Joan Breton Connelly facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Joan Breton Connelly
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Connelly in 2007
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| Alma mater | |
| Title | Professor of Classics |
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| Institutions | New York University |
Joan Breton Connelly is an American classical archaeologist and a professor at New York University. She teaches about ancient Greece and Rome, and also about art history. She leads exciting archaeological digs on Yeronisos Island in Cyprus. In 1996, Joan Connelly won a special award called the MacArthur Fellowship, which is given to very talented people. She also won an award for excellent teaching in 2007. She is even an Honorary Citizen of Peyia, a town in Cyprus!
Contents
Exploring Ancient Worlds: Joan Connelly's Discoveries
Joan Connelly loves to study ancient Greek art, myths, and religions. She is famous for her new ideas about the Parthenon, a very old and important building in Greece.
Unlocking the Parthenon's Secrets
In her book, The Parthenon Enigma, Joan Connelly shared her new ideas about the Parthenon's amazing sculptures. She looked at how these sculptures fit into the history, myths, and religious beliefs of ancient Greece. Her book was named a top book by The New York Times Book Review and The Daily Beast. It also won the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award in 2015 for its important contribution to understanding history.
Women's Roles in Ancient Greece
Joan Connelly is also a cultural historian. This means she studies how people lived in the past. She has explored many topics, like the roles of women, ancient rituals, and how people used their land. In her book, Portrait of a Priestess, she challenged old ideas that women were "invisible" in ancient Greece. She found lots of archaeological evidence showing that women were important leaders in religious life. This book was named one of the 100 Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review in 2007. It also won the James R. Wiseman Book Award in 2009.
Digging Up History: Field Archaeology
As a field archaeologist, Joan Connelly has worked at many ancient sites. She has dug in places like Corinth, Athens, and Nemea in Greece. She also worked in Paphos, Kourion, and Ancient Marion in Cyprus. She even worked on Failaka Island near Kuwait.
Since 1990, she has led the New York University excavations on Yeronisos Island, off the coast of western Cyprus. Here, she is a pioneer in "eco-archaeology." This means she studies ancient sites while also protecting the natural environment. She does surveys of plants and animals, counts birds, and makes sure her digs don't harm nature. Her work on Yeronisos Island helps us understand how different cultures exchanged ideas in the eastern Mediterranean after Alexander the Great died.
Joan Connelly's Journey: Education and Career
Joan Connelly studied Classics at Princeton University. She earned her master's and PhD degrees in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College. She later worked at Bryn Mawr College as an Assistant Dean and a lecturer.
She has been a visiting scholar at famous universities like Oxford University and Harvard University. She also held fellowships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. From 2003 to 2011, Joan Connelly served on a committee for the U.S. Department of State that advised on cultural property. She also taught a popular course at NYU about protecting ancient art and cultural heritage.
Remembering 9/11: A Memorial Proposal
In 2003, Joan Connelly worked with architect Demetri Porphyrios. They submitted a design proposal for the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition. This competition was to create a memorial for the people lost on September 11, 2001.
Joan Connelly in the Media
Joan Connelly has shared her knowledge on TV and radio. She was interviewed about the Parthenon on the PBS NewsHour. She also talked about Greek Priestesses on BBC Radio 4.
She even appeared on shows like Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed (on The History Channel). In this show, she talked about how ancient stories influenced the Star Wars saga. In 2008, she was on Indiana Jones: The Ultimate Quest. Here, she discussed new ways of doing archaeology and the problem of illegal trading of ancient artifacts. In 2012, her excavations on Yeronisos Island were shown on ABC's Born to Explore with Richard Wiese. She has also written for newspapers like The Wall Street Journal and the New York Daily News.
In 2015, the famous physicist Freeman Dyson told The New York Times that Joan Breton Connelly was one of three writers he would invite to a dinner party. He also said her book, Parthenon Enigma, was on his nightstand.
