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Elizabeth R. Macaulay

From EverybodyWiki Bios & Wiki


Elizabeth R. Macaulay
File:Elizabeth Macaulay.jpgElizabeth Macaulay.jpg Elizabeth Macaulay.jpg
Elizabeth R. Macaulay in 2026
Born1980
New York, NY, U.S.
🎓 Alma materCornell University (B.A.)
St John's College, Oxford (M.St.)
St John's College, Oxford (D.Phil.)
💼 Occupation
🏢 Organization The Graduate Center, The City University of New York
TitleProfessor; Executive Officer, Liberal Studies

Elizabeth R. Macaulay is an American scholar of archaeology, classics, and liberal studies. She is the Executive Officer of the Liberal Studies Department at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.[1] Macaulay's main research interests are Roman gardens, classical, Egyptian, and Islamic architecture; the reception of ancient architecture in the modern world, especially at World's Fairs; and the intersections between archaeology and diplomacy.

Early life and education

Macaulay was born in New York City; she attended and graduated from the Taft School. She received her undergraduate degree in Classical Archaeology in 2002 from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Her submission The Political Uses of Roman Gardens won the undergraduate thesis prize in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Academic Career

Macaulay continued her Classical Archaeology studies, earning her M.St. and D.Phil degrees from the St. John's College, Oxford in 2003 and 2008, building on her undergraduate foundation and scholarship around Roman gardens. Her dissertation The City in Motion: Movement and Space in Roman Architecture and Gardens from 100 BC to AD 150 with Janet DeLaine and Nicholas Purcell as supervisors.[2][3] capped her education as a classical archaeologist and architectural historian.

Roman Gardens

Macaulay's research on Roman gardens and their architecture explored their political and cultural significance, arguing that gardens were spaces integral to Roman public and private life. The research grew to include research and publications on the distribution and movement of plants across the Roman world, building on work by Wilhelmina Jashemski and others and opening new areas of classical archaeological research. She authored A commercial nursery near Abu Hummus (Egypt) and re-use of amphoras for the trade in plants[4] in the Journal of Roman Archaeology that demonstrated the existence of large-scale plant nurseries to support these gardens, underscoring the significance of this feature of Roman life.

Islamic Architecture

Macaulay applied the archaeological method to study Bayt Farhi and other important Jewish houses in Ottoman Damascus to understand their construction and decorative practices, leading to the publication Bayt Farhi and the Sephardic Palaces of Ottoman Damascus in the Late 18th and 19th Centuries[5]. Interest in Islamic Architecture led to research on ajamī rooms and the European collectors who purchased and moved them. This led to awareness and research of understudied archaeological objects that had been moved to other countries. Many objects had been used for political and diplomatic purposes to municipalities and universities. This research is featured in Archaeological Ambassadors: A History of Archaeological Gifts in New York[6], which examines Cleopatra’s Needle, the so-called Marathon Stone, the Column of Jerash, and the Temple of Dendur, and the political goals of the gifts and their recipients.

Intersection of Antiquity and Modernity

Macaulay applied her classical expertise to modern cities such as New York, where buildings featuring classical and Egyptian architecture and art offered sophisticated interpretations and expressions worthy of research in the context of a modern city. This work resulted in Housing The New Romans: Architectural Reception and the Classical Style in the Modern World, co-edited with Katherine von Stackelberg, and Classical New York: Discovering Greece and Rome in Gotham, co-edited with M. McGowan. Macaulay and Von Stackelberg proposed the Neo-Antique framework to encourage scholars to examine the reinterpretation and appropriation of the architecture, art, and landscapes of ancient civilizations in the Mediterranean, North Africa, and Western Asia. Their work argued that receptions of classical and Egyptian art, architecture, and gardens were complex and nuanced, and that they played out in domestic and funerary contexts rather than solely in civic or public ones. Macaulay and McGowan argued that New Yorkers have appropriated Greco-Roman art, architecture, and languages in many of the city’s iconic buildings and works of art since the city’s founding.

Antiquity in Gotham: The Ancient Architecture of New York City further examined the influence of ancient architecture in New York and its adaptation to serve a people and a place with a need for a usable past. The Egyptian, classical, and ancient Near Eastern visual and material culture in the architecture and architectural sculpture of New York City from the late 18th century to the present influenced every type of New York architecture, from tombs to skyscrapers due to its flexibility, fluidity, and diversity of both meanings and forms of ancient architecture. The New York Times quoted my research about Brooklyn’s Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch in the Streetscapes column.[7]

World's Fairs

An outgrowth of graduate-level seminars taught between 2020 and 2024, Ancient Fantasies and Modern Power: Neo-Antique Architecture at the U.S. World's Fairs, 1893–1915[8] examines the use of classical architecture as a vehicle for cultural expression and modernization in late 19th and early 20th-century America. The book argues that five major American world's fairs, Chicago in 1893, Nashville in 1897, Omaha in 1898, St. Louis in 1904, and San Francisco in 1915, used Greco-Roman architectural references to communicate cultural accomplishment, economic progress, and political achievement. Rather than serving as mere historical pastiche, these classical forms were deliberately reinterpreted to reflect each city's specific aspirations and contemporary historical circumstances. Macaulay contends that world's fairs functioned as crucial mechanisms for disseminating new ideas, technologies, and cultural forms during the pre-mass tourism, pre-internet era. Macaulay used the topic of World's fairs for the introductory seminar in the Liberal Studies program, and it provided fertile ground for students within the interdisciplinary program and across different concentrations. The universality of the World's fairs offered topics and themes that corresponded with the students' interests and fields of study while also introducing interdisciplinary approaches.[9]

Teaching and Public Scholarship

Macaulay began teaching at the University of London and the University of Oxford, and has been a member of Wolfson College, Oxford since 2008. She began teaching at the CUNY Graduate Center in 2011 as a visiting professor in the Classics department and in 2012, the Master of Arts Liberal Studies Program. She became Deputy Executive Officer of the Liberal Studies department in 2012, acting Executive Officer in 2017, and official Executive Officer in 2019.[10] She received her full professorship in 2025, continuing to teach in the Liberal Studies and Classics programs as well as the Ph.D. program in Anthropology-Archaeology, and the Master of Arts programs in Digital Humanities and Islamic Art.

Macaulay serves as a contributing and acquiring editor[11] and serves on the board[12] of Smarthistory, a public scholarship website devoted to art history education. On the Smarthistory site, she has showcased her work through educational essays and videos on classical, Islamic, and Egyptian art. Her contributing editor roles cover Islamic Art and she works with Roman and Islamic art, cultural heritage, and archaeology scholars as an acquiring editor.

Current Work and Research

Macaulay's current research examines the intersection of modernity and antiquity, and the politics of modern-day archaeology and museums. She is a leading scholar in classical reception studies, especially around the reception of classical, Egyptian, and ancient West Asian architecture, primarily in New York City and the United States. Her scholarship has also helped to situate the reception of ancient art and architecture at the heart of classical studies today. In addition to an entry on Roman gardens and architecture[13], Macaulay authored classical reception entries in the Oxford Classical Dictionary on the Colosseum[14], Greco-Roman architecture[15], the Column of Trajan[16], and the Pantheon of Rome[17].

Additionally, her research extends to the examination of the phenomenon of gifting archaeological objects as tools of cultural diplomacy. Using frameworks that she developed in anthropology, history, and archaeology, this study tackled some of the most pressing issues in the field of archaeology: provenance and the legal movement of antiquities, the colonial legacies of the field of archaeology, the ownership of cultural objects, and the roles of archaeological objects and museums to build cultural bridges between different countries.[18]

Selected works

Books

  • Ancient Fantasies and Modern Power: Neo-Antique Architecture at American World's Fairs, 1893–1915. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2026. doi:10.1017/9781009407090. ISBN 978-1-009-40713-7. Search this book on
  • Antiquity in Gotham: The Ancient Architecture of New York City (First ed.). New York: Empire State Editions, an imprint of Fordham University Press. 2021. ISBN 978-0-8232-9384-1. Search this book on
  • Bayt Farhi and the Sephardic Palaces of Ottoman Damascus in the Late 18th and 19th Centuries. The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 72. Boston, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research. 2018. ISBN 978-0-89757-100-5. Search this book on
  • Macaulay, Elizabeth; McGowan, Matthew M., eds. (2018). Classical New York: Discovering Greece and Rome in Gotham. New York: Empire State Editions, an imprint of Fordham University Press. ISBN 978-0-8232-8102-2. Search this book on
  • Macaulay, Elizabeth; von Stackelberg, Katharine T., eds. (2017). Housing the New Romans: Architectural Reception and Classical Style in the Modern World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-027233-3. Search this book on
  • Bragg, Edward; Hau, Lisa Irene; Macaulay, Elizabeth, eds. (2008). Beyond the Battlefields: New Perspectives on Warfare and Society in the Graeco-Roman World. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars. ISBN 978-1-84718-516-7. Search this book on
  • Schroeder, H., ed. (2007). Crossing Frontiers: The Opportunities and Challenges of Interdisciplinary Approaches to Archaeology: Proceedings of a Conference Held at the University of Oxford, 25-26 June 2005. Oxford University School of Archaeology Monograph. 66. Oxford: School of Archaeology. ISBN 978-0-9549627-7-7. Search this book on

Book Chapters, Articles, and Dictionary Entries

Dictionary Entries

Journal Articles

  • "J. P. Morgan's Classical Commissions: McKim, Mead & White's Morgan Library and Annex in Context". International Journal of the Classical Tradition. 24 (1): 68–113. 2017. doi:10.1007/s12138-016-0419-5.
  • "Reception, Eighteenth to Twentieth Centuries". Classical Receptions Journal: 447–478. 2016.
  • With Simard, J. (2015). "From Jerash to New York: Columns, Archaeology, and Politics at the 1964–65 World's Fair". Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 74 (3): 341–362.
  • With Burns, R. (2015). "A Monumental Roman Building in Southeast Damascus?". Levant. 47 (1): 93–111.
  • "Transforming the Site and Object Reports for a Digital Age: Mentoring Students to Use Digital Technologies in Archaeology and Art History". Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy (7). 2015.
  • With Kenawi, M.; McKenzie, J. (2012). "A Commercial Nursery Near Abu Hummus, Egypt, and the Reuse of Amphoras in the Roman Plant Trade". Journal of Roman Archaeology. 25: 195–225.
  • "Planting Pots at Petra: A Preliminary Study of Ollae Perforatae at the Petra Garden Pool Complex and at the 'Great Temple'". Levant. 38: 159–170. 2006.

Book Chapters

  • Bakogianni, Anastasia; Hope, Valerie, eds. (2015). "Triumphal Washington: New York City's 'Roman' Arch". War as Spectacle: Ancient and Modern Perspectives on the Display of Armed Conflict. Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 209–239. Search this book on
  • Gleason, K. L., ed. (2013). "The Use and Reception". The Cultural History of Gardens, Volume I: Ancient Gardens. Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 99–118. Search this book on
  • Laurence, R.; Newsome, D., eds. (2011). "The City in Motion". Rome, Ostia, Pompeii: Movement and Space. Oxford University Press. pp. 262–289. Search this book on
  • With Gleason, K. L. (2010). "Introduction". The Gardens of the Ancient Mediterranean: Cultural Exchange Through Horticultural Design, Technology, and Plants. Bollettino di Archeologia Online. pp. 1–8. Search this book on
  • "Imported Exotica: Approaches for the Study of the Ancient Plant Trade". The Gardens of the Ancient Mediterranean: Cultural Exchange Through Horticultural Design, Technology, and Plants. Bollettino di Archeologia Online. 2010. pp. 16–25. Search this book on
  • Bracken, S.; Galdy, A.; Turpin, A., eds. (2009). "Political Museums: Porticos, Gardens and the Public Display of Art in Ancient Rome". Collecting and Dynastic Ambition. Cambridge Scholars. pp. 1–22. Search this book on
  • Bragg, E.; Hau, L. I.; Macaulay, Elizabeth, eds. (2008). "The Fruits of Victory: The Generals, Plants and Power in the Roman World". Beyond the Battlefields: New Perspectives on Warfare and Society in the Graeco-Roman World. Cambridge Scholars. pp. 205–225. Search this book on
  • Frischer, B.; Crawford, J.; De Simone, M., eds. (2007). "Garden Material". The "Horace's Villa" Project, 1997–2003: Report on New Fieldwork and Research. Archeopress. pp. 191–195. Search this book on
  • Morel, J. P.; Juan, J. T.; Matamala, J. C., eds. (2006). "The Role of Ollae Perforatae in Understanding Horticulture, Planting Techniques, Garden Design, and Plant Trade in the Roman World". The Archaeology of Crop Fields and Gardens. EdiPuglia. pp. 207–220. Search this book on

Public Scholarship

Podcasts

Smarthistory Essays

Smarthistory Videos

External links

References

  1. ↑ "Liberal Studies Faculty". CUNY Graduate Center.
  2. ↑ "Elizabeth Macaulay" (PDF). www.gc.cuny.edu. Retrieved 2026-02-14.
  3. ↑ Elizabeth, Macaulay-Lewis. "The city in motion: movement and space in Roman architecture and gardens from 100 BC to AD 150". University of Oxford.
  4. ↑ Kenawi, Mohammed Kenawi; Macaulay-Lewis, Elizabeth; McKenzie, Judith S. (2012). "A commercial nursery near Abu Hummus (Egypt) and re-use of amphoras for the trade in plants". Journal of Roman Archaeology. 25: 195–225. doi:10.1017/S1047759400001197.
  5. ↑ Macaulay-Lewis, Elizabeth (2018). Bayt Farhi and the Sephardic palaces of Ottoman Damascus in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Boston, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research. Search this book on
  6. ↑ Macaulay, Elizabeth R. (2024). Archaeological ambassadors: a history of archaeological gifts in New York City. Cham: Springer Palgrave Macmillan. Search this book on
  7. ↑ Gill, John Freeman (2020). "In Brooklyn, Grand Army Plaza Gets an Intervention". Retrieved 2026-02-19.
  8. ↑ Macaulay, Elizabeth R. (2024). Archaeological ambassadors: a history of archaeological gifts in New York City. Cham: Springer Palgrave Macmillan. Search this book on
  9. ↑ "Elizabeth Macaulay" (PDF). www.gc.cuny.edu. Retrieved 2026-02-14.
  10. ↑ "Elizabeth Macaulay" (PDF). www.gc.cuny.edu. Retrieved 2026-02-14.
  11. ↑ "Content editors and contributors". Smarthistory. Retrieved 2026-02-14.
  12. ↑ "Board of Trustees and Board of Advisors". Smarthistry. Retrieved 2026-02-14.
  13. ↑ Macaulay, Elizabeth (2023-01-12). Murphy, Kevin, ed. Roman Gardens and Landscape Architecture. New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/OBO/9780190922467-0081. Search this book on
  14. ↑ Macaulay, Elizabeth (2025-04-16). "Colosseum, Reception of". Oxford Classical Dictionary. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.8994.
  15. ↑ Macaulay, Elizabeth (2024-05-22). "Greco-Roman Architecture, Reception of". Oxford Classical Dictionary. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.8992.
  16. ↑ Macaulay, Elizabeth (2023-07-19). "Column of Trajan, Reception of". Oxford Classical Dictionary. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.8996.
  17. ↑ Macaulay, Elizabeth (2023-07-19). "Pantheon, Reception of". Oxford Classical Dictionary. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.8993.
  18. ↑ Macaulay, Elizabeth R. (2024). Archaeological ambassadors: a history of archaeological gifts in New York City. Cham: Springer Palgrave Macmillan. Search this book on



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