In Season 2, Episode 3 of the Peopling the Past podcast, we sit down with Dr. Blair Fowlkes Childs, who holds a Ph.D. in classical art and archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. Dr. Fowlkes Childs was a research associate in the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for seven years, and recently completed a fellowship at Yale’s University Institute of Sacred Music. She has also excavated in Italy, Syria, and Cyprus.
Listen in, as Dr. Fowlkes Childs takes us through her exciting research on funerary art from Palmyra in Syria, highlighting some of the important elements of Palmyrene art that emerge from the thousands of portraits stemming from this site.
Interested in learning more? Check out this museum exhibit co-curated by Dr. Fowlkes Childs:
Exhibition website for The World between Empires: Art and Identity in the Ancient Middle East
Season Three Trailer! – Peopling the Past
- Season Three Trailer!
- Breaking the Bond: Forced Marriage and Cursed Freedom in Ancient Rome with Katharine Huemoeller
- Seize the Clay: Pottery Workshops in Sagalassos with Elizabeth Murphy
- There's Something about Mary: Early Cult and Veneration of the Virgin with Sabrina Higgins
- Rolling in the Dough: Bread-Making and Roman Bakeries with Jared Benton
Looking for a transcript of this episode? Click here.
Photo courtesy of the Penn Museum, object no. B8902.
Additional Resources Related to this Episode
Blair Fowlkes Childs. Forthcoming 2021. “Protecting Libya’s Archaeological and Cultural Heritage a Decade after the Arab Spring.” in Libya in 2021: What Went Wrong, What Comes Next. Perim Perspectives on Middle East Policy, eds. Ethan Chorin and Aya Burweila. Pendle Press.
Blair Fowlkes Childs. 2016. “Palmyrenes in Transtiberim: Integration in Rome and Links to the Eastern Frontier,” in Rome and the Worlds beyond Roman Frontiers: Proceedings of the 11th Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire, Impact of Empire 21, eds. Danielle Slootjes and Michael Peachin, pp. 193-211. Leiden and Boston, E.J. Brill
Blair Fowlkes Childs and Michael Seymour. 2019. The World between Empires: Art and Identity in the Ancient Middle East. Exh. cat. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press.
Palmyra Portrait Project (with additional bibliography)
Peopling the Past 