WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. - A Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, Professor Elaine K. Gazda of the University of Michigan, will visit Williams College on Tuesday, November 17, to lecture on "Life and Art in Roman Villas." The lecture is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. in Lawrence Hall 231 on the Williams campus.

Gazda is an expert on ancient Roman and Graeco-Roman art and architecture. Her research focuses on Roman art, especially that associated with the private realm.

Currently, Gazda is working on issues of copying and emulation in Roman art and the exploitation of Roman art by the Italian Fascist government.

Gazda has done fieldwork in Italy at Cosa and Pompeii, which was rediscovered in the 18th century after being buried under ashes by the volcano Mount Vesuvius. She has also worked in Turkey at Sardis, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia, and Pisidian Antioch.

She is author, co-author, or editor of a number of books and exhibition catalogues, "Roman Art in the Private Sphere," (1991) and "The Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii: Ancient Ritual, Modern Muse" (2000) among others. Her most impressive museum projects are "Images of Empire: Marble Fragments in Rome and Ann Arbor Rejoined," (1996) and "The Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii: Ancient Ritual, Modern Muse," (2000) both of which were displayed at the University of Michigan's Kelsey Museum of Archaeology.

Professor Gazda teaches Classical Art and Archaeology at the Department of the History of Art at the University of Michigan. She is also Director of the Interdepartmental Program in Art and Archaeology, and Curator of Hellenistic and Roman Antiquities at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology.

Gazda received her Ph.D. from Harvard University.

The Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program invites 12 or more distinguished scholars to visit colleges and universities around the country with chapters of Phi Beta Kappa. The purpose of the program is to, "contribute to the intellectual life of the institution by making possible an exchange of ideas between the Visiting Scholars and the resident faculty and students." The program is now entering its 53rd year.