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Ann Gunter

Professor; Bertha and Max Dressler Professor in the Humanities

Ann C. Gunter is a specialist in the visual and material culture of the pre-Islamic Middle East and its Eastern Mediterranean neighbors. Her primary research interests include artistic and cultural interaction between the Mediterranean and the Near East; the relationship between material culture and social and cultural identity; and the modern reception of ancient Greek and Near Eastern art. Her books include A Collector’s Journey: Charles Lang Freer and Egypt (Freer Gallery of Art, 2002) and Greek Art and the Orient (Cambridge, 2009). She has also edited several volumes, among them Investigating Artistic Environments in the Ancient Near East (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 1990); Ernst Herzfeld and the Development of Near Eastern Studies, 1900-1950, with Stefan R. Hauser (Brill, 2005); and A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Art (Wiley-Blackwell, 2019). Her recent contributions to conference volumes include Das Weltreich der Perser: Rezeption, Aneignung, Verargumentierung (Harassowitz, 2019); Beyond Egyptomania: Objects, Style, and Agency (DeGruyter, 2020); and The Connected Iron Age: Interregional Networks in the Eastern Mediterranean, 900-600 BCE (University of Chicago, 2022). Her graduate training included archaeological fieldwork in Turkey, and she has also published excavated material from several sites, including Gordion/Yassıhöyük and Labraunda.

Gunter is a member of the editorial board of the series Classica et Orientalia (Harrassowitz Verlag) and the journal State Archives of Assyria Bulletin. She is also a board member of the Melammu Project: The Heritage of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East, an international research network sponsoring workshops and symposia, and their resulting publications. 

Program Area: Ancient

Regional Specialization: Middle East and North Africa

Regional Interests: Ancient Art 1500 BCE to 500 BCE, cultural and artistic interaction between the Mediterranean and ancient Near East

Selected Publications

Ann Gunter, Greek Art and the Orient, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
 
Ann Gunter, "The Etruscans, Greek Art, and the Near East," A Companion to the Etruscans, eds. S. Bell and A. Carpino (Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2016): 339-52.
 
Ann Gunter, "Beyond 'Orientalizing': Encounters among Cultures in the Eastern Mediterranean," Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age, eds. J. Aruz, S. B. Graff, and Y. Rakic (New York and New Haven: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2014): 258-53.
 
Ann Gunter, "Orientalism and Orientalization in the Iron Age Mediterranean," Critical Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Art, eds. B. A. Brown and M. H. Feldman (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2014): 79-108.