Victoria Jennings

Specialization:

Areas of Concentration: Ancient Greek and Roman artwork, Ancient Roman burial and funerary practices, ancient cults, mythology, witchcraft, magic, human remains in museums, NAGPRA and museum practices
Faculty Advisor: Claudia Moser
Committee Members: María Lumbreras, Christine Thomas (Religious Studies), Stuart McKie (University of Exeter, United Kingdom)
Dissertation: "Ars Contra Naturam: The Liminal Magic of Death in Antiquity"
M.A. Thesis: "I Sing the Body Magical: Baubo and Her Apotropaic Power," completed 2020

Bio

Victoria Jennings is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History of Art & Architecture Department at UC Santa Barbara and the Repatriation and Tribal Collaborations Coordinator at UC Santa Cruz. Her dissertation, "Ars Contra Naturam: The Liminal Magic of Death in Antiquity," argues that deviant burial practices of Northern Italy during the Roman Republic and early Roman Imperial period demonstrate a religious devotion – through the use of iron nails and the human body itself – that we may title as magical. Magic, in this instance, utilizes materiality, space, and the practitioners’ agency in unique ways that leave undeniable traces on the archaeological record, demonstrating religious devotion and artistic expression. Beyond her extensive work and research in Ancient Greek and Roman artwork, Victoria has an additional specialty in museum practices of housing and displaying human remains (bog bodies, mummified remains, skeletal remains, and tattooed tissue) along with NAGPRA, CalNAGPRA, and repatriation-related issues.

Victoria previously held a position as Associate Curator/NAGPRA Specialist at the Repository for Archaeological and Ethnographic Collections at UCSB from 2022-2025. She was a recipient of the Margaret Mallory Fellowship and has received the Ridley-Tree Scholarship at UCSB and the Eugene Wurzel Award for Scholastic Excellence at UCLA. She holds an M.A. (UCSB 2020) done under the guidance of Dr. Claudia Moser and a committee that included Dr. Alicia Boswell (HAA, UCSB) and Dr. Elizabeth DePalma Digeser (History, UCSB); her thesis was titled I Sing the Body Magical: Baubo and Her Apotropaic Power . She was the recipient of the Murray Roman Curatorial Fellowship and held the position of Internship Program Coordinator within the Art, Design, & Architecture Museum at UCSB where she helped curate the 2022 MFA exhibition It Appears to Be a Circle . She continued this work in 2023 by co-curating the MFA exhibit Chaotic Good . Victoria was the co-organizer of UCSB's History of Art & Architecture's Art History Graduate Student Association 46th Annual Academic Symposium Objects of Affection: Itineraries, Sensations, and “Thingness” in 2022. She holds a B.A. (UCLA 2017) completed alongside an honors thesis titled Deeper Than Inside: Understanding and Analyzing Ancient Greek and Roman Female Genital Artwork done under the guidance of Dr. Sharon Gerstel (Art History, UCLA). She has worked at both the Fowler Museum at UCLA and UCLA's Design Media Arts Department, volunteered in the Decorative Arts and Sculpture Conservation Lab at the Getty Museum, participated in UCLA's Undergraduate Research Week, and held internships at private conservation studios in Hollywood. She has also lived, worked, and studied for extended periods in Florence and Milan.