Hosted by the Humanities Center and featuring faculty fellow, Maggie Beeler.

Monsters in ancient Greek art embodied alterity by challenging corporeal norms, their composite bodies mediating cultural and cosmological boundaries between divine/mortal, human/animal, and civilized/barbaric. Inspired by Near Eastern artistic traditions, Greek monsters represent a promising site for investigations of identity and interaction across the ancient Mediterranean world. My project examines the role of monster art in cross-cultural exchanges through close, contextual analysis of the relevant archaeological evidence. I focus on two key inflection points in Greek history characterized by political centralization and intensive trade and/or colonization: the rise of palaces in the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1500-1100 BCE), and the so-called ‘Orientalizing period’ during city-state formation (ca. 8th-7th c. BCE). My interpretive framework moves beyond the Eurocentric opposition of ‘western’ Greeks with ‘eastern’ peoples by describing communities of practice that made monster art within an interconnected Mediterranean network. 

Respondents include Alison Mahoney from Theatre Arts + Emily Anderson, Johns Hopkins University . This event will be hybrid, so you can attend it either in person in 602 CL or via Zoom as you prefer. Precirculated material for this colloquium will be available here about two prior to the event.