Mont Allen

Principal Lecturer, PhD

Email: montallen@arizona.edu

Dr. Mont Allen is Principal Lecturer in Art History at the University of Arizona, where he teaches courses ranging from ancient Greek and Roman to Baroque art.

Winner of five teaching awards, including both the Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award and the Faculty Mentor of the Year Award from Southern Illinois University and the ‘Everyday Hero’ Award from UC Berkeley, he lives to teach.  Nothing brings him greater joy than discussing art and sharing ideas with other minds afire in the university classroom.

With a doctorate in Ancient Art History (UC Berkeley), master’s degrees in the History of Religion (Syracuse University) and Modern European History (UC Berkeley), and a bachelor’s degree in Geography, his interests range widely, from Greco-Roman sculpture and painting, ancient sculptural tools and techniques, and the archaeology of the classical world, to Greek mythology and its visual depictions, early Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist art, and the long history of western art, as well as intellectual history and urban geography.  He also reads broadly in all periods of European history.

His own research concentrates on Greek mythology and Roman funerary art as they intersected in the form of ancient Roman sarcophagi:  those elaborately carved marble coffins, often sculpted with scenes from Greek myth, in which leading citizens of the ancient world’s mightiest empire were buried.  His book on the subject — titled The Death of Myth on Roman Sarcophagi: Allegory and Visual Narrative in the Late Empire — was published by Cambridge University Press in 2023.

His newest research project focuses on funerary images of Dionysus, the Greek and Roman god of wine, intoxication, and ecstasy.

• Website: http://www.montallen.com/