My undergraduate teaching ranges from surveys of ancient Western art to more specialized courses on ancient architecture, painting and sculpture.  I also regularly lead the department's Art History Seminar in Rome.  I am particularly interested in the ways in which public art and architecture in ancient cities helped groups and individuals express their membership in various types of communities.  To understand the factors that shaped what ancient public monuments looked like, where they were erected and what their inscriptions said, I am currently examining the public commissions made by groups of ex-slaves (Augustales) in the towns of the western Roman Empire from ca. 27 BCE to 250 CE.

I also study the visual representation of Roman rituals, particularly those of the imperial cult, and have begun a project investigating the development and promotion of archaeological tourism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Expertise: Roman art and archaeology; ancient art

Specialization
Inscribed municipal monuments in their urban contexts
Roman urbanism during the Imperial period
Ostia
Art and architecture of the imperial cult

Current Research Interests
The public and funerary monuments of collegia and the Augustales
Emperor worship among the firemen in Rome and Ostia

Selected Publications
“Foundation Monuments, Commemoration, and Municipal Identity in Imperial Italy,” in The Art of Citizens, Soldiers, and Freedmen in the Roman World. An Illustrated Anthology, edited by E. D’Ambra and G. P. R. Métraux. London: Archeopress, forthcoming, 2005.

Walls and Memory: The Abbey of S. Sebastiano at Alatri (Lazio), from Late Roman Monastery to Renaissance Villa and Beyond, co-edited with E. Fentress, C. Goodson and S. Leone. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, forthcoming, Autumn 2005.

“Reconsidering the So-Called Sede degli Augustali at Ostia,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 45 (2000) 41-84.