The Department of Classical Studies Welcomes Najee Olya as Newest Faculty Member
The department is excited to welcome Najee Olya as the newest addition to its faculty. Dr. Olya specializes in the art and archaeology of ancient Greece in the Archaic and Classical periods. His research focuses on Greek vase-painting and other media as material and visual evidence of interconnections and cultural exchange between Greece and the wider Mediterranean, including Italy, Egypt, and the societies of the Near East. Dr. Olya’s other research interests include Greek presence beyond the Mediterranean, race and ethnicity, and Black Classicism. As a field archaeologist, Dr. Olya has excavated in Italy at Poggio del Molino on the Tyrrhenian Sea and since 2018 he has been a 
member of the archaeology lab team at the Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project in Arcadia, Greece.
Before joining the department, Dr. Olya spent a year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a Bothmer Fellow in Greek and Roman Art. His other accolades include the William Sanders Scarborough Fellowship and Bert Hodge Hill Fellowship (both awarded from the American School of Classical Studies in Athens) as well as a Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration and Field Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society. He has recently published articles with the Los Angeles Review of Books and Ancient World Magazine. He has also co-authored a chapter, “Black-figure and Its Antecedents” in the forthcoming book, A Companion to Heracles, to be published by Wiley-Blackwell and has an essay, “Adjusting the Lens of Race: A Re-examination of Skin Color in Representations of Black Africans in Ancient Greek Vase-Painting” in the forthcoming volume, Chroma: Ancient Sculpture in Color, to be published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Currently, he is working on his first monograph, The Image of the African in Ancient Greek Art and Culture: Identity, Race, and Anthropology.
This semester, Dr. Olya is teaching Greek and Roman Mythology and Greek Art and Archaeology. Welcome Dr. Olya!
