By Appointment
PhD, University of Pennsylvania
Karen Sonik earned her PhD in the art and archaeology of the Mediterranean world at the University of Pennsylvania. She specializes in the visual and literary arts of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, with an emphasis on ancient Mesopotamia. Her recent work has addressed topics including Assyrian rock reliefs and royal memory; the materialization and visualization of emotion in the ancient Near East; the authorization and legitimation of divine images; and the relationship between pictorial and written myth in Mesopotamia. Her publications include the edited volumes Journey to the City: A Companion to the Middle East Galleries at the Penn Museum (with S. Tinney, forthcoming with University of Pennsylvania Museum Press), The Materiality of Divine Agency (with B. Pongratz-Leisten, de Gruyter 2015), A Common Cultural Heritage: Studies in the Mesopotamian & Biblical World in Honor of Barry L. Eichler (with G. Frame et al., CDL Press 2010), and numerous articles and book chapters.
Sonik’s research has been supported by organizations, including the American Philosophical Society, the American Council for Learned Societies, and the Kolb Foundation. She has been a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School; a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles; a postdoctoral fellow in Egyptology & Ancient Western Asian Studies at Brown University; and a visiting research scholar at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University.
ancient Mediterranean and Near East, ancient Mesopotamia