About Me
I specialize in ancient Mediterranean art and architecture in its global context, with an emphasis on the visual representation of music, the relationship between art and ritual, ancient aesthetics, sensory studies, materiality, and the visualization of the divine and the dead. Further interests include Gandharan art and the image of the Buddha, multicultural exchange, the 19th-century reception of Greek and Roman art on the Grand Tour, and curatorial practice.
My research focuses more specifically on the manifold ways that visual art could communicate the presence of the divine by evoking specific sensations in ancient
Greek viewers. My current book, Divine Music in Archaic and Classical Greek Art: Seeing the Songs of the Gods, looks specifically at music and dance, and examines the visual significance of the Greek gods depicted as musicians, to determine the multisensory effect that images of divine musical performance had upon the ancient viewer’s religious experience. I am also working on a number of articles, each of which similarly addresses the complex interaction between viewer and image, be it the representation of musical myths on Greek vases and the role of sound in conveying the narrative, or the depiction of vases embedded within painted scenes and their ability to evoke and elaborate upon the sensory experience of the symposium.
Research Interests
Greek art and archaeology (black- and red-figure vases, votive reliefs) – Greek religion (sanctuaries, ritual, representations of cult) – ancient music (social and religious performance) – Gandharan art and the image of the Buddha – the Grand Tour and the reception of Greek art in 19th-century Europe.
Publications
Monographs
Divine Music in Archaic and Classical Greek Art: Seeing the Songs of the Gods. Book manuscript. Under contract with Cambridge University Press. Word count, including notes and references: 104,439.
Articles and Chapters
“Seeing the Past: Neo-Attic Reliefs as Sites of Temporal and Spatial Contact.” Special issue of Yale Classical Studies. Under review. Word count, including notes and references: 12,695.
“Education: Myth, Ritual, and Socialization.” A Cultural History of Music in Antiquity, edited by Sean Gurd and Pauline LeVen. Forthcoming with Bloomsbury Publishing. Word count, including notes: 6,898.
“Looking at Divine Song: The Aesthetics of Music in Greek Vase-Painting.” The Beauties of Song: Aesthetic Appreciations of Music in the Greek and Roman World, edited by D. Creese and P. Destrée. Forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. Word count, including notes and references: 11,920.
“Moving to the Music: Song and Dance in Antiquity.” Introduction for a special issue of Greek and Roman Musical Studies, 9.1 (2021): 3-12.
“Dancing with Greek Vases: Communicating through Sight, Movement, and Material.” Special issue of Greek and Roman Musical Studies, 9.1 (2021): 85-114.
“Painting with Music: Visualizing ‘harmonia’ in Late Archaic Representations of Apollo Kitharoidos.” Greek and Roman Musical Studies 8.1 (2020): 63-90.
“Hermes Among Pan and the Nymphs on Fourth-Century Votive Reliefs.” In Tracking Hermes, Pursuing Mercury, 2019. Edited by Jenny Strauss Clay and John Miller, 31-48. Oxford.
“Sacred Sounds: The Cult of Pan and the Nymphs in the Vari Cave.” Classical Antiquity 38.2 (2019): 185-216.
In preparation:
Monographs
Touching Memories: Sensation, Mourning, and Representations of the Dead in Ancient Greece. Book manuscript.
Edited Volumes
Remove, Damage, Destroy, Rebuild: Iconoclasm in the Premodern World. Edited volume based on the 2020-2021 Center for the Premodern World lecture series, Iconoclasm in the Premodern World, with additional contributions.
Articles and Chapters
“Embedded Revels: Contexts of Viewing Black-Figure Scenes on Athenian Red-Figure Vases.”
“Mourning in Silence: Musical Instruments on Fifth-Century Athenian White-Ground Lekythoi.”
“Dancing Gods.” In Dance in Greco-Roman Antiquity / Improntas de danza Antigua. Edited by Zoa Alonso Fernandez and Sarah Olsen.
“Memory and Materiality: Re-embodying the Funerary Musical and Dance Performances.” In The Routledge Handbook of Music and Dance Performances in the Ancient Mediterranean: The Evidence from Material Culture. Edited by Angela Bellia and Clemente Marconi. Routledge. Projected word count: 8,000.
“The Materiality of Divinity: Divine Images, Iconophilia, and Iconoclasm.” In The Handbook of the Archaeology of Ancient Mediterranean Religions. Edited by Caitlín Eilís Barrett. Routledge. Projected word count: 8,000.
REVIEWS
Review of The Sarpedon Krater: The Life and Afterlife of a Greek Vase, by Nigel Spivey, West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture 27.1 (2020): 105-108.