DIRECTOR’S BOOKSHELF
An Agora of Ideas
Seeger Center Director Dimitri Gondicas in conversation with Andrew Griebeler
The Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies supports more than a dozen fellows each year who conduct intensive research at Princeton. Former Seeger fellows have published hundreds of books with leading publishers and thousands of articles. Their scholarship reflects the broad, interdisciplinary nature of Hellenic studies, spanning fields from history to religion to literature and periods from antiquity to the present.
In the December 3, 2024, edition of Director’s Bookshelf, Seeger Center Director Dimitri Gondicas speaks with Andrew Griebeler about “Botanical Icons: Critical Practices of Illustration in the Premodern Mediterranean,” published by University of Chicago Press in February 2024.
Griebeler was a postdoctoral fellow at the Seeger Center from fall 2022 to December 2023, when he joined the Department of Art, Art History, & Visual Studies at Duke University as an assistant professor. At Duke, he investigates the intersections of art, science, and the natural world in the medieval Mediterranean. Griebeler is currently working on a book on Medusa in the late antique and early medieval Mediterranean, and a database on ancient plants. With students and other faculty at Duke, he is also helping to document the legacy of the Duke Herbarium on Instagram (@bluedevil.herbarium) before its closure by the university.
How did this book project begin?
This book began as a doctoral dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley. As a topic, illustrated herbals allowed me to combine a number of my interests simultaneously: I have a bachelor’s degree in biology in addition to art history, I had worked in a natural history museum, and I wanted to learn more about plants. The book is, however, substantially different from the dissertation, as I expanded its focus to include a broader part of the ancient botanical tradition and its later developments.
Please tell us about your time at the Seeger Center and the research you conducted then.
The first image that comes to my mind when I think of my time at the Seeger Center is the interior of Firestone Library. I practically lived there. Princeton’s libraries, together with the University’s Index of Medieval Art, proved invaluable, not only for revisions of the book manuscript but for exploratory research for new projects on Medusa and medieval conceptions of ecology. This research was further enriched by spending several weeks at the Princeton Athens Center and by accompanying the Mount Menoikeion Seminar to the Hagios Prodromos Monastery near Serres, Greece. During my residency in Princeton, I was also able to study Modern Greek with Nikos Panou, senior lecturer and associate director for teaching, learning, and public service at the Seeger Center, and Hebrew with Philip Hollander. Finally, I learned much from the faculty, staff and fellows of the Seeger Center.
How did that research impact your work as a whole and this book project?
Without a doubt, the book was greatly reshaped through the revision process at Princeton. I also advanced in other projects, including an article on ecological imagery in Norman Sicily and an article on Michael Psellos’ understanding of plant life. More importantly, however, my time at the Seeger Center made me more confident in my work, largely due to the Center’s supportive intellectual community. I am especially grateful for the willingness of faculty and fellows at the Seeger Center to reach out, meet, reply to emails, and follow up.
What would you like your readers to learn?
I’d like my readers to gain a full appreciation for the variety and complexity of botanical illustrations in ancient and medieval herbals. These illustrations and related practices of observation and critical engagement laid the foundations for early modern modes of scientific visualization and empirical inquiry that we live with today. While learning this story, I hope my readers also learn to recognize and challenge their preconceptions about how premodern peoples engaged with the natural world.
A transformative journey to Greece inspired Stanley J. Seeger to found Hellenic Studies programs at Princeton. Please tell us about a journey that expanded your intellectual horizons or influenced your research.
Four weeks in Greece in May and June 2023 have had a tremendous impact on my research outlook. On Crete, I saw many of the plants that I write about blooming in their natural habitat. For example, I saw the rocky slopes of Mount Ida dotted with rock roses, bug orchids, and dragon arums while griffon vultures soared overhead. Botanical illustrations typically depict single plants on a blank ground. The experience of seeing these plants in bloom, in context, and in proximity to each other brought the earlier depictions of them to life in new and unexpected ways for me. Later in the trip, I joined the Mount Menoikeion Seminar, where I met the botanist nun Sister Pachomia and saw her lab. This visit gave me a fundamental insight into the relationship between tradition and contemporary botanical practice, and the many critical ways both can coexist. I was especially struck by her wonderful herbarium and botanical library, her ongoing contributions to the work of other botanists, and her accounts of botanizing in the mountains. I remain grateful to the Seeger Center for providing this opportunity.
Photo of Dimitri Gondicas by Sameer A. Khan/Fotobuddy. Photo of Andrew Griebeler by Jeannette Shindell.