Milette Gaifman

B.A., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1997
Ph.D., Princeton University, 2005

Milette Gaifman is a scholar of ancient art and archaeology, with a focus on Greek art architecture of the Archaic and Classical periods. She is jointly appointed in the departments of Classics and History of Art. Her research interests include the interaction between visual culture and religion, the variety of forms in the arts of antiquity (from the naturalistic to the non-figural), the interactive traits of various artistic media, and the reception of Greek art in later periods. In addition, her scholarship explores the historiography of the academic disciplines of art history and archaeology. Her current book project is the revised and expanded version of the Louise Smith Bross Lectures that she delivered at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago in 2018. The volume

titled A Landmark Through Time: On Classifying Greek Art and Architecture (forthcoming with Chicago University Press) examines how classifications and taxonomies shape our understanding of Greek art and architecture in the modern era. Professor Gaifman is also the author of Aniconism in Greek Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2012), and The Art of Libation in Classical Athens (Yale University Press, 2018), as well as co-editor of Exploring Aniconism, thematic issue of Religion 47, (2017), The Embodied Object in Classical Antiquity, special issue of Art History (June 2018), and Relief in Greek, Roman, and Late Antique Art, Yale Classical Studies 40, (2025).

She was the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the The Art Bulletin, the flagship journal of art history globally, from July 2019 to July 2022.

Her honors and awards include the Jane Faggen Dissertation Prize from Princeton University’s Department of Art and Archaeology (2007), the Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publication from Yale College (2009), and the Gaddis Smith International Book Prize from the MacMillan Center at Yale (2013). She was a visiting scholar at Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 2008-2009, an invited professor at the University of Paris Diderot - Paris 7 in 2015 and held the 2023 Geddes-Harrower Chair of Greek Art and Archaeology, a visiting professorship at the University of Aberdeen.

She currently serves as Chair of the Department of History of Art. Previously, she served as Director of Undergraduate Studies (2009-2011) and as Director of Graduate Studies (2013-2015) at History of Art.

Professor Gaifman advises graduate students interested in exploring any aspect of art, architecture, and material culture in Greek antiquity; Greek and Greco-Roman religious art; intercultural exchanges in the ancient world; the reception of ancient art in post-antique periods; art and religion; and the historiography of the fields of Greek art and archaeology and the history of art.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

BOOKS AND EDITED VOLUMES:

Relief in Greek, Roman, and Late Antique Art, Yale Classical Studies 40, co-edited with Nathioniel B. Jones and Jas’ Elsner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025).

The Art of Libation in Classical Athens, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018).

The Embodied Object in Classical Antiquity special issue of Art History, co-edited with Verity Platt and Michael Squire (June 2018).

Exploring Aniconism, thematic issue of Religion 47, co-edited with Mikael Aktor (2017).

Aniconism in Greek Antiquity, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS:

“Introduction” (with Nathaniel B. Jones and Jas’ Elsner) in: Relief in Greek, Roman, and Late Antique Art, Yale Classical Studies 40, Nathaniel B. Jones, Milette Gaifman, and Jas’ Elsner eds., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1-27.

“Aniconism” in: The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. Oxford University Press, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.913

“What Do attributes Say About Apollo?” in: What’s in a Divine Name?  Religious Systems and Human Agency in the ancient Mediterranean. Alaya Palamidis and Corinne Bonnet eds., (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024), 249-269.

“The Flattened Greek Vase” in: Drawing the Greek Vase, eds. Caspar Mayer and Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), 112-139.

“The Incense Burner in Greek Art of the Fifth Century BCE” in: Holy Smoke: Censers Across Cultures, Beate Fricke ed., (Munich: Hirmer, 2023), 109-127.

“Libations of Victory” in: Mitos, Deuses e Heróis As coleções de Vasos Gregos em Portugal Myths, Gods and Heroes The collections of Greek Vases in Portugal, Luis Morais ed. (Santa Maria da Feira: Muse Convento dos Lóios, 2022), Vol 2 175-178.
“Animals in Ancient Greek Dedications” in: Animals in Ancient Greek Religion, Julia Kindt ed., (London: Routledge, 2020), 217-238.

“The Greek Libation Bowl as Embodied Object”, in: The Embodied Object in Classical Antiquity special issue of Art History, Milette Gaifman, Verity Platt, and Michael Squire eds., (June 2018), 444-465.

 “Introduction: The Embodied Object” (with Verity Platt), in: The Embodied Object in Classical Antiquity, special issue of Art History, Milette Gaifman, Verity Platt, and Michael Squire eds., (June 2018), 402-419.

“Aniconism: Definitions, Examples and Comparative Perspectives”, in: Exploring Aniconism, thematic issue of Religion 47, Mikael Aktor and Milette Gaifman eds., (2017), 335–352.

“Framing Divine Bodies in Greek Art”, in: Framing the Visual in Greek and Roman Art, Verity Platt and Michael Squire eds., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 392-424.

“Theologies of Statues”, in: Theologies of Ancient Greek Religion, Esther Eidinow, Julia Kindt, Robin Osborne eds., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 249-280.

“Visual Evidence”, in: Oxford Handbook on Greek Religion (OHAGR), Esther Eidinow and Julia Kindt eds., (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2015), 51-66.

“Timelessness, Fluidity, and Apollo’s Libation”, RES Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics 63/64,  Special Issue, Christopher Wood ed. (2013), 39-52.

“Pausanias and Modern Perceptions of Primordial Greeks”, Classical Receptions Journal 2 (2010), 254-86.

“Aniconism and the Idea of the Primitive in Greek Antiquity”, in: Divine Images and Human Imagination in Greece and Rome, Joannis Mylonopoulos ed., (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 63-86.

“The Libation of Oinomaos”, in: Antike Mythen, Medien, Transformationen, Konstruktionen, Ueli Dill and Christine Walde eds., (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 576-598.

“Visualized Rituals and Dedicatory Inscriptions on Votive Offerings to the Nymphs”, Opuscula: Annual of the Swedish Institute at Athens and Rome 1 (2008), 85-103.

“The Aniconic Image of the Roman Near East”, in: The Variety of Local Religious Life in the Near East in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods, Ted Kaizer ed., (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 37-72.

“Statue, Cult and Reproduction” Art History 29:2 Special Issue, Jas’ Elsner and Jen Trimble eds., (April 2006), 258-279.