Jennifer Barry

Visiting Associate Professor of Women's Studies and Early Christianity
WSRP Research Associate 2026-27
Colorado Scholar
Jennifer Barry headshot

Home Institution

University of Mary Washington

WSRP Project

Red Shoes: Marian Iconography, Material Culture, and the Choranic Imagination in Late Antiquity

In mosaics from late antique and Byzantine churches, the Virgin Mary is sometimes depicted wearing vivid red shoes. This project examines how this small detail signals the transformation of an ordinary body into a sacred presence. By following her shoes across different sites, the book shows how material objects and visual choices helped define what it meant to see the Virgin.

Profile

Jennifer Barry is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Mary Washington. She is a historian of late antiquity whose research examines early Christianity, gender, violence, ecclesiastical historiography, and the construction of religious identity. She is the author of Bishops in Flight: Exile and Displacement in Late Antiquity (University of California Press, 2019) and Gender Violence in Late Antiquity: Male Fantasies and the Christian Imagination (University of California Press, 2025).