in some courses were studying for exams or writing final research papers, students in Professor Eliza Garrison’s art history class on the Bayeux Tapestry were wrapping up the semester with an intense group project they had chosen for themselves: a half-scale pencil-and-paper facsimile of the 11th-century masterpiece that illustrates the Norman Conquest of England in 1066.

On Thursday, May 20, the class held a public poster session to display their creation, rendered on sheets of copy paper taped end to end and snaking out of sight through the lower lobby of the Mahaney Arts Center. As viewers worked their way left to right along the 115-foot-long drawing, students were on hand to narrate the scenes and translate the Latin inscriptions.

The course, The Bayeux Tapestry: Models, Contexts, and Afterlives, centered on a close analysis of the 20-inch-high, nearly 230-foot-long tapestry, which dates to roughly 1070 AD. Garrison envisioned the tapestry as a prompt for her students, a “jumping-off point for various questions that people who work in the humanities generally ask: How do we know what we know? Why is a particular line of argumentation about the work accepted over others? Who made this artwork? What was involved in its making? Who had it made? Who is deemed worthy of representation, and who isn’t?”

Comprising 59 scenes, the tapestry depicts the events leading up to and including the invasion of England led by William, Duke of Normandy, culminating in the English defeat at the Battle of Hastings. Framed by top and bottom friezes decorated with real and fantastical creatures, the scenes feature skillfully sewn images of castles and ships, feasts and a funeral, noblemen and peasants, knights and archers, and too many horses to count. Halley’s Comet even makes an appearance.

The piece is, technically, an embroidery, not a tapestry; the images were fashioned with wool yarn stitched onto a plain linen background, not woven into the fabric itself. Janice Zhang ’21 said the class did in fact refer to the piece as the “Bayeux Embroidery,” but not just for semantic accuracy. “It gives more power and credit to the historically erased labor of the women who worked on it,” she said. “Embroidery was seen as women’s work.”

Due to COVID-19, the class met remotely in the early weeks of the semester. But eventually Garrison was able to introduce more interactive components to the course. Robin Foster Cole and Carol Wood of the Theatre Department, for instance, helped her brainstorm a three-day session on medieval embroidery techniques and created a dyeing demo.

In the final weeks of the semester, the class divided the tapestry up into sections, with each of the 13 students—as well as Garrison herself, who said she felt she needed to “have some skin in the game”—taking on four to six consecutive scenes and recreating them as faithfully as possible in pencil.

During the poster session, in addition to explaining the significance and context of the scenes along the tapestry, students shared their thoughts on their individual areas of focus, which ranged from the lack of female representation in the tapestry to the history-is-written-by-the-winners bias of the narrative. They discussed the knowns and unknowns concerning the tapestry’s origins as well as the limitations of their expertise, given that only one student had seen the tapestry in person. And they admitted that copying the tapestry in pencil turned out to be far more challenging and time consuming than they had anticipated.

Garrison explained that the facsimile wasn’t meant to be a test of students’ artistic skills but rather a way to more deeply study the tapestry. “I wanted to make sure students emerged from the class with a capacity to look closely and to see what kinds of questions emerge as one becomes familiar with a particular thing,” she said.

Despite the difficulty of drawing the tapestry, students unanimously recommended that Garrison integrate the same final project the next time she offers the class. “What I hadn’t realized is just how invested the students were in it,” Garrison said, “and I also hadn’t realized that it became a lesson in humility for us all. This thing is huge!”

Rhys Glennon ’22, who illustrated the last five scenes, saw the poster session as a fitting tribute to the tapestry. “I wrote my research paper for the class on the medieval presentation and display of the embroidery, looking at scholarly suggestions that it was displayed in a public place, perhaps a cathedral, during a midsummer feast day,” he said. “I thought this final event perfectly captured what such an event might be like, right down to our role as interpreters of the work to a general public unable to read the Latin inscription or decipher every detail.”

The Bayeux Tapestry, on display at the Bayeux Museum in Normandy, France, can be viewed on the museum’s website.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Stories

Features

A Dog’s Life

A filmmaker takes us into the minds of the animals who are part of our families.

By Sara Thurber Marshall
Photographs by Randal Ford and Steve James
April 4, 2025

On Parenting

Caitlin McCormick Murray ’05 has some thoughts on what it means to be a good mom.

By Frederick Reimers ’93
Photograph by Justin Patterson
March 15, 2025

Object Lessons

Curator Rebekah Irwin sees Middlebury's Special Collections as a laboratory, where antiquities meet utility.

By Caroline Crawford
Photograph by Adam Detour
August 23, 2024

Seeing the Forest for the Trees

How one alumna is embracing a distinctive reforesting technique that promotes accelerated ecological benefits.

By Elena Valeriote, MA Italian '19 in conversation with Hannah Lewis '97
Illustrations by Karlotta Freier
August 16, 2024

Dispatches

Thanks for the Memories

A student-curated exhibit explores the Middlebury experience through more than a century of undergrad scrapbooks.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Photographs by Todd Balfour
May 5, 2025

Fear Factor

A scientific model—and work of art—warns of the next pandemic.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Photograph by Jonathan Blake
April 4, 2025

From NESCAC to NFL?

Thomas Perry '25 has a shot at playing football on Sundays.

By Matt Jennings
Photograph by Rodney Wooters
March 11, 2025

Words in Space

A NASA interpreter bridges the language gap, one mission at a time.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Illustrations by Davide Bonazzi
February 15, 2025

Keeping Her Stick on the Ice

An alumna’s passion for ice hockey puts her in the record books.

By Sara Thurber Marshall
Illustration by Connie Noble
January 26, 2025

Watch Party

Henry Flores ’01 builds a community of collectors.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Photograph by Hubert Kolka
January 15, 2025

A Man of Letters

The art of letter writing may be in decline, but one alumnus has kept it alive in a unique way.

By Sara Thurber Marshall
Photograph used with the permission of Melvin B. Yoken
October 9, 2024

If the Sneaker Fits

Adam King ’05 brings an Asian aesthetic—and celebrates Asian American culture—with his startup, 1587 Sneakers.

By Jessie Raymond ’90
Photograph by Sasha Greenhalgh
August 22, 2024

Jacob Shammash and the Gift of the Torah

A story of two journeys.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Photographs by Paul Dahm
April 21, 2024
View All

Essays

Shear Madness

A yarn shop owner with no livestock experience takes an unlikely detour.

By Lindsey Spoor, MA French ’08
Illustration by Ben Kirchner
April 4, 2025

Q&A

37 Minutes with Lorraine Besser

The professor and philosopher talks about the three elements of the “good life”—especially the one happiness culture overlooks.

By Jessie Raymond '90
Photograph by Oliver Parini
April 4, 2025

Quotation

A summer immersed in a language can do wonders, as veterans of Middlebury College’s famous language-learning program can attest. The lockdown is clearly going to amount to the equivalent of about two summers, and there are mini-Middleburys happening in millions of houses worldwide.”

—John McWhorter, writing “The Coronavirus Generation Will Use Language Differently” in the Atlantic.

Podcasts

The Exit Interview with Middlebury President Laurie L. Patton

With her presidency at Middlebury coming to an end, the host of this podcast becomes its final guest.

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
December 18, 2024

The Monterey Trialogue: A Distinct Take on Superpower Diplomacy featuring Anna Vassilieva and Peter Slezkine

Our guests for episode six of season three are Anna Vassilieva and Peter Slezkine, the folks behind the Monterey Trialogue—which brings together leading experts from the United States, China, and Russia for in-depth discussions of their countries' interests and concerns in the vital regions of the world.

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
July 19, 2024

Education as the Great Equalizer, featuring Annie Weinberg ’10

Our guest for episode five of season three is Annie Weinberg '10, the founder and executive director of Alexander Twilight Academy, an educational catalyst program in Boston, Massachusetts, that supports students from under-resourced backgrounds.

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
March 14, 2024

Review

Editors’ Picks for March and April

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
April 10, 2025

Editors’ Picks for January and February

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
February 14, 2025

Long Live Brazenhead

Out of a secret bookstore comes a unique literary review.

By Sara Thurber Marshall
Photograph by Todd Balfour
January 13, 2025

Videos

Creating Community Through Hip Hop

For three days in March, the sounds, styles, and fashions of global hip hop converged on Middlebury for an electric symposium.

By Jordan Saint-Louis '24
April 17, 2023

Pomp and Unusual Circumstances

As viewed from above.

By Chris Spencer
June 1, 2021

Davis the Owl Returns Home

Having recovered from life-threatening injuries, a beautiful winged creature is released to its natural habitat.

By Andrew Cassell
April 22, 2021
Middlebury College
  • Alumni
  • Newsroom
  • Contact Us
  • icon-instagram

The views presented are not necessarily those of the editors or the official policies of the College.

© 2025 Middlebury College Publications.