Gretel Rodríguez
Biography
Gretel Rodríguez specializes in the art, architecture, and archaeology of the ancient Roman Empire. Her work investigates the relationship between art and society, exploring issues of viewership, identity, and acculturation in relation to ancient artistic production. Her publications deal with Roman honorific architecture, the iconography of captives on public monuments, painted ceramics in the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia, and, recently, the architecture and material culture of water sanctuaries throughout the Mediterranean world. Professor Rodríguez’s 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 Chiapas, Mexico. Her work has been published in the American Journal of Archaeology, RES Anthropology and Aesthetics, and the Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal.
Professor Rodríguez is affiliated with the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, and with Brown’s Program in Early Cultures.
Recent News
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.