Academic Programs
Archaeology and Art History

Jennie Ebeling earned a Doctor of Philosophy in the archaeology of the Near East from the University of Arizona and specializes in the archaeology of Israel and Jordan. A former Fulbright scholar, Ebeling has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Lady Davis Trust to conduct research into ancient food and drink technology and women in Canaan and ancient Israel. She is co-editor of The Old Testament in Archaeology and History (Baylor, 2017), Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond (Brill, 2011), and New Approaches to Old Stones: Recent Studies of Ground Stone Artifacts (Equinox, 2008) and the author of Women's Lives in Biblical Times (T&T Clark, Int'l, 2010). Ebeling currently co-directs the Jezreel Expedition with Norma Franklin of the University of Haifa, Israel.

Professor Ebeling teaches core courses in the archaeology curriculum and survey courses that focus on the archaeology of the Near East, Egypt, and Syria-Palestine. She also teachers upper-level seminar courses on Ancient Technology, Food and Drink in Antiquity, and Women in Antiquity.

Alan Kaiser, who earned a Doctor of Philosophy in archaeology from Boston University, specializes in Roman archaeology and the application of geographic information systems (GIS) to site analysis. He has conducted fieldwork at a number of sites in Spain, Italy, Greece, England, and on the Caribbean island of Nevis as well as in the US in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Indiana. Kaiser is the author of three books, The Urban Dialogue: An Analysis of the Use of Space in the Roman City of Empuries, Spain (Archaeopress, 2000), Roman Urban Street Networks (Routledge, 2011), and Archaeology, Sexism, and Scandal: The Long-Suppressed Story of One Woman’s Discoveries and the Man Who Stole Credit for Them (Rowman and Littlefield).

Professor Kaiser teaches courses in Roman and Etruscan archaeology, as well as courses in Roman history and the Latin language. He has also conducted training excavations in connection with the archaeological field techniques course. The most recent excavation was on the Evansville campus, at the site of the post-WWII "Tin City."

Heidi Strobel earned a Doctor of Philosophy in art history from the University of Illinois; her fields of specialization include eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European art and Asian art. Her dissertation research, which focuses on the promotion of eighteenth-century female artists by female patrons such as Charlotte, wife of King George III of England, is published as The Artistic Matronage of Queen Charlotte (1744-1818): How a Queen Promoted Both Art and Female Artists in English Society (Edwin Mellen Press, 2011). She is currently co-editing Enlightened Objects: Essays on Material Culture and Gender in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800, a volume which will include one of her essays on late eighteenth-century textile artist Mary Linwood. Other recent publications include articles on twentieth-century topics such as British sculptor Barbara Hepworth, Women’s Scholarship of Women, American folk artist Howard Finster, and World War II icon Rosie the Riveter.

Professor Strobel also has given many local lectures on Evansville-area Rosie the Riveters and oversaw the cataloging of the University art collection. She also supervises student internships at the following local museums: Reitz Home Museum; Audubon Museum and Nature Center; Children’s Museum of Evansville; Evansville Museum of Arts, History, and Science; Angel Mounds State Historic Site; and Cultural Resource Analysts, Inc.

Patrick Thomas earned a Doctor of Philosophy in classical archaeology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Despite his "classical" degree, his research focuses on Greek Bronze Age and Early Iron Age ceramics and Greek prehistory. Professor Thomas has worked for excavations in Egypt, Turkey, and Greece, most recently at Iklaina in the Peloponnesus and Mitrou on the east-central coast of the Greek mainland. His idea of a great time in the summer is sorting through a big table of freshly-excavated pottery sherds and writing up a preliminary analysis with his colleagues.

Professor Thomas teaches a range of courses in Greek archaeology, European prehistory, ancient Greek history, Latin language, and Classical Mythology. In 2000 he received the Archaeological Institute of America’s Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award, and in 2002 he was the University’s Teacher of the Year. In his spare time, he assists with support of activities of Angel Mounds State Historic Site in Evansville.

Christine Lovasz-Kaiser earned an MA in archaeology from Boston University with an emphasis on the Middle Ages in Europe. She is particularly interested in the Picts and Anglo-Saxons of early medieval Scotland and England as well as the Vikings. She has extensive fieldwork experience having worked on sites in Colorado, Massachusetts, Indiana, Spain, Hungary, England, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, and Israel. She has served as a member of the History Committee for the Evansville Museum of Arts, History and Science and she teaches history and archaeology part-time at the University of Southern Indiana where she received the USI Foundation Award for Outstanding Teaching by Adjunct Faculty in 2008.

As an adjunct lecturer for the department Mrs. Lovasz-Kaiser teaches courses on the archaeology of medieval England, Viking archaeology, and occasionally the archaeology of Pompeii. She also co-teaches the archaeological field techniques course here on campus and is the campus assistant for the Jezreel Expedition.

Ian Cipin earned an MA from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London and has a particular interest in the archaeology of the Near East. He has excavated extensively in the United Kingdom, Romania, Turkey and Israel at sites dating from prehistory to the modern era. He has also worked as a senior archaeologist for a commercial archaeology company in the UK and is currently the Field Director of the Jezreel Expedition in Israel. His research interests are the later Neolithic to Early Bronze Age in the Southern Levant with a focus on daily life practices and social organization from the perspective of the individual and smaller scale dynamics within societies.