Silvers's essay links masks from contemporary popular culture with 12th century corbel sculptures in southwestern France.
Holly R. Silvers, visiting assistant professor in the Department of Art & Art History for 2015-16, has published an essay in “postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies” (volume 7, pp. 43-54; http://www.palgrave-journals.com/pmed/journal/v7/n1/index.html).
“Occupying the margins: Masks, microcultures and the mainstream media” explores how microcultures appropriate and lend new and specific meanings to publicly presented imagery (for example, the mask from V for Vendetta used by Occupy protesters or the corbel sculptures on the outsides of medieval churches as interpreted by agrarian audiences).
Silvers more fully develops her work on these corbels in her forthcoming book from Brill, “Speaking in Tongues: The Forgotten Language of Romanesque Corbels.”