Profile

Megan Goldman-Petri is a Ph.D. candidate in classical art and archaeology. She studies Roman art history and archaeology, with a current focus on monuments in the period of political transition from Republic to Augustan principate. Her dissertation, “The Augustan Honorific Altar: Its Emergence, Monumentalization, and Eclipse,” explores a series of monumental freestanding altars constructed by the Roman senate in honor of Augustus. The project seeks to explain how the form, imagery, and place of these altars within the contemporary monumental system represented a new conceptualization of the unprecedented status of the princeps in relation to traditional institutions of power, and transformation of the role of monuments and images in the early empire. Her project will be supported by the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) for the 2014–2015 academic year, during which time she will be affiliated with the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. Goldman-Petri received a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University in the history of art and Classics, and an M.St. in classical art and archaeology from Oxford University. She has excavated for several summers at Gabii and at the sanctuary of Sant’Ombono in Rome.