Breton Langendorfer joined A&A as lecturer in fall 2024. His current research projects focus on the early visual cultures of the Iranian plateau during the 3rd millennium B.C.E., and the use of ornamental repetition, duplication, and fine craftsmanship in Achaemenid royal art. Before arriving at Princeton he taught at Hamilton College, Brown University, and the University of New Hampshire.

In spring 2025, Langendorfer is teaching ART 416 / CLA 416 / NES 418 “Borderlands: Art and Society Between Rome and Iran." 

Below, he shares what excites him about his work, his influences, and his upcoming course:

Q&A

What drew you to A&A at Princeton?

Two big things come to mind. The first is the admirable breadth and depth of knowledge represented by the faculty in A&A. It’s a large department (hardly the norm for Art History) with scholars working in historical periods ranging from the classical to the contemporary. Students here have access to so much expertise! The second is contained within the name of the department itself, Art and Archaeology. At many other institutions these disciplines are separated, but at Princeton the emphasis is on a shared commitment to the study of material culture to explore the past. As someone working on the ancient side of the spectrum (where the boundary between Art History and Archaeology can be blurred or nonexistent) I greatly appreciate this. 

“I think that the study of premodern visual culture is becoming ever more relevant. The more I learn and teach the more convinced I am that literacy in the ancient world was fundamentally visual- based on a sophisticated recognition of familiar images, motifs, and visual formulae rather than the written word. In our contemporary era of hypertexts and internet memes I think we’re returning to a period in which literacy will be primarily visual rather than textual, and ancient art has many pressing lessons to impart about navigating this new reality.” 

—Breton Langendorfer

What’s your area of research?

I study the art and archaeology of the ancient Middle East. Geographically this includes everything from Anatolia and ancient Egypt to Central Asia, but my area of focus is Iraq (Mesopotamia to the Greeks, “Sumer and Akkad” to the people who lived there) and Iran.

What initially sparked your interest in the field?

A passionate professor! When I first got to grad school I planned to focus on a different area, but I took a class on Mesopotamian art from a professor (Nassos Papalexandrou, a graduate of Princeton’s A&A department himself) who really opened my eyes to this material. Perhaps more than other areas of study, scholars of Mesopotamia are made, not born. They need someone to push them in that direction- that was certainly the case in my experience.

I’ve also been consistently fascinated with the ways in which the material culture of the ancient Middle East eerily prefigures our contemporary moment– from “speaking” tablets on which one can manipulate information to the use of objects like ancient cylinder seals or modern ID cards that allow us to swipe traces of our identity in official contexts.

As a plug for why others should be interested in this material, I think that the study of premodern visual culture is becoming ever more relevant. The more I learn and teach the more convinced I am that literacy in the ancient world was fundamentally visual- based on a sophisticated recognition of familiar images, motifs, and visual formulae rather than the written word. In our contemporary era of hypertexts and internet memes I think we’re returning to a period in which literacy will be primarily visual rather than textual, and ancient art has many pressing lessons to impart about navigating this new reality.

Are there experiences that particularly impacted your professional path?

Aside from excellent and caring mentors, travel has been the most important experience that piqued my interest in Art History and Archaeology. I spent a semester abroad in Greece as an undergrad, and visiting sites and monuments in that wonderful landscape turned me on to the study of material culture. It doesn’t hurt that I’ve been fascinated by ruins my whole life.

With whom at Princeton does your work intersect?

There’s a devoted contingent of scholars at Princeton who work on cuneiform culture- Johannes Haubold and Sophus Helle in Classics in fact just released a superb new translation Enuma elish, the Babylonian epic of creation. In A&A my work overlaps with my colleagues Nathan Arrington and Sam Holzman who study the classical world, which is in deep dialogue with the ancient Middle East. I think there’s also a lot of thematic resonance between my research and Carolyn Yerkes’ current projects. She specializes in early modern European architecture and drawing, but she’s working on a study related to siege craft and depictions of sieges in the Renaissance. The dissertation I wrote for my doctorate focuses on depictions of city sieges in the Assyrian palace reliefs, and it’s been exciting to talk about these themes with her across the chronological divide.

How are you enjoying teaching at Princeton?

I’ve really enjoyed co-teaching ART 100 with Monica Bravo, which is my first experience developing and teaching a course with a colleague. A particular highlight is that every member of the A&A faculty guest-lectures at some point in ART 100 over the course of the semester, so I’ve gotten to listen to my colleagues speak at length on their areas of interest and see their individual lecture styles.

Has anything surprised you?

The friendly collegiality and intellectual exchange within the department has happily surprised me, given that its size could in other contexts lend itself to colleagues isolating themselves into their disciplinary silos. I’ve also been consistently surprised by the enormous resources Princeton has. This is especially apparent in ART 100, in which we regularly take precepts to Firestone to examine medieval manuscripts or ancient coins from Princeton’s special collections. In fact, I’m writing the answers to these questions on the train into NYC, where thanks to A&A I’ll be taking students to the Morgan Library to examine their collection of Mesopotamian cylinder seals.

What excites you most about your course ART 416 / CLA 416 / NES 418 “Borderlands: Art and Society Between Rome and Iran” coming up in spring 2025?

The course is called Borderlands, and explores what happens to the visual culture of the Middle East during the classical and late antique periods, or after Alexander and Hellenism sweep through in the 4th century B.C.E. It’s intriguing material in part because it’s comparatively understudied, and often dismissed as being “in-between” the art of Rome and Parthian/Sasanian Iran. We’ll examine sites like Palmyra, Petra, Hatra, and Dura Europos, and how certain traditions of the cuneiform world live on in later antiquity. One thing I think will become apparent through the course is the degree to which Rome’s fascination with the Middle East (culturally, economically, geopolitically) determines the actions of and eventually dominates the empire, to the point where Rome becomes an eastern state in the late antique period. It’s an especially exciting course for thinking about the origins of Islamic art, which originates in the unique culture of this “in-between” zone and partakes of both Roman and Iranian visual traditions.