Fall 2023 Milwaukee AIA Lectures

In-Person Lecture

International Archaeology Day Lecture
Thursday, October 19, 2023, 4:30 pm
Sinclair Bell, Professor, Art History and Presidential Teaching Professor, Northern Illinois University
“Race, Racism, and Representation in Ancient Italy: Aethiopians in the Visual Arts of the Roman Empire
Lubar Hall, Room N140, 3202 North Maryland Ave., UW-Milwaukee Campus

The visual and material culture of the Roman Empire provides an abundant record of encounters with or simply imaginings of foreign peoples. These images render visible complex formulations of ethnicity, social hierarchies, and power. This lecture surveys the ways in which imperial artists represented the peoples whom the Romans referred to as Aethiopians or Nubians (i.e., “Black” Africans) in a variety of visual media. The lecture also considers how and why these works have been (mis)interpreted or sometimes altogether ignored by ancient art historians, and proposes new ways of integrating them into future, critical histories of Roman art.

Prof. Sinclair Bell is Professor of Art History and Presidential Teaching Professor at Northern Illinois University, where he teaches courses on Greek, Etruscan, and Roman art and architecture. He has excavated at sites in Italy and Tunisia and worked as a curatorial assistant at museums in Germany and Greece. He studied Classical Art & Archaeology at the universities of Oxford, Edinburgh, and Cologne, receiving his PhD in Classics in 2004. Sinclair’s research is broadly concerned with Etruscan and Roman material culture and art, with special interests in sport and spectacle and freed slaves and foreigners. His current book project, Aethiopians in Roman Art and Society: Visualizing Difference in a Multi-ethnic Empire, is the subject of his lecture tonight.

For more about Dr. Bell see:
https://www.niu.edu/art/about/faculty-staff/sinclair-bell.shtml
https://niu.academia.edu/SinclairBell

Other Fall 2023 Events

Archaeology Hour Virtual Lecture
Wednesday, September 27, 7:00pm CT
Elise A. Friedland, Associate Professor, Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, George Washington University
“Classical Washington: Greece & Rome in the Art and Architecture of DC”

Prof. Friedland’s research focuses on Roman sculpture, especially that produced and displayed in the Roman Near East, and the role of religious statuary in cultural exchange.

Event Registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_dp5zhsyHTaidUiNh5lnFgg#/registration

Archaeology Hour Virtual Lecture
Wednesday, October 18th, 7:00pm CT
Anne Austin, Assistant Professor, Anthropology & Archaeology, University of Missouri—St. Louis
“Ancient Ink: Discovering the Tattooed Women of Ancient Egypt”

Prof. Austin’s research combines the fields of osteology and Egyptology in order to better understand daily life in ancient Egypt. Prof. Austin’s talk focuses on the practice of tattooing in ancient Egypt and its potential connections to gender, religion, and medicine.

Event Registration:
(https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Emw27BLTRsqwyVheRqFMTA#/registration)

Field Trip to the Field Museum in Chicago
Saturday, November 11, 2023, 9:00am – 5:00pm
The First Kings of Europe, Field Museum, Chicago

First Kings of Europe Exhibition – Registration Form

The First Kings of Europe explores the rise to power of ancient Europe’s first kings and queens and how once egalitarian farming communities developed power, inequity, and hierarchy for the first time. Travel back to 5000 BCE to uncover what prehistoric tools, weapons, and ritual sculptures can tell us about life in the Balkans’ earliest societies. Venture through the trade routes that shaped the world as we know it today. See the axes, swords, and crowns that turned warriors into royals and forever changed the structure of society.

Join AIA-Milwaukee on a society-sponsored field trip to the Field Museum in Chicago to visit the latest blockbuster exhibition: The First Kings of Europe. A chartered bus will take care of the driving! The trip is partially subsidized by AIA-Milwaukee and a generous donation from Carthage College Archaeology Fund via AIA member, Prof. Dan Schowalter. Exact costs will be based on total number of participants.

Archaeology Hour Watch Party
Sunday, December 3, 3:00pm
“Cuisine and Crisis: An Edible History of the Moche of Ancient Peru”
Katherine L. Chiou, Assistant Professor, Anthropology, University of Alabama
North Cultural Arts Center, Saint John’s on the Lake, 1800 North Prospect, Milwaukee

Prof. Chiou, is an anthropological archaeologist and paleoethnobotanist whose research interests include foodways in the past and present, Andean archaeology, household archaeology, and plant domestication. The watch party will give us an opportunity to watch the video of the December Archaeology Hour presentation on Peruvian cuisine. Following that, engage in live discussion and Q&A led by Prof. David Pacifico, an Assistant Professor of Art History at UW-Milwaukee and specialist in Peruvian archaeology.

We will meet at 3:00 p.m. in the North Cultural Arts Center at Saint John’s on the Lake. Saint John’s on the Lake is a large high-rise complex on the East side of Prospect Avenue between Royall (south) and Kane Place (north). St John’s may be entered from any of three main entrances: 1800 North Prospect, 1840 North Prospect or 1858 North Prospect Ave, Milwaukee. Check in as a visitor at any front desk and tell the assistant you are here for the archaeology program. They will direct you to the NCAC meeting room. Masks are optional. The room is equipped with comfortable chairs, a large screen and good sound system for viewing. Light refreshments will add to our enjoyment of the program.

Please RSVP to: jcw@uwm.edu