GAHA Distinguished Lecture: Dr. Emily S.K. Anderson, "The Unsettling Presence of Minoan Creatures"
GAHA Distinguished Lecture: Dr. Emily S.K. Anderson, "The Unsettling Presence of Minoan Creatures"
Please join GAHA (Graduate Art History Association) as they welcome Dr. Emily S.K. Anderson, Assistant Professor of Classics at Johns Hopkins University, as this year's Distinguished Lecturer. Dr. Anderson will present her lecture, "The Unsettling Presence of Minoan Creatures."
From tiny objects to monumental halls, Minoan renderings of creatures were distinctively unsettling presences in Aegean social contexts. In this talk we will explore two different types of animalian thing from Bronze Age Crete and the southern Aegean: small Middle Minoan seal stones engraved with both the figures of beasts and signs of early script, and polychrome wall paintings of the Late Bronze Age that featured animals. In their own particular ways, these crafted embodiments of animals contributed to the shaping of social arenas that saw considerable change during these moments. The animals that took form in the seal stones and paintings—which were, at once, both bodily and thingly—were part of key developments in interactive life in the region, involving matters of identification, administration, and the manifestation of spatial authority. From their textured surfaces outward, these things realized new dimensions and conceptions of the animalian and made animals intrinsic elements of innovations in social, cultural and political life. While we may not be able to get ahold of the intentions of the makers and designers of these artful animals, we can think critically and closely about the more fundamental question of how they were actually experienced as realities.
Bio
Emily S.K. Anderson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics at Johns Hopkins University where she is also a core faculty member in the interdisciplinary Archaeology Program. Her research focuses on the archaeology of the Bronze Age Aegean and eastern Mediterranean, especially the visual and material cultures of the Minoan and Mycenaean spheres. She is the author of numerous articles and two books: Seals, Craft, and Community in Bronze Age Crete (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and Minoan Zoomorphic Culture: Between Bodies and Things (Cambridge University Press, in-press). In 2020, she received a Catalyst Award to support a major research project that examines how reproductions of classical and Bronze Age Aegean objects in late 19th and early 20th-century Baltimore were part of the city’s diverse and complex urban life.
The talk will take place at 5 pm in the small lecture hall (2309) in Parren J. Mitchell Art-Sociology Building, and will be preceded at 4 by a Tea in the Michelle Smith Collaboratory (4213A). All are welcome!
Please join GAHA (Graduate Art History Association) as they welcome Dr. Emily S.K. Anderson, Assistant Professor of Classics at Johns Hopkins University, as this year's Distinguished Lecturer. Dr. Anderson will present her lecture, "The Unsettling Presence of Minoan Creatures."
From tiny objects to monumental halls, Minoan renderings of creatures were distinctively unsettling presences in Aegean social contexts. In this talk we will explore two different types of animalian thing from Bronze Age Crete and the southern Aegean: small Middle Minoan seal stones engraved with both the figures of beasts and signs of early script, and polychrome wall paintings of the Late Bronze Age that featured animals. In their own particular ways, these crafted embodiments of animals contributed to the shaping of social arenas that saw considerable change during these moments. The animals that took form in the seal stones and paintings—which were, at once, both bodily and thingly—were part of key developments in interactive life in the region, involving matters of identification, administration, and the manifestation of spatial authority. From their textured surfaces outward, these things realized new dimensions and conceptions of the animalian and made animals intrinsic elements of innovations in social, cultural and political life. While we may not be able to get ahold of the intentions of the makers and designers of these artful animals, we can think critically and closely about the more fundamental question of how they were actually experienced as realities.
Bio
Emily S.K. Anderson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics at Johns Hopkins University where she is also a core faculty member in the interdisciplinary Archaeology Program. Her research focuses on the archaeology of the Bronze Age Aegean and eastern Mediterranean, especially the visual and material cultures of the Minoan and Mycenaean spheres. She is the author of numerous articles and two books: Seals, Craft, and Community in Bronze Age Crete (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and Minoan Zoomorphic Culture: Between Bodies and Things (Cambridge University Press, in-press). In 2020, she received a Catalyst Award to support a major research project that examines how reproductions of classical and Bronze Age Aegean objects in late 19th and early 20th-century Baltimore were part of the city’s diverse and complex urban life.
The talk will take place at 5 pm in the small lecture hall (2309) in Parren J. Mitchell Art-Sociology Building, and will be preceded at 4 by a Tea in the Michelle Smith Collaboratory (4213A). All are welcome!