Rate My Professor Susan Langdon

Susan Langdon serves as Professor Emerita of Greek Art and Archaeology in the Department of Classics, Archaeology, and Religion at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She earned her Ph.D. from Indiana University. Her research specializes in Greek art and archaeology, focusing on the Dark Age and Early Iron Age (1100-700 B.C.E.), with particular attention to social identity, gender dynamics, childhood, pottery, sculpture, architecture, and iconography in regions such as Attica, the Cyclades, and the Aegean Bronze Age transition.

Langdon previously chaired the Department of Art History and Archaeology and directed graduate studies at the university. She taught courses including History of Ancient and Medieval Art, Art and Gender in Antiquity, Art and Archaeology of Egypt and the Near East, Greek Art and Archaeology, Art & Archaeology of the Aegean Bronze Age, Greek Architecture, Greek Pottery, Greek Sculpture, and graduate seminars in Greek Art and Archaeology. Key publications include her monograph Art and Identity in Dark Age Greece, 1100–700 B.C.E. (Cambridge University Press, 2008; paperback 2010), edited volume New Light on a Dark Age: Exploring the Culture of Geometric Greece (University of Missouri Press, 1997), and exhibition catalogue From Pasture to Polis: Art in the Age of Homer (University of Missouri Press, 1993). She co-authored Artifact and Assemblage: The Finds from a Regional Survey of the Southern Argolid, Greece, I. The Prehistoric and Early Iron Age Pottery and the Lithic Artifacts (Stanford University Press, 1995). Notable articles feature “Beyond the Grave: Biographies From Early Greece” (American Journal of Archaeology 105, 2001) and “Significant Others: The Male-Female Pair in Greek Geometric Art” (American Journal of Archaeology 102, 1998). Ongoing projects include Corinth XVIII. The Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore: Archaic Terracotta Figurines (Princeton University Press, in progress) and chapters on childhood in ancient Greece and Geometric bronzes. Her scholarship has advanced understanding of social life and material culture in early Greek society.