Secret History

Annetta Alexandridis is an associate professor in the Department of History of Art & Visual Studies at Cornell University and a member of the Executive Committee of the Cornell Institute of European Studies. Her research and publications focus on representations of the body — both human and animal — in ancient Greece and Rome; the iconography of Greek myth; Roman female portraiture; Roman funerary culture; the modern reception and historiography of ancient art; and the media of archeology, especially photographs and plaster casts. Professor Alexandridis is also a member of the Harvard-Cornell Archeological Exploration of Sardis in Turkey. Before joining Cornell, she taught at Rostock University and worked at the Antikensammlung Berlin. Professor Alexandridis has held fellowships at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., and Cornell’s Society for the Humanities. She holds a Master’s degree and Ph.D. in Classical Archeology from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität at Munich.

Verity Platt is a Professor of Classics and chair of the Department of Classics at Cornell University. She specializes in the history of Greek and Roman art, the relationship between art and literature in antiquity, and receptions of classical art by contemporary artists. Dr. Platt previously taught at the University of Chicago following a postdoctoral research fellowship at University College, Oxford. She has held fellowships at the Institute of Advanced Study (Princeton), the Franke Institute for the Humanities (University of Chicago), and Cornell’s Society for the Humanities and Atkinson Center for Sustainability. Dr. Platt’s publications include “Facing the Gods: Epiphany and Representation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature and Religion” (2011) and “The Frame in Classical Art: A Cultural History” (2017). A co-curator of the Cornell Plaster Cast Collection, Dr. Platt holds a Ph.D. in Classics from Oxford University and a Master’s degree from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London.