John Decker

John R. Decker is an historian with a background in cultural heritage and a specialist in data analytics and visualization. His research topics include the use of images and objects as tools of self-fashioning (individual and collective) and the role of visual and material cultures–including social media and the Internet–in asserting, mediating, and sustaining claims about “truth” and “reality” in various socio-political contexts. He is deeply interested in the ways that data analysis, data visualization, and data-driven storytelling can help make complex issues more accessible for a variety of audiences. Making data and stories accessible is more than just creating understandable graphs and adopting a clear writing style. Paying close attention to how people interact with text and data is also important.

In addition to his teaching duties, John is also Reviews Editor for Renaissance Quarterly, which is the journal of record for specialists in the Art, Literature, and History of the Renaissance.

PhD — University of California, Santa Barbara
MA — University of California, Santa Barbara
MS Data Analytics — Pratt Institute
BA — California State University, Stanislaus

Books & Edited Volumes

Audience and Reception in the Early Modern Period (New York: Routledge, 2021).

Death, Torture, and the Broken Body in European Art, 1300 – 1650. Series Title: Visual Culture in Early Modernity (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Press, 2015).

The Technology of Salvation and the Art of Geertgen tot Sint Jans. Series Title: Visual Culture in Early Modernity (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Press, 2009).

Selected Articles and Book Chapters

“Co-opting Liberation Technology,” in Cultural Studies in the Interregnum, Robert F. Carley, Beenash Jafri, Anne Donlon, Stefanie A. Jones, Laura J. Kwak, Eero Laine and Chris Alen Sula, eds. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2025), Chapter 13 (forthcoming).

“Expecting Efficacy,” in Imago and Contemplatio in the Visual Arts and Literature (1400-1700), Stijn P.M. Bussels, Karl A.E. Enenkel, Michel Weemans, and Elliot D. Wise, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 2024): 19-46.

“Guides Who Know the Way,” in John R. Decker and Mitzi Kirkland-Ives, eds. Audience and Reception in the Early Modern Period (New York: Routledge, 2021): 324-357.

“By Stages Toward What We Mean to Say: Diegetic Rupture as a Tool of Devotion.” Word and Image, 36, 3 (2020): 284-298.

“Dürer’s Feast of the Rose Garlands and the Scuola dei Tedeschi as Strategies for Mediating Foreign, Masculine Identity,” in Carlee Bradbury and Michelle Moseley-Christian, eds. Gender, Otherness and Culture in Medieval and Early Modern Art (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2017): 121-150.