Associate Professor, School of Art | Member of the Graduate Faculty | Associate Professor, History
John R. Senseney is Associate Professor of Ancient History at the University of Arizona. He is an architectural historian with a research focus on ancient cities, sanctuaries, and how creative labor constructed a sense of order that enabled knowledge about the world. He has published on topics including Archaic Greek practices of construction and engineering, the Parthenon frieze, Plato's reliance on metaphors from artisanship, and the Greek and Hellenistic influences on the urban development of Rome. His teaching explores questions of power and identity, religious and ethnic conflict and tolerance, and the origins of science and scientific world views. He teaches ancient Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman history, as well as the classical tradition in the art of painting in the age of Dante. He is a native Arizonan, a Tucsonan and Anatolian forever, and will tell anyone who pretends to listen that he is a real Wildcat who first arrived at Arizona/Sonora decades ago, with subsequent intervals at the University of California, Santa Barbara where he earned his Ph.D. and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he was tenured) His office overlooks Old Main and he wanted you to know that.