Roland Betancourt is an Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of California, Irvine. In the 2016–2017 academic year, he was the Elizabeth and J. Richardson Dilworth Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He has co-edited Byzantium/Modernism: The Byzantine as Method in Modernity (2015), and is the author of a forthcoming book on the intersectionality of race, sexuality, and gender identity in the medieval world.

• Acknowledgements; Note to the reader; Introduction: can't touch this; Part I. How Sight Is Not Touch: 1. The medium of sight; 2. The problem of tactility; 3. The commonalities of the senses; Part II. Photios and the Unfolding of Perception: Introduction; 4. Has the mind seen?: the language of effluxes; 5. Has it grasped?: apprehending the object; 6. Has it visualized?, I: the grasp of the imagination; 7. Has it visualized?, II: the problem of fantasy; 8. Then it has effortlessly …: judgment and assent; Conclusion; Part III. Mediation, Veneration, Remediation: 9. Medium and mediation; 10. Tactility and veneration; 11. Synaesthesia and remediation; Conclusion: tempted to touch; Bibliography; Index.

'This is a very learned and important book, with significant ramifications for thinking about sight and touch, aesthetics, the cultural history of vision, the historiography of Byzantine art and continuity/shift between the classical world and Byzantium. Betancourt shows better than all previous scholarship how theories of vision/touch grow out of their classical intellectual archaeology.' Jas' Elsner, Humphrey Payne Senior Research Fellow in Classical Art, Corpus Christi College, Oxford

Roland Betancourt is an Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of California, Irvine. In the 2016–2017 academic year, he was the Elizabeth and J. Richardson Dilworth Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He has co-edited Byzantium/Modernism: The Byzantine as Method in Modernity (2015), and is the author of a forthcoming book on the intersectionality of race, sexuality, and gender identity in the medieval world.

• Acknowledgements; Note to the reader; Introduction: can't touch this; Part I. How Sight Is Not Touch: 1. The medium of sight; 2. The problem of tactility; 3. The commonalities of the senses; Part II. Photios and the Unfolding of Perception: Introduction; 4. Has the mind seen?: the language of effluxes; 5. Has it grasped?: apprehending the object; 6. Has it visualized?, I: the grasp of the imagination; 7. Has it visualized?, II: the problem of fantasy; 8. Then it has effortlessly …: judgment and assent; Conclusion; Part III. Mediation, Veneration, Remediation: 9. Medium and mediation; 10. Tactility and veneration; 11. Synaesthesia and remediation; Conclusion: tempted to touch; Bibliography; Index.

'This is a very learned and important book, with significant ramifications for thinking about sight and touch, aesthetics, the cultural history of vision, the historiography of Byzantine art and continuity/shift between the classical world and Byzantium. Betancourt shows better than all previous scholarship how theories of vision/touch grow out of their classical intellectual archaeology.' Jas' Elsner, Humphrey Payne Senior Research Fellow in Classical Art, Corpus Christi College, Oxford

Roland Betancourt is an Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of California, Irvine. In the 2016–2017 academic year, he was the Elizabeth and J. Richardson Dilworth Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He has co-edited Byzantium/Modernism: The Byzantine as Method in Modernity (2015), and is the author of a forthcoming book on the intersectionality of race, sexuality, and gender identity in the medieval world.

• Acknowledgements; Note to the reader; Introduction: can't touch this; Part I. How Sight Is Not Touch: 1. The medium of sight; 2. The problem of tactility; 3. The commonalities of the senses; Part II. Photios and the Unfolding of Perception: Introduction; 4. Has the mind seen?: the language of effluxes; 5. Has it grasped?: apprehending the object; 6. Has it visualized?, I: the grasp of the imagination; 7. Has it visualized?, II: the problem of fantasy; 8. Then it has effortlessly …: judgment and assent; Conclusion; Part III. Mediation, Veneration, Remediation: 9. Medium and mediation; 10. Tactility and veneration; 11. Synaesthesia and remediation; Conclusion: tempted to touch; Bibliography; Index.

'This is a very learned and important book, with significant ramifications for thinking about sight and touch, aesthetics, the cultural history of vision, the historiography of Byzantine art and continuity/shift between the classical world and Byzantium. Betancourt shows better than all previous scholarship how theories of vision/touch grow out of their classical intellectual archaeology.' Jas' Elsner, Humphrey Payne Senior Research Fellow in Classical Art, Corpus Christi College, Oxford