Elizabeth Baltes
Associate Professor, Chair of the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, Coastal Carolina University
PhD, 2016 – Art History
Elizabeth Baltes received her PhD in Greek and Roman Art & Archaeology from Duke in 2016. With a background in political science, art history, archaeology, and digital humanities, Elizabeth Baltes’ research and teaching interests cross traditional disciplinary boundaries to consider the intersection of sculpture, politics, identity, and public space in the ancient Greek world. Her first book project, Dedication and Display of Portrait Statues in Hellenistic Greece: Spatial Practices and Identity Politics investigates how statue landscapes at such important sites as Delphi and Delos helped to articulate and reinforce a complex set of political and social identities and how space was utilized and manipulated on a local and regional level. Her contextual approach to ancient sculpture has been deeply influenced by recent work on contemporary American public sculpture, and it has also benefitted from a critical engagement with trends in digital art history.
Dr. Baltes’ scholarly work in digital historical reconstruction informs her approach to teaching. In her upper-level classes, students often undertake research-based digital projects––such as mapping the movement of objects, materials, or artists, or reconstructing buildings from archaeological plans––through which they learn interdisciplinary, transferrable skills.
Dr. Baltes’ scholarly work has been published in multiple venues, including the American Journal of Archaeology and Hesperia, and her research has been generously supported by grants from the Archaeological Institute of America, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the American Philosophical Society, and the Loeb Classical Library Foundation.
Related Courses
Wired! The Museum Inside Out
Related Projects
Aphrodisias
Death, burial and commemoration in Athens from antiquity to the late 19th century
Delos
Statues Speak
Related Publications and Presentations
Articles
Dillon, Sheila, and Elizabeth Palmer Baltes. “Honorific Practices and the Politics of Space on Hellenistic Delos.” American Journal of Archaeology 117 (2013): 207-46.
Book Chapters
Baltes, Elizabeth P. “Itinerant Statues? The Portrait Landscape of the Athenian Agora,” in Greek Art in Context, edited by D. Rodríguez-Pérez. Ashgate, in press.
Dissertation
Baltes, Elizabeth P. “Dedication and Display of Portrait Statues in Hellenistic Greece: Spatial Practices and Identity Politics.” PhD dissertation, 2016.
Presentations
Baltes, Elizabeth P. “In the Round: Using Digital Technologies to Recontextualize Classical Sculpture,” University of North Carolina/Duke Classics Colloquium, Chapel Hill, NC. March 20, 2010.
Baltes, Elizabeth P. “The 3-D Model, Double-Spaced with 1” Margins: Reformulating the Digital Dissertation,” Panel Presentation, Digital Scholarly Communication – Notes from the Wired! Lab for Digital Historical Visualization, HASTAC 2011 Conference, Ann Arbor, MI, December 2, 2011.
Baltes, Elizabeth P. “Three Art Historians, a Computer Scientist, and a Digital Artist Walk into a Classroom…” Panel Presentation, Art Historians Interested in Pedagogy and Technology (AHPT), Annual meeting of the Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC), Greensboro, NC. November 1, 2013.
Baltes, Elizabeth P. “A Critique of Digital Modeling,” Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology – Greece Conference, Rethymno, Greece. March 7-8, 2014.
Baltes, Elizabeth P., Caroline Bruzelius, Hannah L. Jacobs, and Timothy Shea. “Digital Thinking and Art History: Re-Imagining Teaching, Research, and the Museum.” Intermezzo Speaking Series, Art, Art History & Visual Studies. Duke University, Durham, NC. September 29, 2015.
Olson, Mark J.V. and Elizabeth P. Baltes, Erica Sherman, Victoria Szabo. “Digital Scholarly Communication – Notes from the Wired! Lab for Digital Historical Visualization,” HASTAC 2011 Conference, Ann Arbor, MI, December 02, 2011.
