Melissa Gryan

Melissa graduated summa cum laude from College of the Holy Cross in 2018 with a double major in Classics and Art History and completed a post-baccalaureate in Classical Languages at the University of Pennsylvania in 2019. Her undergraduate thesis focused on the reception of the Laocoön in Antiquity and the Renaissance, as well as the reception of Pliny the Elder in Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists. While at Holy Cross, she also participated in manuscript research on Pliny the Elder and ancient translations of Josephus into Latin, in addition to research on the Greco-Roman coinage at the Worcester Art Museum and the representation of foreign cultures in exhibition spaces. In 2019, she joined the University of Michigan’s excavation at Gabii. Her research interests include the legacy of the reception and interpretation of classical art and artifacts, ancient aesthetics, the interplay of text and art, and how ancient people interacted with and venerated images.