Home | For Faculty | Help | About | Webmaster

Margaret M. Miles

Professor, Art History
School of Humanities

Professor, Classics
School of Humanities

Professor, Visual Studies
School of Humanities

Ph.D., Princeton University, Classical Archaeology

Phone: (949) 824-7333
Fax: (949) 824-2509
Email: mmmiles@uci.edu

University of California
Department of Art History
2331 Humanities Gateway
Mail Code: 2785
Irvine, CA 92697

picture of Margaret M. Miles

Research
Interests
Greek and Roman Art, Architecture and Archaeology
   
URL www.humanities.uci.edu/arthistory/faculty/mmiles.htm
   
Academic
Distinctions
Rome Prize, American Academy in Rome; Mellon Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
   
Appointments Agora Excavations, Athens; Resident, American Academy in Rome; Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Classical Studies, American School of Classical Studies at Athens
   
Research
Abstract
As an archaeologist, I am interested in how religion and ritual shaped architecture in ancient Greece and Italy. I have excavated in Athens and Corinth, and I've done field work on Greek temples in Rhamnous and Sounion in Greece, and in Selinous and Agrigento in Sicily. In my first project, I measured and drew all the remaining parts and foundations of the Temple of Nemesis at Rhamnous and reconstructed it (in drawings). Subsequently I published the American excavations of the sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone near the Agora of Athens that was ritually linked to the Eleusinian Mysteries. I am now working on a book on temples and religion in Sicily and Southern Italy, in which I show how the cosmic views of Presocratic philosophers (especially Pythagoras and Empedocles) helped to shape the design of western Greek temples. I am also very interested in the issues of cultural property, ethics of collecting and the fate of art in wartime, and I have just completed a book on the origins of the modern concept of "cultural property" in the work of Cicero.

Currently I am the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Classical Studies at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, on leave from UCI 2008-2011.
   
Publications ART AS PLUNDER: THE ANCIENT ORIGINS OF DEBATE ABOUT CULTURAL PROPERTY. Cambridge University Press, 2008.
   
  (Editor) CLEOPATRA: A SPHINX REVISITED. University of California Press (forthcoming).
   
  "Cicero's Prosecution of Gaius Verres: A Roman View of the Ethics of Acquisition of Art." INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CULTURAL PROPERTY 2, 2002: 28-49.
   
  "Interior Staircases in Western Greek Temples." MEMOIRS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY IN ROME 43/44,1998/1999: 1-26.
   
  THE ATHENIAN AGORA, RESULTS OF EXCAVATIONS CONDUCTED BY THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF CLASSICAL STUDIES, XXXI: THE CITY ELEUSINION. Princeton, 1998.
   
  "The Propylon to the Sanctuary of Demeter Malophoros at Selinous." AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 102, 1998: 35-57.
   
  "A Reconstruction of the Temple of Nemesis at Rhamnous." HESPERIA 58, 1989: 131-249.
   
  "The Date of the Temple on the Ilissos River." HESPERIA 49, 1980: 309-325.
   
Professional
Societies
Archaeological Institute of America
College Art Association
American Philological Association
Society of Architectural Historians
   
Link to this profile http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=2657
   
Last updated 09/11/2009