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University of Florida professor to deliver Monmouth College's annual Fox Classics Lecture Feb. 26

by Barry McNamara

Monmouth, Ill. (02/20/2024) — The last week of February provides a bridge from Black History Month to Women's History Month, and a talk that week at Monmouth College will offer insights into both areas.

Mary Ann Eaverly, a professor of classics at the University of Florida, will deliver the College's 39th annual Fox Classics Lecture at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 26 in Dahl Chapel and Auditorium. Titled "Shades of Meaning: Skin Color in Ancient Greek and Egyptian Art," her talk is free and open to the public.

Eaverly will share some of her study into "codes" of coloration of skin on Greek and Egyptian art. In both peoples' approaches at certain points in history, men's skin is typically, but not exclusively, dark (black or brown), and women's light (white or yellow). This commonplace ancient method of gender differentiation proves to be both complex and flexible, though, encompassing the differing worldviews of Pharaonic Egypt and Archaic Greece and revealing underlying societal ideals about the roles and status of men and women.

"Her talk should have broad appeal," said Monmouth classics professor Bob Simmons.

Eaverly's most recent book, on which her talk is based, is Tan Men, Pale Women: Color and Gender in Archaic Greece and Egypt.

At Florida, where she is also an affiliate faculty member of the art history department, Eaverly has won several university-wide teaching awards.

While she was working on her doctorate at the University of Michigan, Eaverly was the Vanderpool Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. In 2021, she was named a Luminary by Eos, the scholarly society for Africana Receptions of Ancient Greece and Rome, for her work in that area.

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