Michael Anthony Fowler
Michael Anthony Fowler, Ph.D, is Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Art and Design at East Tennessee State University (ETSU); he also serves as affiliate faculty in the Classical and Medieval Studies, Religious Studies, and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies programs. An art historian and classical archaeologist, Prof. Fowler specializes in the art and material culture of ancient Greece and the Near East. His dissertation, “Human Sacrifice in Greek Antiquity: Between Myth, Image, and Reality” (2019), offers an archaeologically and art historically grounded inquiry into the historicity, forms, and meanings of human sacrifice. The project combined several of Prof. Fowler’s research interests, particularly the iconography and archaeology of ritual, gender, and violence in the artistic imagination.
Prof. Fowler previously served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History (2018-2019) at ETSU. He has also taught as Visiting Lecturer at the University of Tübingen’s Institute for Classical Archaeology (2014) and as Art Humanities Instructor at Columbia (2013-2014; 2016-2017), where he earned the Preceptor Award for Excellence in Teaching for the Core Curriculum in 2014.
Since 2015, he has been an active member of the team excavating the sanctuary of Poseidon at Onchestos (Boeotia, Greece), and for the past six years has served on the excavation’s senior staff as Supervisor of Site B (the administrative center). In summer 2018 he joined the excavation and scientific team working at the sanctuary of Apollo on the Cycladic islet of Despotiko. Since 2011 Prof. Fowler has also served as co-author of the Chronique Archéologique de la Religion Grecque (Kernos), on which he is responsible for Central Greece. In addition to developing his dissertation into a book, Prof. Fowler is currently co-editing an international volume on the archaeology of ritual in the ancient Mediterranean and completing studies on the theme of man-eating in Greek art, on the aesthetics of apotropaism, and on visualizations of violence against the elderly in the Greek art.
Prof. Fowler was educated at Columbia University (Ph.D., M.Phil., M.A.), Tufts University (M.A.), Harvard University (M.T.S.), and The Colorado College (B.A.). His research has been generously supported by the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation Foreigners' Fellowship, the Teach@Tübingen program, an Alliance Doctoral Mobility grant, the Riggio Fellowships in Art History, and a C.V. Starr writing grant.
In recognition of “superior all-around performance” in teaching, research, and service over his first four years at ETSU, in 2023 Prof. Fowler was named the recipient of the College of Arts and Sciences’ Distinguished New Faculty Award.
Address: Department of Art and Design, East Tennessee State University, 309 Ball Hall, PO Box 70708, Johnson City, Tennessee 37614
Prof. Fowler previously served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History (2018-2019) at ETSU. He has also taught as Visiting Lecturer at the University of Tübingen’s Institute for Classical Archaeology (2014) and as Art Humanities Instructor at Columbia (2013-2014; 2016-2017), where he earned the Preceptor Award for Excellence in Teaching for the Core Curriculum in 2014.
Since 2015, he has been an active member of the team excavating the sanctuary of Poseidon at Onchestos (Boeotia, Greece), and for the past six years has served on the excavation’s senior staff as Supervisor of Site B (the administrative center). In summer 2018 he joined the excavation and scientific team working at the sanctuary of Apollo on the Cycladic islet of Despotiko. Since 2011 Prof. Fowler has also served as co-author of the Chronique Archéologique de la Religion Grecque (Kernos), on which he is responsible for Central Greece. In addition to developing his dissertation into a book, Prof. Fowler is currently co-editing an international volume on the archaeology of ritual in the ancient Mediterranean and completing studies on the theme of man-eating in Greek art, on the aesthetics of apotropaism, and on visualizations of violence against the elderly in the Greek art.
Prof. Fowler was educated at Columbia University (Ph.D., M.Phil., M.A.), Tufts University (M.A.), Harvard University (M.T.S.), and The Colorado College (B.A.). His research has been generously supported by the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation Foreigners' Fellowship, the Teach@Tübingen program, an Alliance Doctoral Mobility grant, the Riggio Fellowships in Art History, and a C.V. Starr writing grant.
In recognition of “superior all-around performance” in teaching, research, and service over his first four years at ETSU, in 2023 Prof. Fowler was named the recipient of the College of Arts and Sciences’ Distinguished New Faculty Award.
Address: Department of Art and Design, East Tennessee State University, 309 Ball Hall, PO Box 70708, Johnson City, Tennessee 37614
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Chapters in Thematic Volumes and Proceedings by Michael Anthony Fowler
In fact, recent studies of roadside shrines in Athens and Corinth, two of the more intensively studied poleis, have underscored the importance of integrating these sacred spaces into our understanding of ancient Greek religion and religious practice – especially as concerns its personal aspect. Other regions of Greece await similar efforts. Fortunately, this work has become increasingly feasible over the last 25 years, thanks to the identification or renewed exploration of several roadside shrines and sanctuaries across Greece. Many of the new identifications have come to light, fittingly enough, during the construction of Greece’s new motorway system.
A full account of all the available evidence, even for a single region, is well beyond the scope of this article. I have therefore opted for an approach that privileges depth (site-specific analysis) over breadth of coverage. To that end, I focus herein on two recently excavated roadside shrines in Central Greece, the existence of which was first made known through the construction of two new highways across several of its regions. The two shrines—one probably dedicated to Demeter at Palaiochori/Styrfaka (Malis) and the other perhaps dedicated to the Mother of the Gods/Kybele in the Vale of Tempe (Perrhaibia)—have been selected for their similar siting along interregional passes, respectively, Malis-Phthiotis and Perrhaibia-Macedonia. After discussing their internal features, I shall situate them, insofar as is possible, within their local and regional contexts and conclude with some points of comparison. It is my hope that this discussion will encourage others to venture toward this exciting frontier of research, which promises to enrich our understanding of the commonalities and variances in cult practice from region to region and locality to locality, and of the roles that such sites played in diverse forms of travel in ancient Greece.
Journal Articles by Michael Anthony Fowler
Archaeological Bulletins by Michael Anthony Fowler
Book Reviews by Michael Anthony Fowler
Open Educational Resources (OER) by Michael Anthony Fowler
Translations by Michael Anthony Fowler
Conference Presentations by Michael Anthony Fowler
In fact, recent studies of roadside shrines in Athens and Corinth, two of the more intensively studied poleis, have underscored the importance of integrating these sacred spaces into our understanding of ancient Greek religion and religious practice – especially as concerns its personal aspect. Other regions of Greece await similar efforts. Fortunately, this work has become increasingly feasible over the last 25 years, thanks to the identification or renewed exploration of several roadside shrines and sanctuaries across Greece. Many of the new identifications have come to light, fittingly enough, during the construction of Greece’s new motorway system.
A full account of all the available evidence, even for a single region, is well beyond the scope of this article. I have therefore opted for an approach that privileges depth (site-specific analysis) over breadth of coverage. To that end, I focus herein on two recently excavated roadside shrines in Central Greece, the existence of which was first made known through the construction of two new highways across several of its regions. The two shrines—one probably dedicated to Demeter at Palaiochori/Styrfaka (Malis) and the other perhaps dedicated to the Mother of the Gods/Kybele in the Vale of Tempe (Perrhaibia)—have been selected for their similar siting along interregional passes, respectively, Malis-Phthiotis and Perrhaibia-Macedonia. After discussing their internal features, I shall situate them, insofar as is possible, within their local and regional contexts and conclude with some points of comparison. It is my hope that this discussion will encourage others to venture toward this exciting frontier of research, which promises to enrich our understanding of the commonalities and variances in cult practice from region to region and locality to locality, and of the roles that such sites played in diverse forms of travel in ancient Greece.
Interested scholars should submit for consideration an abstract of 200 words (max) via the following online portal: https://secac.secure-platform.com. The portal will remain open for submissions through Wednesday, 1 May 2024 at 11:59 p.m. EDT.
Questions regarding the above art history session may be addressed to the chair at fowlerma@etsu.edu. For general inquiries about the annual meeting, please contact Conference Director Tracy Stonestreet (SECACdirector@umw.edu).
N.B. Any scholar whose paper is accepted to the session must be (or become) an active member of SECAC through the date of the conference and pay the conference registration fee.
In keeping with the SECAC (formerly the Southeastern College Art Conference) 2023 theme "Crossroads", the session is intended to be a crossroads of scholarly exchange across cultures and geographies. As such, papers which adopt a global perspective and/or engage in cross-cultural analysis are especially encouraged. Papers may be wide-ranging, including, but not limited to: issues of reception and cultural translation in religious art and architecture; the mobility of spolia, gifts, or ephemera; the artistic or architectural dimensions of travel or pilgrimage; varying concepts of preciousness and their materialization; and the sighting and location of religious architecture. Papers which develop new cross-cultural or interdisciplinary methodologies are also welcome.
Interested scholars should submit for consideration an abstract of 200 words or less via the following online portal: https://secac.secure-platform.com/a/solicitations/12/home
Abstracts may be submitted from Monday, 13 March through Monday, 1 May 2023. Official notifications of decision will be sent via e-mail by end of May 2023. Questions regarding the session may be directed to the co-chairs Dr. Michael Anthony Fowler (fowlerma@etsu.edu) and Dr. Joseph Kopta (joseph.kopta@temple.edu).
N.B. Any scholar whose paper is accepted to the session must be (or become) an active member of SECAC through the date of the conference, pay the conference registration fee, and be able to travel to Richmond, VA, USA for in-person participation.
For more information: https://secacart.org/page/Richmond23
Interested scholars should submit for consideration an abstract of 200 words or less via the following online portal: https://secac.secure-platform.com. Abstracts may be submitted from Tuesday, 11 February through Wednesday, 1 April 2020. Official notifications of decision will be sent via e-mail by Wednesday, 27 May 2020.
Questions regarding the above session may be addressed to the chair at fowlerma@etsu.edu. For general inquiries, please contact the Conference Director, Carly Phinizy (secac2020@vcu.edu).
N.B. Any scholar whose paper is accepted to the session must be (or become) an active member of SECAC through the date of the conference and pay the conference registration fee.
But rather than offer a critical survey of the literature, the present essay will focus on the primary evidence – literary, epigraphic, visual, and archaeological – for an aspect of the goddess’ annual festival that has heretofore received only brief remarks: the equestrian torch race. To be fair, the brevity of scholarly discussions of this event is largely due to the paucity of evidence. The race is explicitly referred to only in Plato’s Republic (327-328b) and a dedication from around 300 BC, and implied in a later fourth-century votive relief. Nevertheless, still more can be gleaned from these sources than previously has been, particularly when interpreted in the general context of Athenian torch rituals and in concert with related pieces of evidence.
Following efforts by M. Shanks, T. Inomata and L.S. Coben and, most recently, J.B. Connelly to develop archaeological approaches to ritual and other highly formalized or “scripted” public performances, I would like not to lose sight of the salience of embodiment for any exploration of ritual performance; for, the body, as the medium of performance, gives sensible expression to ritual forms through movement. But the body produces more than a mere “show” by means of physical exertion: the embodied actor, along with the audience, is shaped and affected by that which he or she en-acts. To wit, ritual is (re)iterative in form and socially (re)generative in function. Therefore, the ensuing discussion of the mounted torch race will be interested in reconstructing the details of its performance, including who was involved, what was done, and where it may have transpired, in order to gain an appreciation of what made this event unique and spectacular. In keeping with the socially (re)generative effect of ritual, the essay will conclude with what the performance of the torch race may, as it were, illuminate about Classical Athenian society, particularly the complex position of the Thracians within it.
Although eighteenth-century Western Europeans were aware of the islands of the Aegean archipelago due to their geographic placement along maritime trade and pilgrimage routes, very few would ever experience them firsthand. Instead, knowledge of the islands amounted to a pastiche of second-hand information culled together from classical texts, imperfect maps, and subjective travelers’ accounts. For contemporaries of Choiseul-Gouffier the most recent work to appear in the centuries long tradition of travel writing was Pierre Augustin Guys’ masterful two-volume Voyage littéraire de la Grèce, ou lettres sur les Grecs anciens et moderns, avec un parallèle de leurs mœurs (1771). Notwithstanding its importance as ethnography avant la lettre, the first edition of Guys’ travelogue, like many others before it, was unillustrated. Hence, Guys’ readers had to conjure their own mental images of the people, places, and practices that were being described in the text. The novelty of Choiseul-Gouffier’s creation of a richly illustrated travelogue, then, was that the reader would not only be permitted to retrace the narrator’s voyage, but also to see some of what he saw and from the same point of view.
In scholarly investigations of the Voyage pittoresque, the textual rather than the visual component of the work has received the most attention. Yet, I would like to reverse this relationship for at least two reasons. First, to do so would take seriously Choiseul-Gouffier’s own assertion of the primacy of the images. Accordingly the engravings would be treated, not as mere illustrations of the travel narrative, but as a visual narrative; the texts would then be understood as providing supplementary information, since they function to contextualize and explain the images. Second, approaching the images as primary would necessitate a more sustained engagement with the image that moves beyond superficial descriptions of what it represents, and would allow us to explore the points of convergence and divergence between image and text.