On Snails, Fountains, and the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

Betsey Robinson, ALM '95, Assistant Professor
of History of Art and Architecture and the Classics

by Sue Weaver Schopf, Director of the Master of Liberal Arts Program

Betsey Robinson

If one looked at Betsey Robinson's resume, one would guess from its lengthy and impressive list of awards, grants, fellowships, professional papers, and publications that the scholar in question must be at least in mid-career, having already spent many years teaching, researching, and publishing: Williams Fellow in Ancient Art, Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Fellow, School of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Fellow, Junior Fellow in Landscape Architecture at Dumbarton Oaks, Samuel H. Kress Fellow in the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Oscar Broneer Fellow in Classical Studies at the American Academy in Rome--to name a few. To learn, then, that Betsey Robinson is in her mid-30s and has only just completed her first year of an assistant professorship in two Harvard departments--History of Art and Architecture and the Classics--casts her achievements in another light altogether. Add to this knowledge the fact that, less than ten years ago, she was a candidate in the Extension School's Master of Liberal Arts (ALM) Program and we have the outline of an educational journey and career evolution that would be an inspiration to anyone.

Born and reared in Falmouth, Massachusetts, where one of her first summer jobs was sailing instructor, Robinson seems to have a natural affinity with water, watery environments, and all things aquatic. She was admitted as an undergraduate to Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges in 1985, where she began as a biology-anthropology concentrator. However, a two-year opportunity to work at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) on a series of deep-sea exploration projects with Bob Ballard (the discoverer of the remains of the Titanic) gradually changed the direction of her interests to archaeology. Among the ventures on which she served as research assistant and archaeological consultant were the 1989 Jason* project, as well as two Mediterranean research cruises in which remotely operated robots were used to locate, map, and recover artifacts from a fourth-century AD Roman shipwreck off the coast of Sicily. "Needless to say, it was all exciting and probably how I caught the bug, even if the average day at sea included 8 hours of watching mud on television screens between ‘discoveries,'" Robinson said. "The project did get me to Rome, however, and that was pretty important, as it began my long love affair with that city."

After spending a summer studying these ancient shipping routes, Robinson returned to Harvard and changed her concentration. Finding, however, that the anthropology department had no offerings in Mediterranean archaeology, she cross-registered into a number of classes in classical archaeology and ancient art history, mainly with David Gordon Mitten, Loeb Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology, who became her most important mentor, and also with visiting historians of Roman art and architecture such as Bettina Bergmann and William MacDonald. "Mitten really helped my interest grow--listening to the directions I wanted to take and helping me follow them in literature, through independent studies and tutorials." Her Harvard AB degree was awarded in March 1990.

In the fall of 1990, she took her first Extension School course, History of Rome. Soon she was hooked and began pursuing the ALM in fine arts, choosing her courses to enrich her growing interest in classical art and archaeology and its influence upon later artists and cultures--from the Italian Renaissance to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Boston. In the spring of 1993, she enrolled in a humanities proseminar taught by Sue Weaver Schopf, Lecturer in Extension. "In a class with many talented students, Betsey Robinson was clearly the star. Her final paper on Piranesi was brilliant and became the germ of her Crite Prize-winning ALM thesis, ‘Giovanni Battista Piranesi's Descrizione e disegno dell'emissario del Lago Albano: Authenticity and Illusion in Architectural Illustration,'" said Schopf. Professor Mitten, who directed the thesis, praised its detailed investigation of Roman republican aquatic engineering and Piranesi's imaginative approach to archaeological representation, stating that Robinson "has produced a major contribution to our knowledge of Piranesi's work as an archaeological scholar as well as an artist," and urged her to publish it. The thesis anticipated what would become Robinson's major research interest: ancient fountains and waterworks and the ways in which they reveal a society's historical and cultural values.

At the same time Robinson was taking her first courses at the Extension School, another life-changing opportunity came her way: she became the research assistant to Professor Stephen J. Gould. "I was an anthro major and hung out a lot with the geologists (as an active Geology Club participant). When I finished the AB, I worked at the Museum of Science for a few months; but when Gould's previous research assistant left to go back to grad school, one of the curators in invertebrate paleontology thought I should apply. A bit of being in the right place at the right time," explains Robinson. "I had two main functions and some accessory roles. First, I worked on various gastropod morphometrics projects. The first was a study of sinistral snails (contrary little critters that spiral left instead of right). The last was a study of irregularly coiling, wormlike (literally, vermetid) snails of the genus Petaloconchus. I'd x-ray the snails, take a bunch of measurements on a digitizing tablet, collate data, and run statistics. A paper and a poster session resulted from this work. Second, I did bibliographic research on whatever Gould was interested in. Much of this work went toward his monthly ‘This View of Life' essay in Natural History Magazine. Most important from this experience for me personally was being in a collegial, almost family-style, work-group with weekly lunches together, much talk, intellectual and not, and with everyone involved in things they loved. It was this environment that really made me want to go back to school. Of course, Steve was also simply inspiring, and in working with him, doing research, and later on doing some editing for him, I learned a lot about writing and came to really like it for the first time."

Her ALM degree was awarded in 1995, but by 1994 she had begun matriculating in the PhD program in art history at the University of Pennsylvania. The next few years provided Robinson with wonderfully rich field experience and a variety of research grants that funded her efforts. "Penn was great. Good teachers and good support, including a three-year Liebmann fellowship funded on the fortune from Reingold beer. (My other years of grad school were sponsored by paint, castor oil, and Five & Dime fortunes.) I was resident at Penn for two years, then excavated and traveled for six months, in the course of which my dissertation topic emerged." Robinson's field work took her to Sicily and Campania, Epirus, Crete, Athens, Corinth, Rhodes, Caesarea Maritima (Israel), Rome, Jordan, Syria, and Cyprus. "Best times overall," she remembers, "perhaps were in the field, either in exotic frontier towns (swimming in the salty springs of the Palmyra oasis, sleeping in the ancient theater-turned-fortress at Bosra, or galloping on horseback through a wadi in Petra--the closest I ever came to an Indiana Jones experience) or in Corinth enjoying the familiar comfort of work and friends, looking at my buildings, mainly fountains, ‘phasing' walls, doing stylistic analysis, and thinking about how they functioned (what they did and how they were used) in antiquity."

Robinson's doctoral dissertation, directed by Professor Lothar Haselberger, was titled "Fountains and the Culture of Water at Roman Corinth." The study considers the history of Corinthian fountains and water imagery from the Roman refoundation of Corinth in 44 BC to the Gothic sack of 395 AD, examining the archaeological evidence for standing fountains and a diverse corpus of fountain art. She explains, "The central archaeological zone of ancient Corinth offers a unique chance to monitor evolving practices and tastes within a prominent class of monuments, and to reflect on their meaning for this Roman colony and provincial capital. Fountains were among the most evocative symbols of Roman Corinth. The fountains of Peirene and Glauke were complemented visually and symbolically by a plethora of other water displays, ranging from modest basins and water-spouting nymphs to an impressive fountain of Neptune-Poseidon, the jewel-like South Stoa fountain, and a grand nymphaeum built in the shadow of Temple Hill. A Skylla group found on local coins and a fountain of Pegasos and Bellerophon, noted by Pausanias, stand out as monuments that perpetuated and further extended Corinthian claims over land and water. Together these works reveal how Roman Corinth transformed itself from a provincial parvenu to a potent exemplar for the rest of the Roman hegemony."

She completed the doctorate in 2001 and began the search for a teaching position, one of which became available at Harvard. She found herself on the short list of interviewees and thought it remarkable to be considered as a colleague by professors under whom she had previously been a student. In July 2002, Robinson was hired as Assistant Professor of the Classics and of the History of Art and Architecture, performing double duty in two departments. Like that of all new assistant professors, her first year was an enormous challenge. In addition to developing four brand new courses--Greek Architecture and Urbanism, Hellenistic Art and Architecture, In the Footsteps of Pausanias (in which all 10 of his books were read and analyzed), and The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World--Robinson attended two sets of departmental meetings and assisted with new faculty searches in both departments as well. (No wonder she hasn't agreed to teach an Extension School course for us yet!)

Robinson spent this past summer in Delos and Samothrace, covering some of the great sanctuary sites she hadn't yet seen. She also completed more work in Corinth, consulting archival records and checking old measurements and conclusions for accuracy, as well as continuing work on a book she has underway.

She has also taken on one more new assignment: In September 2003, at the invitation of Dean Michael Shinagel, she agreed to serve as member of the Administrative Board of the Harvard Extension School. Dean Shinagel is delighted to have an ALM graduate and faculty colleague on the Board.

Robinson's challenging workload has been offset for her, she says, by some very great advantages: "I'm delighted to be back here in Cambridge with old friends, close to native Cape Cod, and thrilled to have fascinating colleagues, brilliant students, and the freedom to develop lots of new classes. It's also wonderful to be here working with David Mitten, my former advisor and mentor, as a colleague. I'm looking forward to helping build the undergraduate and graduate classical archaeology and art history programs at the College and, eventually, to teaching Extension School classes, too."

* The Jason/Medea is a remotely operated vehicle capable of diving to depths of 21,325 feet.