Verity Platt

Professor, on leave 2023-2024

Publications

Monographs

Epistemic Objects: Making and Mediating between Classical Art and Text. Oxford University Press. In progress.
Pliny the Elder's Aesthetics of the Overlooked. In progress.
Facing the Gods: Epiphany and Representation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature and Religion. Cambridge. 2011 (paperback edition, 2016).

Edited Volumes

The Embodied Object in Greek and Roman Art, special edition of Art History, co-edited with M. Gaifman and M. Squire, issue 41.3, June 2018.
The Frame in Greek and Roman Art: A Cultural History, co-edited with M. Squire, Cambridge. 2017.
The Art of Art History in Graeco-Roman Antiquity, special edition of Arethusa, co-edited with M. Squire (Vol. 43.2, Spring 2010).

Articles:

“Undisciplining the University through Shared Purpose, Practice, and Place,” Nature: Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 9, no. 172 (2022), with A. Freiband et al.
“Ancient Relief: Terminology, Medium, Ontology”, in J. Elsner, M. Gaifman and N. Jones (eds.), Rethinking Classical Relief, Yale Classical Studies/Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
“Art, Nature, and the Material Divine in Roman Landscape Painting,” in J. Powers, (ed.), Art, Nature, and Myth in Ancient Rome, exhibition catalogue, San Antonio Museum of Art. Forthcoming October 2021.
“Bodies, Bases and Borders: Framing the Divine in Greco-Roman Antiquity,” in R. Wood and J. Elsner (eds.), Imagining the Divine: Exploring Art in Religions of Late Antiquity across Eurasia, British Museum Press, 2021: 19–36.
"Beeswax: The Natural History of an Archetypal Medium," in A. Anguissola and A. Grüner (eds.), The Nature of Art: Pliny the Elder on Materials. Brepols series on "Art and Materiality", 2021: 51–64.
- Translated into Italian as "Cera d’api: la storia naturale di un medium archetipico," transl. C. Ballestrazzi, Journal of the Istituto universitario olandese di storia dell’arte. Forthcoming.
“Re-membering the Belvedere Torso: Ekphrastic Restoration and the Teeth of Time,” Critical Inquiry 46 (Autumn 2020): 49–75.
"Color in Ancient Religion and Ritual," in D. Wharton (ed.), A Cultural History of Color in Antiquity. Bloomsbury, 2020: 63–80.
“The Seal of Polycrates: A Discourse on Discourse Channel Conditions,” in P. Michelakis (ed.), Classics and Media Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, series on “Classical Presences”, 2020: 53–76.
“De l’original perdu aux séries de répliques : nouvelles approches des multiples gréco-romains,” transl. G. Mélère, invited contribution to Perspective: actualité en histoire de l’art, special issue on Multiples. 2019.2: 165–78.
"Ecology, Ethics and Aesthetics in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History," Journal of the Clark Art Institute 17, special issue on Ecologies, Agents, Terrains, ed. C. P. Heuer and R. Zorach, Yale University Press, 2018. 219-42.
"Orphaned Objects: Pliny’s Natural History and the Phenomenology of the Incomplete," Art History 41.3 (June 2018), special issue on The Embodied Object, 492-517.
"The Embodied Object," Introduction to Art History 41.3 (June 2018), special issue on The Embodied Object (co-authored with M. Gaifman), 402-19.
“Ex votos in the Ancient World”, in I. Weinryb (ed.), Agents of Faith: Votive Giving Across Cultures. Bard Graduate Center Gallery Publications, Yale University Press, 2018, 2-19.
"Silent Bones and Singing Stones: Materializing the Poetic Corpus in Hellenistic Greece", in N. Goldschmidt and B. Graziosi (eds.), Tombs of the Poets: Between Text and Material Culture. Oxford University Press, 2018, 21-49.
- Also published in an abridged version as "Des os muets et des pierres sonores : matérialiser le corpus poétique en Grèce hellénistique," Mètis special issue on Place aux objets! Présentification et vie des artefacts en Grèce ancienne, edited by M. Brouillet and C. Carastro, 2019, 15-42.
"Of Sponges and Stones: Matter and Ornament in Roman Painting," in N. Dietrich and M. Squire (eds.), Ornament and Figure in Graeco-Roman Art: Rethinking Visual Ontologies in Classical Antiquity. De Gruyter, 2018, 241-78.
"Double Vision: Epiphanies of the Dioscuri in Greece and Rome," Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 20.1, March 2018, 229-56.
"Framing the Visual in Greco-Roman Antiquity: an Introduction," in V. Platt and M. Squire (eds.), The Frame in Classical Art: A Cultural History. Cambridge University Press (2017), 3-99 (co-authored with M. Squire).
"Framing the Sacred," in V. Platt and M. Squire (eds.), The Frame in Classical Art: A Cultural History. Cambridge University Press (2017), 384–91.
"Framing Pictorial Space," in V. Platt and M. Squire (eds.), The Frame in Classical Art: A Cultural History. Cambridge University Press (2017), 102–16.
"Getting to Grips with Classical Art: Rethinking the Haptics of Graeco-Roman Visual Culture," in A. Purves (ed.), Touch and the Ancient Senses. The Senses in Antiquity, Vol. 6. Routledge (2017), 74-100 (co-authored with M. Squire).
"The Matter of Classical Art History”, in What’s New About the Old? Reassessing the Ancient World, special issue of Daedalus edited by M. Santirocco (Spring 2016), 5–14.
"The Artist as Anecdote: Creating Creators in Ancient Texts and Modern Art History," in J. Haninck and R. Fletcher (eds.), Creative Lives in the Ancient World. Cambridge University Press (2016), 274-304.
"Epiphanies," in The Oxford Handbook of Greek Religion, eds. E. Eidinow and J. Kindt, Oxford University Press (2015), 491-504.
"Agamemnon's Grief: on the Limits of Expression in Roman Rhetoric and Painting," in J. Elsner and M. Meyer (eds.), Art and Rhetoric in Roman Culture. Cambridge University Press (2014), 211-31.
"Likeness and Likelihood in Classical Greek Art," in V. Wohl (ed.), Probabilities, Hypotheticals, and Counterfactuals in Ancient Greek Thought. Cambridge University Press (2014), 185-207.
"Sight and the Gods: On the Desire to See Naked Nymphs," in M. Squire (ed.), Sight and the Ancient Senses. The Senses in Antiquity, Vol. 4, Routledge (2015), 169-87.
"Framing the Dead on Roman Sarcophagi," RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 61/62 (Spring/Autumn 2012), 213-27.
- Revised and updated version published in V. Platt and M. Squire (eds.), The Frame in Greek and Roman Art: A Cultural History. Cambridge University Press (2017), 353–81.
"Art History in the Temple," Arethusa 43.2 (Spring 2010), 197-213.
"Viewing the Past: Cinematic Paideia in the Caverns of Macedonia," in P. Cartledge and F. Rose Greenland (eds.), Responses to Oliver Stone's Alexander. Film, History and Cultural Studies. University of Wisconsin Press (2010), 285-304.
"Where The Wild Things Are: Locating the Marvellous in Augustan Wall-Painting", in P. Hardie (ed.), Paradox and the Marvellous in Augustan Literature and Culture. Oxford University Press (2009), 41-74.
"Virtual Visions: Phantasia and the Perception of the Divine in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana," in E. L. Bowie and J. Elsner (eds.), Philostratus. Cambridge University Press (2009), 131-54.
"Burning Butterflies: Seals, Symbols and the Soul in Antiquity", in L. Gilmour (ed.), Pagans and Christians - from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, British Archaeological Reports series, Archaeopress (2007), 89-99.
"Honour Takes Wing: Unstable Images and Anxious Orators in the Greek Tradition," in Z. Newby and R. Leader-Newby (eds.), Art and Inscriptions in the Ancient World. Cambridge University Press (2006), 247-71.
"Making an Impression: Replication and the Ontology of the Graeco-Roman Seal Stone", Art History, special edition on Replication in Ancient Art, 29.2 (April, 2006), 233-57.
"Shattered Visages: Speaking Statues from the Ancient World," Apollo (July, 2003), 9-14.
"Evasive Epiphany in Ekphrastic Epigram," Ramus 31 (2002), 33-50.
"Viewing, Desiring, Believing: Confronting the Divine in a Pompeian House," Art History 25.1 (Feb, 2002), 87-112.

Online articles and journalism

“Why People are Toppling Monuments to Racism”, Scientific American, July 2020.
"Picturing Poets," Living Poets (Durham, 2016).
"Classical Cover-Ups" (on ancient statuary, censorship, and fashion), Eidolon, May 2016.
"Reinventing Pygmalion: Tracey Emin’s “Rocky Marriage," Ms. Magazine, April 2016.
"The Empty Chair and the Silent Voice: Symbols of Loss, Grief – and Hope?" Eidolon, Feb. 2016.

Curated exhibitions

“Wonder and Wakefulness: The Nature of Pliny the Elder”, Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University (with Andrew Weislogel), Spring 2023.
“The Sculpture Shoppe at Ithaca Mall”, a contemporary art exhibition featuring the Cornell collection of plaster casts (with David Nasca), Spring 2022.
“Cast and Present: Replicating Antiquity in the Museum and the Academy,” Johnson Museum, Cornell University, Spring 2015 (with Annetta Alexandridis and Andrew Weislogel).
“Firing the Canon: the Cornell Casts and their Discontents,” Cornell Sesquicentennial Celebrations, Cornell Chilled Water Plant, Fall 2014 (with Annetta Alexandridis).
“IthaCasts. Plaster Casts of Ancient Sculpture from the Collections of Cornell University,” Tompkins County Library, Ithaca, Fall 2012 (with Annetta Alexandridis).

120 Goldwin Smith Hall
vjp33@cornell.edu

Education

Prof. Platt received her DPhil in Classics from Oxford University, and also has a Masters in Classical Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. She joined the Classics and History of Art departments at Cornell in 2010 having previously taught at the University of Chicago, following a post-doctoral research fellowship at University College, Oxford. She has held fellowships at the Institute of Advanced Study (Princeton), the Franke Institute for the Humanities (University of Chicago), the Society for the Humanities (Cornell), and the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future (Cornell).

Departments and programs

Keywords

The history and historiography of Greek and Roman art; text and object/word and image; Roman wall-painting and sarcophagi; seal-stones/glyptics; art and religion; Hellenistic and Imperial Greek literature; Pliny the Elder; cast collections; classics and media studies; eco-art history; classical reception studies; classicism and contemporary art.

Latest Books

Breakups are the worst. On one scale devised by psychiatrists, only a spouse’s death was ranked as more stressful than a marital split. Is there any treatment for a breakup? The ancient Roman poet Ovid thought so. Having become famous for teaching the art of seduction in The Art of Love, he then wrote Remedies for Love (Remedia Amoris), which presents thirty-eight frank and witty strategies for coping with unrequited love, falling out of love, ending a relationship, and healing a broken heart. How to Get Over a Breakup presents an unabashedly modern prose translation of Ovid’s lighthearted and provocative work, complete with a lively introduction and the original Latin on facing pages.

Ovid’s advice—which he illustrates with ingenious interpretations of classical mythology—ranges from the practical, psychologically astute, and profound, to the ironic, deliberately offensive, and bizarre. Some advice is conventional—such as staying busy, not spending time alone, and avoiding places associated with an ex. Some is off-color, such as having sex until you’re sick of it. And some, for modern readers, is, simply and delightfully, weird—such as becoming a lawyer and not eating arugula.

But far more often, How to Get Over a Breakup reveals an Ovid whose advice—good or bad, entertaining or outrageous—can sound startlingly modern.

2. 2024 or 2025 (in press). Plutarch and Prudentius. How to Resist: An Ancient Guide to Coping with Pressure. Princeton University Press.

Charles Brittain

Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy and Humane Letters

Publications

Books
- Philo of Larissa. The last of the Academic sceptics. Oxford, 2001
- Cicero: On Academic Scepticism. Hackett. 2006
Edited Books
- Simplicius On Epictetus Handbook 1-26. London & Ithaca, 2002 &
- Simplicius On Epictetus Handbook 27-53. London & Ithaca, 2002, trans. with Tad Brennan, for the series The Greek commentators on Aristotle.
- Plato: The Divided Self, edited with T. Brennan & R. Barney, Cambridge, 2012

Chapters
- 'No place for a Platonist soul in 5th Century Gaul? The case of Mamertus Claudianus', R. Mathisen & D. Shanzer (ed.s), Society and Culture in Late Antique Gaul. Revisiting the Sources, Aldershot, 2001, 239-62.
- 'Arcesilaus', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (on line), sub-ed. J. Cooper. 2004; http://plato.stanford.edu/.
- ‘Common Sense. Concepts, definition and meaning in and out of the Stoa.’ Language and Learning. Proceedings of the Symposium Hellenisticum 2001 (ed. D. Frede & B. Inwood); 2005, 165-209.
- 'Philo of Larissa', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (on line), sub-ed. J. Cooper; 2006. http://plato.stanford.edu/
- 'Middle Platonists on Academic scepticism', in R. Sharples & R. Sorabji (ed.) Greek & Roman Philosophy 100 BC – 200 AD, London, 2007, vol. II. 297-315.
- 'Plato and Platonism', in G. Fine (ed.), Oxford Handbook on Plato, Oxford, 2008, 931-69.
- 'Posidonius on divinatory dreams', in J. Allen, E. Emilsson, W. Mann & B. Morison, (ed.) OSAP XL (2011), Essays in Memory of Michael Frede, 213-36.
- 'Augustine as a reader of Cicero', in R. Taylor et al. (ed.), Tolle Lege. Essays on Augustine and on Medieval Philosophy in Honor of Roland J. Teske SJ, (Marquette, 2012) 81-112.
- 'Antiochus’ epistemology', in D. Sedley (ed.), The Philosophy of Antiochus (Cambridge, 2012), 104-30.
- 'Intellectual self-knowledge in Augustine', in E. Bermon & G. O’Daly (ed.), Le De Trinitate de saint Augustin : exégèse, logique et noétique. Actes du colloque international de Bordeaux, 16-19 juin 2010. (Bordeaux, 2012.3), 321-39.
- 'The compulsions of Stoic assent', in M. Lee & M. Schiefsky (ed.), From Refutation to Assent: Strategies of Argument in Greek Philosophy (Oxford, 2014). 332-355.
- ‘Cicero’s Sceptical Method: the example of the De finibus’, in G. Betegh & J. Annas (edd.), Cicero’s De Finibus: Philosophical Approaches (Cambridge, 2016) 12-39.
- ‘Alexander on the first oikeion’, in T. Engberg-Pedersen (ed.), From Stoicism to Platonism (Cambridge, 2017) 322-47.
- ‘Deinos (wicked good) at interpretation (Protagoras 334-48)’, in V. Harte and R. Woolf (eds), Rereading Ancient Philosophy: Old Chestnuts and Sacred Cows (Cambridge, 2018) 32-59.
- ‘Ciceronian dialogue’, with Peter Osorio, for J. Atkins & T. Benatouil (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Cicero’s Philosophy (2021) 25-42.
Academic articles
- 'The New Academy’s Appeals to the Presocratics', with John Palmer, Phronesis XLVI.1 2001, 38-72.
- 'Non-rational perception in the Stoics and Augustine.' Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy XXII, Summer 2002, 253-308
- 'Attention Deficit in Plotinus and Augustine: Psychological Problems in Christian and Platonist Theories of the Grades of Virtue.' Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, XVIII (2003) 223-63.
- 'Self-knowledge in Cicero and Augustine' (De Trinitate X, 5, 7 – 10, 16), in G. Catapano & B. Cillerai (ed.), Augustine of Hippo’s De Trinitate and its Fortune in Medieval Philosophy, Medioevo XXXVII (2012) 107-36
- 'A Stoic ethics for attention (Seneca, Letter 56)’, Rhizomata 9.2 (2021) 224-46.
Reviews
- The Sceptics, by R. Hankinson, Philosophical Review 106 1997 635-83
- Sextus Empiricus: Against the Ethicists, by R. Bett, Ancient Philosophy 19 1999 178-83.
- Paradosis and Survival, by D. Clay, Phoenix LIII.3-4 1999 379-81.
- Stoic Studies, by A. Long, & Essays in Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics, by G. Striker, Philosophical Review 109 2000 434-8.
- Lucrèce & les sciences de la vie, by P. Schrijvers, Classical Review, 51.2 2001 247-9.
- Rationality, Rules and Rights, a discussion article on Topics in Stoic Philosophy, edited by K. Ierodiakonou, Apeiron 34.3 2001 247-67.
- Sextus Empiricus and Pyrrhonean Scepticism, by Alan Bailey, Classical Review 53 2003 326-8.
- The Roman Stoics, by G. Reydams-Schils, Notre Dame Philosophical Books 2006; online journal.
- The Irrational Augustine, by C. Conybeare, Rhizai IV.1 (2007) 19-46.

Alan van den Arend

ALI Postdoctoral Associate

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Education

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Cat Lambert

Assistant Professor

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Jeffrey S Rusten

Professor Emeritus

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Verity Platt

Professor, on leave 2023-2024

Publications

Education

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Links

Keywords

Hayden Pelliccia

Professor

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Alan Jeffrey Nussbaum

Professor

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Athena Kirk

Associate Professor

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Mike Fontaine

Professor

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Latest Articles

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Charles Brittain

Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy and Humane Letters

Publications

Departments and programs

Keywords

Tad Brennan

Professor

Publications

Departments and programs

Keywords