Amanda Herring
Associate Professor of Art History, College of Communication and Fine Arts | Loyola Marymount University
Los Angeles, CA, UNITED STATES
Associate Professor of Art History
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Biography
Amanda Herring received her B.A. in Art History & Classical Archaeology from Dartmouth College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History from UCLA. At LMU, she teaches courses on the art and architecture of the ancient world.
With a specialization in Hellenistic Greece, her research explores how architecture and sculpture were used as expression of cultural and ideological identities in a period of rapid social and political change. In particular, she has examined the Temple of Hekate at Lagina, the Temple of Artemis at Magnesia on the Meander, and the statue, the Barberini Faun. Her research also examines the reception of the classical past in the modern world, and recent publications have focused on the history of archaeology in nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire. Her current research project examines the superhero Wonder Woman and the manner in which her comics reinterpret and depict Greek myths, particularly their transformation of amazons from antagonists to heroes.
Her work has been published by the Journal of the History of Sexuality, History of Photography, and Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. She has presented her work at various venues including the annual conferences of the Archaeological Institute of America and the College Art Association.
Education (3)
Dartmouth College: B.A., Art History & Classical Archaeology 2002
University of California, Los Angeles: M.A., Art History
University of California, Los Angeles: Ph.D., Art History 2011
Areas of Expertise (3)
Art History
Ancient Greek Art & Architecture
Ancient Roman Art & Architecture
Industry Expertise (3)
Education/Learning
Research
Arts and Crafts
Affiliations (3)
- College Art Association
- Archaeological Institute of America
- Society of Architectural Historians
Languages (5)
- French
- German
- Greek
- Latin
- English
Articles (2)
Sexy Beast: The Barberini Faun as an Object of Desire
Project Muse2016-01-01
The Barberini Faun is simply a sexy beast. In contrast to most Greek male nudes, the Hellenistic Barberini Faun shows the satyr as an overtly sexual object.1 With his heavily muscled torso reclined in sleep, the satyr’s animalistic characteristics are downplayed, encouraging the viewer to see him as human. The position of his body, notably his splayed legs, draws attention to his genitalia, while his closed eyes cast the viewer as voyeur. It is a radically different depiction of satyrs from earlier archaic and classical images depicting them as ithyphallic hypersexual aggressors, indifferent to gender or even species when pursuing objects of their desire...
Photographing Magnesia on the Meander: Image, Exhibition and Excavation
Taylor & Francis Online2015-03-06
This article examines nineteenth-century photographs of the archaeological site of Magnesia on the Meander, focusing on the work of Alexander Svoboda in the 1860s and that of a German archaeological team who excavated there in the 1890s. While a brief archaeological campaign was undertaken at Magnesia in the 1840s, by the 1860s, when Svoboda took his photograph, the site was abandoned and unstudied. Through an investigation of both the career of Svoboda and the history of archaeological photography in the region, this article places Svoboda’s photography in the larger context of investigation at Magnesia. It argues that Svoboda’s photograph of Magnesia was part of his most important project, a book of photographs and an accompanying exhibition on the Seven Churches of Asia. Svoboda’s inclusion of Magnesia within this project exposed the site to a much larger audience, and influenced how the site was viewed and understood. This photograph, therefore, represents a turning point in the history of this site, leading to the eventual recovery and study of this important classical city under the German excavators, and their own photographic recording of the city’s classical ruins...
