Rebecca Ruppar

Department of Fine and Performing Arts

Rebecca Ruppar teaches Art History in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts. She has had a lifelong fascination with the intersection of visual art and religion. After working as a Catholic campus minister and retreat director, she moved to Belgium where she learned to write sacred icons and earned a Master’s degree in Theology and Religious Studies from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. She earned Master’s and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Art History and Archaeology from the University of Missouri, focusing on late antique and medieval European and Byzantine art and architecture. Her research centers on the material and iconographic aspects of thirteenth century Franciscan paintings in their response to heterodoxy. She regularly contributes to the Catholic Studies minor, teaching classes such as FNAR 344: Early Italian Renaissance Art and FNAR 349: Art and the Catholic Tradition.