Laurinda Dixon, a professor at Syracuse University since 1982, teaches a variety of courses, from the large, introductory Arts & Ideas lecture to specialized graduate seminars. She teaches Ancient art, Northern Renaissance art, Women in Art, and various other courses on art and science and art and music for the Department of Fine Arts.

Professor Dixon's background is interdisciplinary, including a degree from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and a Ph.D. in art history from Boston University. Her scholarly specialty is the relationship of art and science before the Enlightenment, and she lectures widely on the subject at Universities and Museums throughout the world. Her many articles in such journals as The Art Bulletin, Oud Holland, and Gazette des Beaux-Arts address the relationship of art to such subjects as chemistry, cartography, and gynecology. Professor Dixon has edited and authored nine books, most recently Hieronymous Bosch (Phaidon Press, 2003), In Sickness and in Health: Disease as Metaphor in Art (University of Delaware Press, 2003), and Perilous Chastity: Women and Illness in Pre-Enlightenment Art and Medicine (Cornell University Press, 1995). She has been honored by the College of Arts and Sciences as the William P. Tolley Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities.