USC College Department of Art History

Faculty

Ann Marie Yasin

Associate Professor of Classics and Art History

Contact Information
E-mail: yasin@usc.edu
Phone: (213) 740-3676
Office: THH 256

LINKS
Curriculum Vitae

Education

A.B. Classical Archaeology, University of Michigan, 4/1993
M.A. Art History, University of Chicago, 12/1995
Ph.D. Art History, University of Chicago, 5/2002

Academic Appointment, Affiliation, and Employment History

Associate Professor, University of Southern California, 05/2009-
Assistant Professor, University of Southern California, 08/2005-05/2009
Assistant Professor, Northwestern University, 09/2002-07/2005

Description of Research

Summary Statement of Research Interests

Ann Marie Yasin specializes in Roman and late antique art and material culture and holds a joint appointment in the Departments of Classics and Art History. Her primary research interests include monuments and commemoration; social lives of ancient objects and buildings; material culture of ancient religion; and the history of collecting and displaying Roman and early Christian antiquities. She teaches undergraduate courses on Greek, Roman and late antique art and archaeology, and her recent graduate seminars include Building and Displaying Ancient Rome (taught on site), Collecting the Sacred, Late Antique Cityscapes, Monuments and Cultural Memory, Image and Narrative in Late Antiquity, and Late Antique Sacred Space and Religious Architecture.

Her recently completed book, Saints and Church Spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean: Architecture, Cult and Community (Cambridge University Press, 2009), examines how the increasing popularity of saint veneration affected the architectural space and social function of early Christian churches. It focuses on evidence from Italy, North Africa and the Greek East from the fourth through sixth centuries CE to investigate the impact of saints' cults on commemoration of the dead, expressions of social hierarchies, and the organization of sacred space. A version of a chapter on North African funerary basilicas appeared in the September 2005 issue of The Art Bulletin. She is developing her work on sacred space in a number of current projects including a co-authored book entitled Archaeologies of Sacred Space, 500 B.C.E. to 500 C.E. (with Kim Bowes) and an essay in the Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity. She is also Associate Editor of Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture for the Cambridge World History of Religious Architecture.

Professor Yasin was named a Fellow in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. for Spring 2006. She has also been the recipient of fellowships from the Jacob K. Javits and the Whiting foundations and from 1999 to 2001 held a two-year Rome Prize Fellowship in the School of Classical Studies at the American Academy in Rome. She has worked on archaeological sites in Tunisia, Italy and France and has taught on-site in Rome, Athens and Thessaloniki. She serves on the Editorial Board of the journal Classical Antiquity and the Governing Board of the Byzantine Studies Association of North America. Before joining the faculty at USC, she taught for three years in the Department of Art History at Northwestern University.

Research Specialties

Roman and Late Roman Art and Architecture

Conferences and Other Presentations

Conference Presentations

"Engaging Graves: Functions and Expectations of Early Christian Funerary Imagery", Talk/Oral Presentation, , Washington University in St. Louis, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Invited, Spring 2009
"Negotiating Old Sacred Places: Material Biographies of Late Antique Church Buildings", Roman Archaeology Conference, Talk/Oral Presentation, Refereed , Ann Arbor, Spring 2009
"Images at the Christian Tomb: What They Do and What They Expect", Symposium accompanying the exhibit, Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art, Talk/Oral Presentation, , Fort Worth, TX, Kimbell Art Museum, Invited, Spring 2008
"Making Use of Paradise: Heavenly Visions and the Late Antique Commemorative Imagination", Looking Beyond: Visions, Dreams and Insights in Medieval Art and History, Talk/Oral Presentation, Paper, Princeton University, Index of Christian Art, Princeton University and T, Invited, Spring 2008
"Peering at Sanctity: Sight Lines and the Sacred at Late Antique Martyria", Byzantine Studies Conference, Talk/Oral Presentation, Refereed , University of Toronto, Fall 2007
"The New Euergetism: Churches as Commemorative Landscapes", Cities and Gods: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Talk/Oral Presentation, , St. John's College, University of Durham, UK, Invited, Spring 2007
"Churches before Architecture: Approaches to Sacred Space in the Early Christian World", Talk/Oral Presentation, , Washington D.C., Dumbarton Oaks, Invited, Spring 2006
"The Museology of Rome's Early Christian Churches", Past Perfected: Antiquity and Its Reinventions, Talk/Oral Presentation, Refereed , Getty Villa, Los Angeles, National Committee for the History of Art, Spring 2006

Publications

Book

Yasin, A. (2009). Saints and Church Spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean: Architecture, Cult and Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Book Review

Yasin, A. (2006). Review of The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinople, Sarah Bassett. caa.reviews.
Yasin, A. (2002). Review of Burial, Society and Context in the Roman World, eds. J. Pearce, M. Millett and M. Struck (Oxford 2000). Bryn Mawr Classical Reviews.

Journal Article

Yasin, A. (2005). Funerary Monuments and Collective Identity: From Roman Family to Christian Community. The Art Bulletin/College Art Association. pp. 433-57.
Yasin, A. (2000). Displaying the Sacred Past: Ancient Christian Inscriptions in Early Modern Rome. International Journal of the Classical Tradition/International Society for the Classical Tradition, Boston University. Vol. 7 (1), pp. 39-57.

Other

Yasin, A. (2001). Translation (from German) of Franz Alto Bauer, "Urban Space and Ritual: Constantinople in Late Antiquity". Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia.
Yasin, A. (1998). Roman and Late antique Objects, in The Classical Collection of the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago. The University of Chicago Press.

Honors and Awards

Byzantine Studies Fellow, Dumbarton Oaks, 1/2006-5/2006
American Academy at Rome, 2-year Rome Prize in Classical Studies and Archaeology, 9/1999-8/2001

Service to the University

Administrative Appointments

Graduate Advisor, Classics Department, 2009-2010

Service to the Profession

Committees

Member, Governing Board, Byzantine Studies Association of North America, 10/2007-10/2010

Editorships and Editorial Boards

Editorial Board Member, Classical Antiquity, 08/2008-
Associate Editor for Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, Cambridge World History of Religious Architecture, 03/2008-

Professional Offices

Secretary, Byzantine Studies Association of North America, 10/2008-