Since joining the Center at the beginning of 2025, I have expanded part of my dissertation project for future publication. My research examines illuminated gospel manuscripts and monastic visual culture in pre-16th-century Ethiopia. I investigate the set of creative choices that shaped the breadth and complexity of visual programs in gospel manuscripts and examine how the intersection of text, image, and the gospel book’s venerated status generated specific meanings for monastic audiences. The project elaborates on the ways in which the intertwining of text and image, especially in the prefatory cycles of gospel manuscripts, is characterized by a multivalency that draws upon an overlapping range of visual and textual references and associations. In the coming months at the Center, I will explore further how such references prompt a layered reading from the monastic reader/viewer by encompassing the elements of both intertextuality and what art historians have termed “intervisuality,” or the visual citations and cross-references between images. Through a close analysis of such entwined intertextuality and intervisuality, I aim to shed light on how attentive reading and viewing constituted a key part of monastic spiritual practice that facilitated piety and devotion in Ethiopia. My broader goals for the project include situating the Ethiopian gospel manuscript within the broader context of medieval monastic visual culture.