Joan Breton Connelly

Joan Breton Connelly is an American classical archaeologist and Professor of Classics and Art History at New York University. She is Director of the Yeronisos Island Excavations and Field School in Cyprus. Connelly was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1996. She received the Archaeological Institute of America Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2007 and held the Lillian Vernon Chair for Teaching Excellence at New York University from 2002-2004. She is an Honorary Citizen of the Municipality of Peyia, Republic of Cyprus.

Connelly’s scholarship focuses on Greek art, myth, and religion, and includes a groundbreaking reinterpretation of the Parthenon and its sculptures. In The Parthenon Enigma: A New Understanding of the West's Most Iconic Building and the People who Made It, Connelly presents her reading of the Parthenon's sculptural program within its full historic, mythological, and religious contexts.The New York Times Book Review named The Parthenon Enigma a Notable Book of the Year 2014.The Daily Beast named it one of the top ten works of nonfiction for 2014 and Metropolis Magazine named it one of the year's Top Ten Books in Architecture and Design. The Phi Beta Kappa Society honored The Parthenon Enigma in 2015 with the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for its significant contribution to the humanities.

A cultural historian, Connelly has examined topics ranging from female agency, to ritual space, landscape, life cycles, identity, reception, and complexity. In her Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece, Connelly challenges long held beliefs concerning the “invisibility” of women in ancient Greece and brings together far-flung archaeological evidence for women’s leadership roles in the religious life of the city.Portrait of a Priestess was named as one of the 100 Notable Books of the Year for 2007 by the New York Times Book Review, and the Association of American Publishers named it the best book in Classics and Ancient History for 2007. In 2009, Portrait of a Priestess won the Archaeological Institute of America’s James R. Wiseman Book Award.

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