Braden Scott

• PhD (2023), McGill University
• MA (2016), Concordia University
• BFA (2014), Concordia University
   

Braden Lee Scott is an architectural historian who focuses on the expanded histories of ancient buildings and their receptions in early modern art. His current book project, Building Worlds: Architecture Expanded in Early Modern Archaeological Imagination, contends that a diverse aggregation of antiquities beyond the so-called "classical" directed the imaginations of early modern artists and architects. The very concept of classical art and architecture was only invented in the eighteenth century, but it profoundly shaped the ways that the histories of the era referred to as the "European Renaissance" and its cultural production continue to be told. Another book project, Burgundy in Bethlehem: Architectural Diplomacy in Fifteenth-Century Mamluk Syria, emphasises the movement of architectural materials and diplomats during the renovation of the Bethlehem Basilica between 1450 and 1482. Scott also publishes on film, video, and contemporary art, and his first book on Kent Monkman's cinematic practice is forthcoming with McGill-Queen's University Press. 

Scott held predoctoral fellowships at the Nederlands Interuniversitair Kunsthistorisch Instituut in Florence (2021), and the Center for Netherlandish Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2022-2023). He remains a running research affiliate with Angela Vanhaelen's & Bronwen Wilson's international research project Making Green Worlds: Early Modern Art and Ecologies of Globalization. Before arriving at the University of Manitoba in 2025, he will complete a Fonds de recherche du Québec Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Bibliotheca Hertziana—Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte in Rome (2023-2025).

Scott's research interests include: Early Modern art and architecture, c. 1300-1700; ancient Mediterranean architecture; archaeology and archaeological methods in art history; transalpine art histories; Netherlandish artists in Italy; inter- and transmediality; ancient West Asian & Egyptian architecture; ancient Roman architecture & sculpture; material culture; histories & theories of empire; lithics; wood & tree studies; seas, oceans, and climate studies; Kent Monkman; visual cultures of sex & sexuality.

 “Processing Obelisks, or a Punctual History of Granite and Thermodynamics,” Aegyptiaca (forthcoming).

“The Egyptian Telamons from Tivoli and the Bodying Column in Renaissance Architecture,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (forthcoming).

“Kingship and the Rocks: Infrastructure and the Materiality of Empire.” In The Routledge Handbook of Infrastructure Designs: Global Perspectives from Architectural History. Edited by Joseph Heathcott, 18-29. New York: Routledge, 2022.

“Pornoarchaeology of Kent Monkman’s Group of Seven Inches.” Porn Studies 8, no. 3 (2021): 296-313.