Illuminating the Past: A Conversation with Professor Laura Hollengreen
Fall 2025
This fall, the Humanities Seminars Program is delighted to welcome back Professor Laura Hollengreen, a distinguished scholar of medieval and Byzantine architecture, who will be teaching Lightscapes and Liminality in Premodern Architecture. In this course, students will explore how light shaped the meaning and experience of sacred and civic spaces across centuries, and how architectural design framed moments of ritual and transformation. HSP Director Micah Lunsford recently sat down with Professor Hollengreen to discuss her upcoming seminar, the inspiration behind it, and what students can expect to uncover.
Watch the Full Interview
Before we dive into highlights, we invite you to watch the full conversation between HSP Program Director Micah Lunsford and Professor Laura Hollengreen. In this engaging discussion, Professor Hollengreen shares the inspiration behind her upcoming course, reflects on her personal experiences with light, and explores how architecture has shaped human ritual and meaning across centuries.
Watch or listen to the full interview to hear Professor Hollengreen discuss the role of light in architecture, from Stonehenge to Hagia Sophia, and how her course will guide students through these fascinating topics.
Why Light?
Micah Lunsford: Professor Hollengreen, thank you for joining me. To start, what inspired you to design a course around light and liminality in architecture?
Laura Hollengreen: Light has always been present in my work as an art historian, but in recent years I’ve become especially attuned to it. Living in Tucson sharpened my awareness—the desert light is unlike anything I experienced growing up in Virginia. It changes everything about how you perceive space.
What fascinates me is how architects intentionally shape the way light enters a building. Windows, apertures, domes, materials—all are designed to direct and modulate light. That’s the physics and design side. But there’s also a metaphysical dimension: light has always carried symbolic meaning. In premodern societies, it evoked the presence of the divine, marked the passage of time, or gave structure to ritual practices.
When you combine the physical and the symbolic, light becomes central to architecture not just as illumination, but as revelation. That is what we’ll be exploring together in this course.
The Thresholds of Ritual
Micah: The course title also includes “liminality.” Could you unpack what that means in this context?
Laura: The term comes from anthropology, where it describes the “in-between” phase of ritual—the threshold between what you were and what you are becoming. In rites of passage, for example, there’s a preliminary stage of preparation, the liminal stage of transformation, and then the re-entry into society as someone changed.
Architecture often frames these experiences. Churches, pilgrimage sites, initiation spaces—all of these were designed to guide participants through transition. What interests me is how light played into this. Think of entering a darkened space, then being flooded with light at a key ritual moment. That experience was not accidental—it was created.
So in this course we’ll study how buildings served as theaters for ritual transformation. They weren’t static structures; they were dynamic environments that shaped people’s spiritual and social lives.
Stonehenge, Hagia Sophia, and Beyond
Micah: That’s fascinating. Could you share an example of a space that illustrates both light and liminality?
Laura: One example is Stonehenge. Its arrangement frames the movement of the sun on solstices. We believe it marked the transformation of the land itself, made alive by light crossing the horizon. Human beings witnessed that transformation, but the ritual centered on the earth, the sky, and their relationship.
Another is Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Built in the sixth century, it was a marvel of innovation. The architects used light to evoke heaven on earth. Imagine entering a vast interior where light seems to dissolve the boundaries of stone and mortar—it was designed to feel otherworldly. For Byzantine Christians, this was a glimpse of the Heavenly Jerusalem.
In both cases, light was not decoration—it was the essential medium of meaning.
The Personal Dimension
Micah: You’ve described how architecture shapes meaning collectively. But you also mentioned that light has been significant in your personal life.
Laura: Yes. I carry strong memories of light. One is simple—I was reading in my mother’s home, sitting in a corner surrounded by windows, bathed in warm light. It was an ordinary moment, but I felt deeply enveloped and at peace. The other is harder. When my mother was dying, she kept the curtains drawn against the light. That absence of light marked her world narrowing and closing in. These experiences remind me that light is not neutral—it profoundly affects how we feel, think, and even who we become. And that’s true for all of us, not just in monumental spaces but in our everyday environments.
What Students Can Expect
Micah: What do you hope students will take away from this course?
Laura: First, that architecture is never just structure—it’s an integrated practice involving society, culture, spirituality, and the environment. By studying how premodern societies designed with light and ritual in mind, we can better understand our own relationship to the spaces we inhabit. I also want students to experience the joy of looking closely. Many of the works we’ll study—cathedrals, temples, monuments—still have something to teach us about how to live attentively today. When we train our eyes to see how light shapes space, we also become more aware of how our environments shape us.
This is a course for anyone who wants to think about architecture as a living conversation between people, nature, and meaning.
Why It Matters Now
Micah: It strikes me that these themes are timeless. Even today, we experience the power of light and liminality in ways we might not always name.
Laura: Exactly. Think of how many of our own transitions are marked by space and light—a wedding in a sunlit hall, a graduation in an auditorium, a funeral in a dim chapel. The rituals may look different, but the underlying dynamics are similar. Studying premodern examples gives us perspective. It helps us see that our experiences are part of a much longer human story, one in which architecture and environment shape how we understand ourselves and our communities.
About the Instructor
Professor Hollengreen is an art historian specializing in medieval and Byzantine architecture, with a particular focus on ritual and meaning. She has taught at Princeton, Georgia Tech, and the University of Arizona, and her work combines careful historical research with a deep interest in how environments affect human experience. Students can expect a seminar that is rigorous, engaging, and full of opportunities to connect the past with the present.
Join the Conversation This Fall
Professor Hollengreen’s seminar, Lightscapes and Liminality in Premodern Architecture, begins September 10, 2025. The course meets Wednesdays from 10 AM to noon in the Dorothy Rubel Room at the UA Poetry Center and online via Zoom. Over ten weeks, students will journey from the stones of prehistoric monuments to the soaring domes of Byzantine cathedrals, exploring how light shaped human ritual, meaning, and imagination. Discover how architecture is more than walls and windows—it’s a way of seeing, a way of being, and a way of connecting with the world.