Helen weaving a garment depicting the battles between the Greeks and Trojans in Book 3 of the Iliad illustrates how the Greeks imagined a nexus between textiles and storytelling.  Scholars most often have seen representations of dress in ancient Greek art as mere sources for the study of lost historical garments and have viewed their decoration as merely "ornamental." Challenging these assumptions, Dr. Mangieri explores how ancient Greek artists used the embellishment of textiles to tell stories and add meaning to their work. He interprets the visual representations of dress as cultural practices related to the portrayal of textiles in other art forms, like epic poetry, thus allowing us to see them as artistic creations capable of modeling rhetorical conceits, playing sophisticated narrative roles, and encoding allusive meanings. In this lecture, Dr. Mangieri shares his research and discusses how he has discovered new modes of storytelling and new meanings in the imagery of Greek vase-painting.

Anthony Mangieri is an Art Historian and Associate Professor of Art History and Chair of the Department of Art and Art History, and holds a Ph.D. in Art History, with a specialization in Greek and Roman art, from Emory University. He is the author of the book Virgin Sacrifice in Classical Art: Women, Agency, and the Trojan War, a work of Feminist Art History that offers new interpretations on the meanings of the mythological sacrificial virgins in ancient Greece and Rome. He is also the author of articles on Greek vase-painting and has presented papers at more than two dozen conferences and symposia.