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Archaeology and Iconongraphy of Ancient Religions
Katie Rask is a PhD student in the History of Art Department at OSU. An affiliate of the Center, Katie has spent the last three years taking part, as well, in the Focus Program for Religions and Cultures of the Ancient Mediterranean, which is cosponsored by the Departments of Greek and Latin and History of Art. Having recently finished her candidacy exams, Katie will spend the 2008-9 school year in the Regular Program of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, in support of which she has received a School Fellowship. While there, she will begin her dissertation on the art and archaeology of Greek religion.
Katie's research centers on ritual in the Greek world and the ways that archaeology is used to reconstruct past religious practice. Her dissertation will focus on the use of iconographic representations in the scholarship on Greek religion and will trace the development of iconographic studies in the field of classics. Using several case studies, she will propose new ways of interpreting iconography in light of ritual theory. She is particularly interested in how the new 'archaeologies of religion' and 'archaeologies of ritual' can aid our understanding of the social, communicative and cultural use of religious iconography in the ancient world.
Katie has two forthcoming articles that are written in a similar vein. The first, entitled 'New Approaches to the Archaeology of Etruscan Cult Images,' will be published in a special supplement to the Journal of Roman Archaeology. This article provides an innovative view of how we might study ancient statuary as it is used in ritual. The second article, which is currently under review at another journal, is called 'The Dioskouroi and the Near East: Laying the Indo-European Model to Rest.' Here, Katie argues that studying the Dioskouroi in light of Indo-European origins is no longer tenable, and instead discusses them in the context of the Eastern Mediterranean.
Katie is the founder of the Graduate Society for the Study of Ancient Religion. The group is based on an interactive Web site that provides a space for graduate students to meet and discuss their research. It is also intended to provide useful materials for the interested public and teachers. For example, the Web site offers helpful links about religious theorists, recent reviews of books on Mediterranean religions, and Google Earth coordinates for archaeological sites of interest.
