About the lecture:

Looking back at the distinguished 140-year history of the American School, this lecture highlights some of its major accomplishments through the lens of five intriguing and influential objects (broadly defined). These appear briefly in the School’s new history 54 Souidias (2025) but are explored in greater depth, notably in light of their worldwide scholarly impact.

About the speaker:

Jenifer Neils is the Elsie B. Smith Professor in the Liberal Arts emerita at Case Western Reserve University where she taught in the art history and classics departments from 1980 to 2017, when she was appointed the first female director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Neils has published 18 books in classical art and archaeology and over 75 scholarly articles. Her major publications include The Parthenon Frieze (2001), two books for the British Museum and three major international exhibition catalogues: Goddess and Polis: The Panathenaic Festival of Ancient Athens (1992), Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood from the Classical Past (2003), and HIPPOS: The Horse in Ancient Athens (2022). In conjunction with the last she wrote her first children’s book AVRA An Amazing Greek Horse.

She earned her AB from Bryn Mawr College and her PhD from Princeton University in art and archaeology and as a field archaeologist she has worked in Tuscany (Murlo), Sicily (Morgantina), and northern Greece (Torone)  and has published material from all three sites. Neils has received fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, J. Paul Getty Research Center, Yale Center for British Art, and the Onassis Foundation among others.