Robinson, Elisabeth "Liesl"

Date born: 1957

Place Born: London, United Kingdom

Date died: 2003

Place died: Erfurth, Germany

Classical vase scholar; developed a theory of female body types as portrayed in classical vase painting. Robinson's parents were Robert Hulsch Robinson, a city administrator for Hummerside, UK, and Frieda Kauch (Robinson), a German expatriate. The younger Robinson was schooled at the Weldon School, Ambleside, UK before moving with her mother to Erfurth, Germany in 1975. She entered the university in Erlangen receiving her A.B. in 1979, continuing on for her Ph.D. at the University of Basel. She wrote her dissertation, accepted in 1985, on female body types as portrayed in red- and black-figure Greek pottery. Robinson secured a position in 1986 at the University of Iowa as a lecturer and (non-tenure track) professor of the practice with joint appointments in the departments of classics and art history. Her lectures and research focused on the appearance of maenads (women followers of Dionysus) in vase painting, theorizing that these women--and not goddesses--represented the Greek conception of allure and beauty. Using many little-known painting examples, Robinson demonstrated that the female form depicted in these classical hand-maidens changed during periods of prosperity and austerity in Athens. Her work was adopted as a model by many Women's Studies scholars. Robinson seemed to embody the subject she studied: by the 1990s she had become a regular on regional television talk shows, in part because of her own profound womanly appearance. She married George Humphry Meyer (b. 1954), a poet and writer, in 1997. Her publications drew on erotic vase painting subjects in the literature; more conservative classical-studies publications refused to publish her work because of the photographs of modern alluring woman Robinson insisted accompany her articles. Partially to regain academic credibility--which she felt her televised appearances had tarnished by drawing attention to her particular appearance--she underwent breast reduction surgery. She died of complications resulting from the surgery in Germany. Her work appeared in periodicals as diverse as Panthea to Juggs Magazine. Robinson's major study on concepts of the voluptuous in Greek painting remained uncompleted at her death.

Robinson engaged in a celebrated debate with the Christian iconography scholar Anna Ziegert, culmonating public lectures in 2000. The exchanged focused on the largely methodological issues of how much body representation applied to visual hermeutics.   §SI

Home Country:  United States/Germany

Sources:  "Classics' Controversial Maenad Dies." University of Iowa Ledger July 23, 2003, p. 2; Who's Who Among Classical Women Scholars [manuscript, in preparation].

Bibliography: [dissertation:] Weiblichen Formen: Körperformen in rot und schwarz Figur Vasen. Basle, 1984; "Female Attributes in Attic Black-figure Painting." Panthea 4 (1986): 2-16; and Fleur, Rene. "Ancient Hooters." Juggs Magazine (March 1991): 24-26.