Harvard Professor Uses Art to Unlock Secrets of Ancient Society

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Detail of frieze West House, 1550 BC, Akrotiri, Thera, Greecec

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Harvard art and archeology professor Gloria Ferrari Pinney will be on campus next week as part of the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholars Program to present two lectures on ancient Greece.

“Sailing the Wine-dark Sea: Interpreting the Paintings of the West House at Thera” will be held at 7 p.m. on Monday, March 12, in Old Main’s Giffels Auditorium. This presentation focuses on the paintings of Akrotiri on the Aegan island of Thera (Santorini), a town buried in a volcanic eruption in the seventeenth century BCE. The paintings are used to interpret the lives and culture of a society from which no literary texts survived.

Pinney’s second lecture, “The Ancient Greek Family,” will be held at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, March 13, in Mullins Library room 104. This talk highlights the society’s beliefs about marriage, the definition of family, and the existence of concubines.

Pinney is professor emeritus of classical archaeology and art at Harvard, where she taught from 1998 to 2003. She was previously a member of the faculty at Wilson College, Bryn Mawr College, serving as the Doreen Canaday Spitzer Professor of Classical Studies from 1990 to 1993, and at the University of Chicago.

Both lectures are free and open to the public. Pinney’s visit is part of a five-campus tour and is sponsored by the university’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa academic honors society, the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences Program of Classical Studies, and University of Arkansas Enrollment Services.