Mickey Abel
Chair
Program Coordinator
Associate Professor
Mickey Abel received her B.A. and M.A. from Arizona State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2001. She has been at UNT since 2003. Her scholarly interests center around Medieval Architectural space—its historical analysis, its contextual setting, its liturgical and experiential perception, and its geographical determinants. Dr. Abel’s current research is bifurcated between work in Northern Spain and Western France. In Spain, she is engaged in a project of surveying and mapping the geographical parameters of the post-conquest (12th and 13th Century) churches built on the Sorian plain, undertaken in collaboration with the departments of Geography and Archaeology employing GIS technology. Her work in France examines the spatial/geographical relationship between the Abbey of Maillezais and its parish churches within the ancient Gulf de Picton and in the context of the historical events surrounding the Peace of God movement, as well as the political agenda of the Duke of Aquitaine, his wife, and descendants, and the social/economic life within the monastery and its landed domain. This work includes the surveying and drawing of the abbey’s tower/narthex in order to determine the configuration of the now lost western portal, and includes the GIS mapping of the abbey’s geographical position in relation to its development of a system of dykes, levies, and canals within the gulf’s marshy wetlands.