History of Art and Architecture

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Gretel Rodríguez

Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture
Gretel_Rodriguez@brown.edu
(401) 863 2303
List 410
Research Profile
Research Interests Art and architecture of the Roman Empire, ancient viewership and reception, ancient Mediterranean religions
Office Hours Fridays, 2:00-3:30 pm, List 410

Biography

Gretel Rodríguez specializes in the art, architecture, and archaeology of ancient Rome. Her work investigates the relationship between art and society, exploring issues of viewership, reception, colonialism, and identity in relation to ancient Mediterranean artistic production. Her current book explores the design and reception of Roman honorific arches, reconsidering a corpus of canonical Roman monuments from a postcolonial perspective. Professor Rodríguez’s interests include other topics such as the iconography of captives in Roman art, the survival of indigenous artistic practices in colonial settings, and the architecture of Mediterranean healing sanctuaries. Her secondary specialization is in the art and architecture of ancient Mesoamerica. She has conducted research in Rome, the Bay of Naples, Southern France, and, in Palenque, Mexico. Her work has appeared in the American Journal of Archaeology, RES Anthropology and Aesthetics, and the Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal. She holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin and was one of the recipients of the 2022 Getty ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowship in the History of Art. 

Professor Rodríguez is affiliated with the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, and with Brown’s Program in Early Cultures. 

Recent News

The University of Chicago Press Journals

Professor Gretel Rodríguez Publishes in "RES Anthropology and Aesthetics"

HIAA Professor Gretel Rodríguez publishes in RES Anthropology and Aesthetics.

The article, titled "The myth of Iphigenia in fourth-century funerary vases of southern Italy," explores a series of painted vases produced in the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia, in southern Italy, which depict variations of the myth of Iphigenia. The study combines archaeological evidence, literary analysis, and iconographic examination of the vases, to reveal the myth’s connections with female rituals and with colonial funerary practices.

Image: "Sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron, Greece., 5th century BCE,” taken by Gretel Rodríguez.
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American Journal of Archaeology

Professor Gretel Rodríguez Published in the American Journal of Archaeology

Professor Gretel Rodríguez was recently published in the American Journal of Archaeology. The article, titled, "The Design and Reception of the Roman Arch at Orange," reconsiders one of the most important Roman monuments of ancient Gaul, the Arch at Orange, offering new interpretations of its iconographic program as well as considering its ancient reception by the local viewers of Gallia Narbonensis.
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