Faculty Biography
Vitals:
Name: Megan Cifarelli
Title:
Department: Art History
Building: Brownson
Room: 214
Phone: 914-323-7182
Email: cifarellim@mville.edu
Degrees:
B.A. in Art History, University of Notre Dame, 1987
M.A. in Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, 1989
Ph.D. in Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, 1995
Assistant Professor Megan Cifarelli joined the Department of Art History at Manhattanville College in 2007 as a full time member of the faculty, and as a specialist in the art of the ancient world and museum studies. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1995. Her dissertation -- “Enmity, Alienation and Assyrianization: The role of cultural difference in the visual and verbal expression of Assyrian ideology in the reign of Assurnasirpal II (883-859 B.C.)”—addresses the significance of gender and ethnicity in Assyrian art. Her published work deals with this topic and with other issues in ancient Mesopotamian culture and history.
She worked in the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, participating in the development of major exhibitions of the art of ancient Iran and Iraq. Her most recent curatorial project is as co-director of a children’s exhibition on ancient Greek culture for the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, “Gods, Myths and Mortals: Discover Ancient Greece.” This NEH sponsored exhibition will be on view in New York City through the Fall of 2008, and will travel nationally for several years.
Professor Cifarelli currently teaches part of the introductory level Survey of Art History and a general survey of Ancient Art. She offers courses in the arts of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and is developing a course on the art of Iran and Iraq from the Neolithic period through the Ottoman Empire, as well as a course on the art of the Silk Road. Her advanced seminars have focused on Sexuality and Gender, as well as Death and the Afterlife, in the art of the ancient Mediterranean. She hopes to develop a Museum Studies program for Manhattanville College, with an interdisciplinary team of Manhattanville faculty, in consultation with an advisory panel of museum professionals.