AHMA Participating Faculty
Chris Hallett, PhD (U.C. Berkeley, 1993)
Associate Professor, joint appointment in History of Art and Classics
Greek and Roman sculpture; ancient portraiture; the archaeology of Roman Asia Minor; Hellenistic and Roman Egypt
hallett@berkeley.edu
Chris Hallett was trained as a Classical Archaeologist at Bristol University and Lincoln College, Oxford. He completed his doctorate, in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology, at the University of California at Berkeley.
From 1993-2001 he taught in the Division of Art History at the University of Washington, Seattle, returning to Berkeley in 2002 to take up a joint appointment in the departments of Classics and History of Art. He is the recipient of a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome (1995-96), and in 1997-98 he was awarded a Humboldt Fellowship to work with Paul Zanker at the Institut für klassische Archäologie in Munich.
Professor Hallett specializes in Roman art, particularly sculpture, and has written a book on Roman portraiture entitled The Roman Nude: Heroic Portrait Statuary 200 B.C. - 300 A.D. His interests include: Hellenistic and Roman Egypt; the collecting of Greek art by the Roman elite; and the role of the luxury villa in Roman culture. He is currently working on a book on the visual culture of the late Republic and the early Empire, exploring its relationship to earlier Greek art. Recent graduate seminars he has taught include: Ancient Portraiture—the Eyptian, Greek and Roman traditions; The Roman Villa; and Roman Sarcophagi. In Spring 2006 he will offer a seminar on Text and Image in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (to be jointly taught with Todd Hickey).
Hallett has participated in archaeological fieldwork in Israel (at Tel Dor), Turkey (at Balboura in northern Lycia), and in Egypt (he trained as an Egyptologist at Berkeley, and in 1989 worked as an epigrapher for the Giza Mastaba Project). Since 1991 he has worked at New York University’s excavations at Aphrodisias in south western Turkey, where he is collaborating with R.R.R. Smith in the publication of all the portrait sculpture from the site, and is publishing the sculpture from the city’s Bouleuterion (Council House).
Selected Works:
"The Origins of the Classical Style in Sculpture", Journal of Hellenic Studies 106, 1986
"The East Tomb at Balboura", Anatolian Studies 43, 1993
"Kopienkritik and the works of Polykleitos in Polykleitos": the Doryphoros and Tradition, 1995
"A Group of Portraits from the Civic Center at Aphrodisias", American Journal of Archaeology 102, 1998
"The Ancient Paradigms: Augustus to Mussolini", in The Oxford Illustrated History of Western Art, 2000
Review, M. Bergmann, Die Strahlen der Herrscher: theomorphes Herrscherbild und politische Symbolik im Hellenismus und in der römischen Kaiserzeit (Mainz 1998), Journal of Roman Studies (2000) 228
Review: K. Fittschen, Prinzenbildnisse Antoninischer Zeit (Mainz 1999), Classical Review (2001) 364-65
Review article: "The Romanization of Late Hellenistic Sculpture", Journal of Roman Archaeology 15 (2002) 393-96: review of: M. Fuchs, In hoc etiam genere Graeciae nihil cedamus: Studien zur Romanisierung der späthellenistischen Kunst im 1. Jh. v. Ch. (Mainz 1999)
Review article: D. Boschung, Gens Augusta: Untersuchungen zu Aufstellung, Wirkung und Bedeutung der Statuengruppen des Julisch-Claudischen Kaiserhauses, Monumenta Artis Romanae 32 (Mainz 2002), Gnomon (2004) 437-45
Review article: "Technical Advance and Artistic Decline? A History of Roman Bronzeworking", Journal of Roman Archaeology 17 (2004) 487-501: a review of G. Lahusen, E. Formigli, Römische Bildnisse aus Bronze (Mainz 2002)
Review: P. Zanker, B.Ch. Ewald, P.Zanker, B.Ch. Ewald, Mit Mythen Leben: die Bilderwelt der römischen Sarkophage (Munich 2004), Art Bulletin (2005)
"The Roman Nude: Heroic Portrait Statuary 200 BC-300 AD," Forthcoming OUP 2005