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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 , 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 — Ģ����ý
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): 183-196.

“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.

���ü�����’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.