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Andrew Crocker

Assistant Professor of Art History

Crocker

My approach in the classroom is built around curiosity and direct engagement with antiquity. I want students to think about art history and the past as something they can handle and interrogate. Studying how people made and understood images in the past, and how we interpret and encounter those same images today, empowers students to question how the past is presented to them and why that matters.

-Andrew Crocker

Biography

Dr. Crocker earned his Ph.D. in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Michigan's Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology (IPCAA), with a certificate in Museum Studies. His dissertation, Body Politics: Female Portraiture and Local Politics in the Roman Peloponnese, examined portrait sculpture, identity, gender, and local politics in Roman Greece. His research centers on Roman provincial portraiture and the politics of the image, including current work on facial violence toward images in Greek provincial contexts and moral readings of décor in Roman domestic spaces at the Villa of Oplontis. He has participated in archaeological field projects in Greece, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Belize, and New York. He has taught courses in art history, classics, anthropology, and history, and previously worked in digital accessibility for the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan. He has museum experience at the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Michigan's Kelsey Museum of Archaeology.

Education

  • Ph.D., Classical Art and Archaeology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
  • Graduate Certificate, Museum Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
  • M.A., Archaeology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
  • B.A., Classical Studies, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI.

Publications

  • "Funerary Portraits from Carthage: A Charioteer and His Female Companion," in For the Love of Carthage, vol. 2, JRA Supplement 114, ed. J. Humphrey (2026).
  • "A Head of an African Young Man in Chicago: Issues Regarding Interpretation and Identification," in Representations of Ethnicity in the Ancient World and Contemporary Museums, ed. B. van Oppen and D. Bennett, forthcoming.