About this item
Built in the fifth century b.c., the Parthenon has been venerated for more than two millennia as the West's ultimate paragon of beauty and proportion. Since the Enlightenment, it has also come to represent our political ideals, the lavish temple to the goddess Athena serving as the model for our most hallowed civic architecture. But how much do the values of those who built the Parthenon truly correspond with our own? And apart from the significance with which we have invested it, what exactly did this marvel of human hands mean to those who made it?In this revolutionary book, Joan Breton Connelly challenges our most basic assumptions about the Parthenon and the ancient Athenians. Beginning with the natural environment and its rich mythic associations, she re-creates the development of the Acropolis - the Sacred Rock at the heart of the city-state - from its prehistoric origins to its Periklean glory days as a constellation of temples among which the Parthenon stood supreme.
About the Author
Joan Breton Connelly is a classical archaeologist and Professor of Classics and Art History at New York University. In 1996, she was awarded a MacArthur fellowship for her work in Greek art, myth, and religion. A field archaeologist, Connelly has excavated throughout Greece, Kuwait, and Cyprus where, since 1990, she has directed the NYU Yeronisos Island Expedition. She is an honorary citizen of Peyia Municipality, Cyprus.
The Parthenon Enigma: A New Understanding of the West's Most Iconic Building and the People Who Made It won the Phi Beta Kappa Society's Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for 2015. It was named among the Notable Books of 2014 by the New York Times Book Review, one of the Top Ten Nonfiction Books of the Year by the Daily Beast, and one of the year's Best Books in Architecture and Design by Metropolis Magazine.
Connelly's Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece, was also named a Notable Book of the Year (2007) by the New York Times Book Review. It won the Archaeological Institute of America's James R. Wiseman Book Award and was named best scholarly/professional book in Classics and Ancient History by the Association of American Publishers.
Prof. Connelly has held visiting fellowships at All Souls College, Magdalen College, New College, and Corpus Christi College at Oxford University, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She has received the Archaeological Institute of America's Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award, NYU's Lillian Vernon Chair for Teaching Excellence, and NYU's Golden Dozen Teaching Award. From 2003 - 2011, she served on the Cultural Property Advisory Committee, U.S. Department of State.
Joan Connelly majored in Classics at Princeton University and received her PhD in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College, where she later served as Assistant Dean and as a member of the Board of Trustees.
