Faculty lecture to address fashion and Homeric storytelling in ancient Greek art
McKillop Library will host another faculty lecture for the 2020-21 academic year, and this one is entitled “Epic Fashion: Dress Decoration and Homeric Storytelling in Ancient Greek Art.” The lecture will be given by Dr. Anthony Mangieri, associate professor of art history and chair of the Department of Art and Art History, and it will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 10, from 4-5:30 p.m.
Dr. Anthony Mangieri
To register for the online event, to go the event’s page on the library’s website, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the “Begin Registration” button.
Helen weaving a garment depicting the battles between the Greeks and Trojans in Book Three of the “The Iliad“ illustrates how the Greeks imagined a nexus between textiles and storytelling. Yet scholars have most often seen representations of dress in ancient Greek art as mere sources for the study of lost historical garments and have viewed their decoration as merely “ornamental.”
Challenging these assumptions, Dr. Mangieri explores how ancient Greek artists used the embellishment of textiles to tell stories and add meaning to their work. Dr. Mangieri interprets the visual representations of dress as cultural practices related to the portrayal of textiles in other art forms — like epic poetry — allowing modern viewers to see them as artistic creations capable of modeling rhetorical conceits, playing sophisticated narrative roles and encoding allusive meanings.
Dr. Mangieri holds a Ph.D. in art history with a specialization in Greek and Roman art from Emory University. He is the author of the book “Virgin Sacrifice in Classical Art: Women, Agency, and the Trojan War,” a work of feminist art history that offers new interpretations on the meanings of the mythological sacrificial virgins in ancient Greece and Rome. He is also the author of articles on Greek vase-painting and has presented papers at more than two dozen conferences and symposia.
Register for the online faculty lecture at the library’s event page, and find a listing of upcoming events from McKillop Library here. For any additional questions, please contact Gretchen Sotomayer at gretchen.sotomayor@salve.edu.
