Posted by vrcvanderbilt on Monday, January 25, 2016 in HART, VRC.

Betsey Robinson, associate professor, departments of history of art and classical studies, is among fourteen outstanding faculty members from across the university recently named to the 2016 class of Chancellor Faculty Fellows.  The class comprises highly accomplished, recently tenured faculty from the humanities, social sciences, life and physical sciences, and clinical sciences, as well as business, education and engineering.

Robinson will hold the title of Chancellor Faculty Fellow for two years and will be supported by an unrestricted allocation of $40,000 a year for two fiscal years beginning July 1. The funds can be used to support innovative research, scholarship and creative expression activities that will further propel the career of the awardee. The Chancellor Faculty Fellows will also meet as a group during the course of their awards to exchange ideas on teaching and research, building a broader intellectual community that advances trans-institutional scholarship.

“This class of fellows represents the remarkable breadth and depth of talent we have in our newly tenured faculty,” said Chancellor Nicholas Zeppos. “Our investment in these faculty at this critical time in their careers not only supports their growth as scholars, educators and mentors, but also supports the university’s continued growth and success in fostering interdisciplinary research and collaboration.  These extraordinary faculty members exemplify our academic mission, and our investment in them is an investment in Vanderbilt’s future.”

Robinson (Harvard University, A.B., A.L.M.; University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D.) teaches courses in the art, architecture, and archaeology of the ancient Mediterranean world.  Her primary interests include Greek and Roman architecture and art, ancient cities and sanctuaries, and landscapes—actual, imagined and as represented in ancient art and literature.

Since 1997 she has conducted research at the Corinth Excavations of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, focusing on water supply, architecture, and works of art in context.  Her book, Histories of Peirene: A Corinthian Fountain in Three Millennia (Princeton: ASCSA 2011), won the 2011 PROSE Prize for Archaeology and Anthropology.  Her current project, “Divine Prospects:  Mounts Helicon and Parnassus in Ancient Experience and Imagination,” is a book-length manuscript on Hellenistic and Roman perceptions of, and engagement within, Greek landscapes and sanctuaries.

Ongoing research considers Roman-era mosaics in Corinth, and the history of archaeological excavation in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  Her career began with deep-sea exploration in the Mediterranean and work in paleontology and history of science; more recently, she has excavated ancient through modern contexts in Greece, Israel, and Italy.