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Classics and Ancient History

Art at Warwick

Visual culture has a crucial part to play in any investigation into the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. Several department members are actively engaged in the study of ancient visual culture and many more study it as a important part of their wider research interests. We have particular expertise in Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic Greek art and architecture, in Roman art and architecture in both the Latin West and the Greek East, and in the reception of ancient art.

We are keen to encourage applications from post graduate students who wish to focus on visual culture or wish to include it in their research. In particular, Warwick's Taught MA in Ancient Visual and Material Culture (which also can be taken with the opportunity to spend time at the British School at Rome: MA in Visual and Material Culture of Ancient Rome or at the British School at Athens: MA in Visual and Material Culture of Ancient Greece) encourages students to think about the creation, interpretation and reception of visual and material culture from the ancient world to today. The department has also recently set up a regular VIsual and Material Culture reading group, focused around key texts on, and approaches to, ancient visual culture.

Colleagues in the History of Art Department also work on the reception of ancient art in the Medieval period (Dr Louise Bourdua), as well as in the 17th century (Dr Lorenzo Pericolo) and in the Victorian period (Prof Michael Hatt). The University of Warwick also has teaching premises in Venice, which can be used by any member of the university upon application for research purposes as well as for hosting of conferences and seminars: see Warwick in Venice for more details.

Members of Staff / Current Postgraduates

Members of Staff

  • Dr Michael Scott - works on the visual culture of the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic Greek world, with a particular focus on sacred art and architecture. He has published on the panhellenic sanctuaries of Delphi and Olympia Delphi and Olympia: the spatial politics of panhellenism in the archaic and classical periods (CUP 2010); the spatial development of civic and sacred spaces Space and Society in the Greek and Roman Worlds (CUP 2012); as well as articles both on the processes behind the creation of sacred architecture and on its interpretation over time. He is currently working on an article looking at the artistic representation of death on Cycladic grave stele.

  • Dr Zahra Newby is a specialist in Roman art. Her research interests focus around the visual representation of Greek culture in the Roman empire and include publications on ancient athletics, spectacles and festivals, funerary art and mythological imagery. She is also interested in the interactions between art and text throughout the period of classical antiquity. Publications include Greek Athletics in the Roman World: Victory and Virtue (OUP 2005) and the co-edited volume (with Ruth Leader-Newby), Art and Inscriptions in the Ancient World (CUP 2007). Her most recent monograph Greek Myths in Roman Art and Culture was published by Cambridge University Press in 2016.

  • Dr David Fearn is a specialist in Greek choral lyric poetry and its socio-political contexts of performance and reception. He is also now working on new approaches to the relation between commemorative art, choral lyric poetry, religion, and sport in the late sixth and early fifth centuries BC. This research, intended to appear in the form of a monograph, will raise and discuss a variety of methodological issues concerning the relation between images and texts in the context of late archaic and early classical performance culture, theôria, and epichoric and panhellenic politics. His publications include Bacchylides: Politics, Performance, Poetic Tradition (OUP 2007) and Aegina: Contexts for Choral Lyric Poetry. Myth, History, and Identity in the Fifth Century BC (OUP 2010).

Current Postgraduates

  • Miriam Hay (MPhil/PhD): Defining a Late Antique Aesthetic in Art and Text. Miriam previously took the Taught MA in Ancient Visual and Material Culture and is especially interested in the culture of Late Antiquity and in exploring the common ground between Christian and pagan cultures as expressed in both art and text.
  • Victoria Jewell (MPhil/PhD): Colour in Ancient Art. Vicky's research examines the cultural connotations of colour in Greek and Roman societies, and the ways in which attitudes to colour play into the cultural interactions between the Greek and Roman worlds.