Scholarship and Biography
The research and teaching of Charles McClendon explore the history of European art and architecture from the decline and fall of the Roman Empire to the rise of the Italian Renaissance. His book, entitled "The Origins of Medieval Architecture: Building in Europe 600-900 A.D.," received two distinguished awards, the Otto Gründler Prize and the Haskins Medal, for the outstanding book in medieval studies in 2007 and 2008 respectively. He directed excavations of a medieval site outside Rome at the Benedictine abbey of Farfa and continues to investigate all aspects of the “Eternal City” from antiquity to the present. In addition, the Gothic cathedrals of western Europe and all aspects of the British Isles in the Middle Ages are topics of special interest. He is also interested in the commonalities and unique qualities in the attitudes and development of art and architecture among the great religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the first millennium CE.