Classics
Staff

Dr Glenys Davies

G.M.Davies@ed.ac.uk
0131 650 3592
Room 00M.24, Doorway 4, Teviot Place

Head of Classics, Senior Lecturer in Classical Art and Archaeology

I have been a lecturer in Classical art and archaeology at Edinburgh University since 1979, and in that time have taught a wide variety of topics involving many aspects of the material culture of the Classical world, but I would define myself as a Classical art historian rather than an archaeologist. I am interested in how the Greeks, Etruscans, and above all the Romans expressed themselves and their society through the visual arts – and how these today should be interpreted .

Most of my teaching and research involves this broad theme in some way: my honours courses are on Roman propaganda (how state art was used to advertise Rome and her rulers) and Roman funerary art (how images were used to express the identity of the deceased and his/her hopes for the afterlife). This last theme was the subject of my own doctoral research, which was an analysis of the iconography used on Roman ash chests and grave altars made in Rome in the early Imperial period. The “meaning” of Roman funerary art has been a continuing interest, as are these particular types of (relatively modest) monuments.

Research and further study

I have recently completed a catalogue of the ash chests and other Roman funerary monuments collected by Henry Blundell of Ince Blundell Hall near Liverpool in the late 18th century – this represents another of my research interests, the collection and restoration of Classical sculpture in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I have also studied and catalogued the casts of Classical portraits once owned by Carlo Albacini but now in the care of the National Galleries of Scotland, and the much smaller collection of Romano-British sculpture made by Sir Robert Cotton c AD 1600. I have greatly appreciated the opportunity to study actual artworks from Classical antiquity so closely, but have also become fascinated by their post-Classical histories.

In my most recent research I have been investigating rather different aspects of the relationship between art and society, namely the representation in art of dress and body language. I am particularly interested in what these reveal about status and gender differences in Hellenistic and Roman society. I have written several articles (already published and in press) on various aspects of this, and I am writing a book (to be published by Cambridge University Press) which will explore the use and significance of gendered body language in Roman art. I have collaborated with Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones on a Dictionary of Greek and Roman dress.