Seth Estrin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University, where he specializes in the art, archaeology, and visual culture of ancient Greece. His scholarship and teaching explore the lived experience of art objects—their sensuous properties, their entanglement with felt experiences, and their place in shaping intersubjective encounters and personal histories. His work aims to expand our understanding of classical antiquity by foregrounding interconnections between archaeological, literary, and epigraphical sources.

Estrin’s book, Grief Made Marble: Funerary Sculpture in Classical Athens (Yale University Press, 2023), examines the role of sculpture in constructing emotional experience in Classical Athens. His current research focuses on Archaic Greek art, with one project examining the significance of “speaking” objects, and the other constructions of gender difference. Articles relating to both projects have appeared in Classical Antiquity, The Art Bulletin, and various edited volumes. In addition, he has published on a topics ranging from Minoan wall painting to Hellenistic sculpture, and is currently preparing for publication essays on ancient and modern receptions of Athenian painted ceramics.

Estrin received his BA in Classics and Art History from the University of Toronto (2008), his MSt in Classical Archaeology from the University of Oxford (2009), and his PhD, also in Classical Archaeology, from the University of California, Berkeley (2016). He has previously held fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. the Social Science Research Council, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Prior to his appointment at Harvard, he was Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago (2017-23).

Selected Publications

Grief Made Marble: Funerary Sculpture in Classical Athens. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023.

“Archaic Sculpture and the Making of Gender: Rethinking the ‘Brother and Sister Stele.’” Art Bulletin 105.3 (2023): 33-60.

“Horoi and Horizons in Fifth- and Fourth-Century Athens.” In Shifting Horizons: A Line and its Movement in Art, History, and Literature, ed. L. Burkart and B. Fricke (27-54). Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2022.

“Sirens on the Edge of the Classical Attic Funerary Monument.” In Music and Memory in the Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds, ed. L. Curtis and N. Weiss (261-286). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.

“Experiencing Elegy: Materiality and Visuality in the Ambracian Polyandrion.” In The Genres of Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry: Theories and Models, ed. L. Kurke, M. Foster, and N. Weiss (298-324). Leiden: Brill, 2019.

“Memory Incarnate: Material Objects and Private Visions in Classical Athens, from Euripides’ Ion to the Gravesite.” In The Materialities of Greek Tragedy: Objects and Affect in Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, ed. M. Mueller and M. Telò (111-132). London: Bloomsbury, 2018.

“Cold Comfort: Empathy and Memory in an Archaic Funerary Monument from Akraiphia.” Classical Antiquity 35 (2016): 189-214.

“Living Surfaces: The Materiality of Minoan Wall Painting.” In Beyond Iconography: Materials, Methods and Meaning in Ancient Painting Studies, ed. S. Lepinski and S. McFadden (109-125). Boston: Archaeological Institute of America, 2015.