EDUCATION

PhD. Princeton (1984)
M.A.  Princeton (1979)
B.A. Yale (1976)

STATEMENT OF RESEARCH INTEREST

Barbara Tsakirgis is a classical archaeologist whose research focuses on Greek houses and material found in them.  Since 1993 she has been associated with the excavations in the Athenian Agora, the civic center of ancient Athens, around which the Athenians built their homes.  The focus of her research has been on the remains of houses dating from ca. 600 B.C. to ca. A.D. 600, and she considers both architecture and the detritus of daily life in her study of Greek houses and household.  At present she is at work on two volumes which will be the publication of the Athenian houses and their associated small finds.

Previously Tsakirgis worked at the site of Morgantina in central Sicily, a large and prosperous Hellenistic town where the residents built sizeable and well decorated homes.  She studied both the architecture of the houses as well as the elements of their well preserved floor mosaics and wall paintings.

Tsakirgis has excavated also in Corinth, Greece and La Befa, Italy, the last a late Roman farmhouse located in Tuscany.  As a classicist she is especially intrigued by the value of using both texts and material culture in the study of Greek households.

ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIVITIES

Barbara Tsakirgis is the current chair of Vanderbilt's Department of Classical Studies; she previously served three years as the Director of Graduate Studies and three and a half years as as the Director of Undergraduate Studies.  Tsakirgis was a two-term member of the Governing Board of the Archaeological Institute of America, an international organization of archaeologists, and is also the secretary/treasurer of the Nashville Society of the AIA as well as a national lecturer for the AIA.  She is a member of the board of the Conservancy for the Parthenon and Centennial Park (formerly Parthenon Patrons), a non-profit group that supports and funds the programming and education at the Nashville Parthenon. 

COURSES TAUGHT AT VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY

Archaic and Classical Greek Art (Classics 204)
Late Classical and Hellenistic Greek Art (Classics 205)
Art and Architecture of Fifth Century Greece (Classics 305)
The Birth of Greece: the Archaic Period (Classics 115)
Art and Archaeology of the Aegean Bronze Age (Classics 203)
Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt (Classics 217)
Roman Art and Architecture (Classics 206)
The Greek City (Classics 211)
Greek Sculpture (Classics 216)
Introductory Latin (Latin 101 and 102)
Greek History (Classics 208)
Spectacle in the Ancient World (Classics 115)

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

"A (New) Chimney Pot from the Athenian Agora," Hesperia 70 (2001) pp. 173-175.

"Greek Houses and Households," AJA 100 (1996) pp. 777-781.

"Morgantina, A Greek Town in Central Sicily," in Acta Hyperborea 6 (1995) pp. 123-148. 

"The Decorated Pavements of Morgantina, the opus signinum," AJA 94 (1990) pp. 425-443.

"The Decorated Pavements of Morgantina, The Mosaics," AJA 93 (1989) pp. 395-416.