Paula Gaither

Paula Gaither is PhD candidate in the Classics department and Stanford Archaeology Center. She specializes in Roman archaeology with a PhD minor in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. Her research examines representations of Aethiopians in ancient Roman art. Through an analysis of museum displays and collection histories, she traces the racialization of black peoples in both the ancient Roman empire and modern Western societies. In addition to her art historical work, Paula has excavated as a trench supervisor at the Tharros Archaeological Research Project at Tharros, Sardinia. Paula received her BA in Classics from Columbia University and her MPhil in Classical Archaeology from the University of Oxford as a Euretta J. Kellett Fellow. Before beginning her PhD, she was the Graduate Intern in the Antiquities department at the Getty Villa. Originally from Los Angeles, Paula spends significant time between California and the UK. In her free time, she enjoys spending time in nature, looking at the stars, and dancing.

Project Description

This project digitizes a variety of catalogues and some material from the Menil Archive in order to build a repository of listings of all the examples of Black Africans, also called Aethiopians, in ancient art collections. We will be focusing specifically on examples from the ancient Roman period. How have modern racial cateogories been applied to the study of ancient artifacts? What does black skin mean in an ancient Mediterranean context? Working on this project will familiarize you with museum catalog practices, ancient roman iconography, and archival processing skills. At the end, we will have created the first digital catalogue of this material for other scholars and students of Roman art to use and combat perceptions of the whiteness of the ancient Roman world.