Dr. Joni Hand, associate professor of art history at Southeast Missouri State University, has been selected as a guest editor for a book in a new special series collection through Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

The premise for the book, Suffering for Salvation, was submitted for consideration to Cambridge Scholars by Hand and will focus on the interactive nature of imagery in medieval texts. She says she is looking forward to this new opportunity.

Images of holy figures were particularly potent and charged with symbolic meaning, Hand said. The purpose of this collection will be to explore how users of medieval manuscripts regarded images of suffering, internalizing what they viewed as a means for salvation.

Those interested in the topic will submit chapters to Cambridge Scholars Publishing for acceptance. The selected chapters will then be sent for review to Hand, who will also be submitting her own article, Miserere mei, Deus: The Iconography of Job and the Dung Heap in Books of Hours.

Hands article Playing by the Rules: Monastic Orders and Religious Identity in the Psalter of Bonne of Luxembourg, was featured in Cambridge Scholars Publishings Reflections on Medieval and Renaissance Thought collection.

Hand earned a Bachelor of Arts in graphic design from Kent State University, a Master of Arts in painting from Bradley University, a Master of Arts in art history from Hunter College of the City University of New York, and a doctorate in art history from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her research concerns late medieval manuscripts in northern Europe and female patronage.

She is also a practicing artist, working in mixed media, oils and graphite. She lives in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, with her husband, Kevin.