AIA Lecture: S. Rebecca Martin (Boston University) to speak on “Not Black and White: Seeing and Naming Africans in Greek Art”

How do we know when we are looking at images of Africans in Greek art? And how can we talk productively about what Greeks saw in these images? Neither question has a straightforward answer thanks to the conventions used by Greek artists and the conflicting expectations of ancient and modern people about the representation of “race.” This lecture considers the increasingly popular subject of the representation of Africans in the ancient Mediterranean by focusing on the Greek visual evidence, especially vase paintings of Aithiopia.

Co-sponsored by the local AIA society, the Department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, the Department of Anthropology, and the African Studies Program