Office Hours
By Appointment
Education
PhD, University of Pennsylvania
About Me
Karen Sonik is an art and cultural historian specializing in the visual arts and literature of ancient Mesopotamia, where the world’s earliest cities arose in the late fourth millennium BCE. Her research focuses on three primary and intersecting topics: (1) the invention and reception of ancient art and aesthetics within the framework of nineteenth- and early-twentieth century Europe and the rise of the public museum; (2) developing new readings of Mesopotamian epic literature (including the Gilgamesh Epic and Enuma elish, the so-called Babylonian Epic of Creation) through the application of contemporary methods of literary analysis; and (3) what it meant to be human and what it meant to be Other within the framework of Mesopotamia’s developing urbanism.
Her work on ancient art and aesthetics explores the assimilation of Mesopotamia’s visual arts and literature to the Western “story of art” from the mid-nineteenth century; the significant slippages between contemporary Western ideas of fine art and aesthetics—which developed out of European philosophical discourses of the eighteenth- and nineteenth- century and explicitly reflect the specific cultural, religious, and political concerns of that time—and those of ancient and non-Western civilizations; and the ways in which the rise of the public art museum has shaped ancient artworks. Recent studies include “Between Science and Aesthetics in the Nineteenth-Century Public Museum: The Elgin Marbles, The Chain of Art, and the Victorian Assimilation of Assyrian Sculpture” (with D. Kertai, 2023); “The Distant Eye and the Ekphrastic Image: Thinking Through Aesthetics and Art for the Senses (Western | Non-Western)” (2022); “Art/ifacts and ArtWorks: De-Colonizing the Study and Museum Display of Ancient and Non-Western Things” (2021); the edited books Art/ifacts and ArtWorks in the Ancient World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021) and Journey to the City: A Companion to the Middle East Galleries at the Penn Museum (with S. Tinney; University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019); and other articles and book chapters.
Dr. Sonik’s work on literature critically examines Mesopotamia’s rich corpus of Sumerian and Akkadian epics and other tales, drawing on contemporary theories of literary analysis to articulate new interpretations of narrative structure and meaning; to draw out themes relating (especially) to issues of gender, relationships, and identity; and to rework our understanding of the characters that inhabit these ancient literary works. Recent publications include “A Mirror for Queens: Gender, Motherhood, and Power in Enuma elish” (2025); “Mesopotamian Literature: Issues, Theories, and Methods of Sumerian and Akkadian Narrative Analysis” (with D. Shehata; 2024); “Characterization and Identity in Mesopotamian Literature: The Gilgamesh Epic, Enuma elish, and Other Sumerian and Akkadian Narratives” (2024); “Gilgamesh and Tiamat Abroad: (Mis-)Reading Mesopotamian Epic” (2024); “Awe as Entangled Emotion: Prosociality, Collective Action, and Aesthetics in the Sumerian Gilgamesh Narratives” (2023); “Minor and Marginal(ized)? Re-Thinking Women as Minor Characters in the Epic of Gilgamesh” (2021); the edited volume Contemporary Approaches to Mesopotamian Literature: How to Tell a Story (with D. Shehata; Brill, 2024); and many other articles and book chapters.
Her work on being human and being Other has taken up issues of the body, with an emphasis on the means through which divine, royal, monstrous, and other (including feminine and marginalized Other) bodies materialize or presence identity and exercise or are stripped of agency; the nature, experience, and expression of emotions and the senses; and how ancient and contemporary conceptions of gender shape (or mis-shape) our understanding of women and other marginalized figures in Mesopotamia’s visual arts and literature. Recent works include “Emotions in Ancient Near Eastern Art: Issues and Methods” (2024); “The Emotions of Dead Civilizations: ‘Come, Tell Me How You Lived’” (2023); “Minor and Marginal(ized)? Re-Thinking Women as Minor Characters in the Epic of Gilgamesh” (2021); ”Entangled Images: Royal Memory, Posthumous Presence, and the Afterlives of Assyrian Rock Reliefs” (with D. Kertai, 2021); the edited volumes The Handbook of Emotions in the Ancient Near East (with U. Steinert; Routledge, 2023); and The Materiality of Divine Agency (with B. Pongratz-Leisten; de Gruyter, 2015); and many other articles and book chapters.
Dr. Sonik earned her PhD in the Art & Archaeology of the Mediterranean World at the University of Pennsylvania and has been a Member in the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard; an ACLS New Faculty Fellow in the Department of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles; a postdoctoral fellow in Egyptology & Ancient Western Asian Studies at Brown University; and a Visiting Research Scholar at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University. She has also received research support from the American Philosophical Society and the Kolb Foundation.
Research Interests
ancient Mediterranean and Near East, ancient Mesopotamia
Publications
Books
Contemporary Approaches to Mesopotamian Literature: How to Tell a Story (ed. with D. Shehata). Leiden: Brill, 2024.
The Routledge Handbook of Emotions in the Ancient Near East (ed. with U. Steinert). New York: Routledge, 2023.
Art/ifacts and ArtWorks in the Ancient World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.
Journey to the City: A Companion to the Middle East Galleries at the Penn Museum (ed. with S. Tinney). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.
The Materiality of Divine Agency (with B. Pongratz-Leisten). Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015.
A Common Cultural Heritage: Studies in the Mesopotamian & the Biblical World in Honor of Barry L. Eichler (ed. with G. Frame, E. Leichty, J. H. Tigay, and S. Tinney). Bethesda: CDL Press, 2011.
Articles and Book Chapters
“A Mirror for Queens: Gender, Motherhood, and Power in Enuma Elish.” In Enuma Elish: The Babylonian Epic of Creation, ed. J. Haubold, S. Helle, E. Jiménez, and S. Wisnom, 215–236. New York: Bloomsbury, 2025.
“Introduction: How to Tell a Story in Ancient Mesopotamia” (with D. Shehata). In Contemporary Approaches to Mesopotamian Literature: How to Tell a Story, ed. D. Shehata and K. Sonik, 1–8. Leiden: Brill, 2024.
“Mesopotamian Literature: Issues, Theories, and Methods of Sumerian and Akkadian Narrative Analysis” (with D. Shehata). In Contemporary Approaches to Mesopotamian Literature: How to Tell a Story, ed. D. Shehata and K. Sonik, 11–98. Leiden: Brill, 2024.
“Making the Invisible Visible: Propaganda, Ideology, and Intertextuality in Assyrian Royal Narrative” (with J. Novotny). In Contemporary Approaches to Mesopotamian Literature: How to Tell a Story, ed. D. Shehata and K. Sonik, 235–251. Leiden: Brill, 2024.
“Characterization and Identity in Mesopotamian Literature: The Gilgamesh Epic, Enuma elish, and Other Sumerian and Akkadian Narratives.” In Contemporary Approaches to Mesopotamian Literature: How to Tell a Story, ed. D. Shehata and K. Sonik, 255–295. Leiden: Brill, 2024.
“Gilgamesh and Tiamat Abroad: (Mis-)Reading Mesopotamian Epic.” The Epic World, ed. P. J. Lothspeich, 104–117. New York: Routledge, 2024.
“Emotions in Ancient Near Eastern Art: Issues and Methods.” In Grasping Emotions: Methodological Concepts of Biblical Emotion Research in Interreligious and Interdisciplinary Discourse, edited by U. E. Eisen, H. Mader, M. Peetz, 79–98. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2024.
“Between Science and Aesthetics in the Nineteenth-Century Public Museum: The Elgin Marbles, The Chain of Art, and the Victorian Assimilation of Assyrian Sculpture” (with D. Kertai). In The Reliefs of Ashurnasirpal II: Architecture, Iconography, and Text, ed. J. C. Howard, 105–138. Leuven: Peeters, 2023.
“Emotions in the Ancient Near East: Foundations for a Developing Field of Study” (with U. Steinert). In The Routledge Handbook of Emotions in the Ancient Near East, ed. K. Sonik and U. Steinert, 1–24. New York: Routledge, 2023.
“The Emotions of Dead Civilizations: ‘Come, Tell Me How You Lived.’” In The Routledge Handbook of Emotions in the Ancient Near East, ed. K. Sonik and U. Steinert, 27–50. New York: Routledge, 2023.
“Emotions and Body Language: The Expression of Emotions in Visual Art.” In The Routledge Handbook of Emotions in the Ancient Near East, ed. K. Sonik and U. Steinert, 269–325. New York: Routledge, 2023.
“Awe as Entangled Emotion: Prosociality, Collective Action, and Aesthetics in the Sumerian Gilgamesh Narratives.” In The Routledge Handbook of Emotions in the Ancient Near East, ed. K. Sonik and U. Steinert, 487–524. New York: Routledge, 2023.
“The Distant Eye and the Ekphrastic Image: Thinking Through Aesthetics and Art for the Senses (Western | Non-Western).” In The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East, ed. K. Neumann and A. Thomason, 530–57. New York: Routledge, 2022.
“Minor and Marginal(ized)? Re-Thinking Women as Minor Characters in the Epic of Gilgamesh.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 141.4 (2021): 779–801.
“The Ancient Near East: Western | Non-Western.” In Art/ifacts and ArtWorks in the Ancient World, ed. K. Sonik, xxix–xl. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.
“Art/ifacts and ArtWorks: De-Colonizing the Study and Museum Display of Ancient and Non-Western Things.” In Art/ifacts and ArtWorks in the Ancient World, ed. K. Sonik, 1–82. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.
“Entangled Images: Royal Memory, Posthumous Presence, and the Afterlives of Assyrian Rock Reliefs” (with D. Kertai). In Afterlives of Ancient Rock-Cut Monuments in the Near East: Carvings In and Out of Time, ed. J. Ben-Dov and F. Rojas, 39–68. Leiden: Brill, 2021.
“Gilgamesh and Emotional Excess: The King Without Counsel in the SB Gilgamesh Epic.” In The Expression of Emotions in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, ed. S.-W. Hsu and J. Llop Raduà, 390–409. Leiden: Brill, 2020.
Slingerland, E., M. W. Monroe, B. Sullivan, R. Faith Walsh, D. Veidlinger, W. Noseworthy, C. Herriott, B. Raffield, J. L. Peterson, G. Rodríguez, K. Sonik, W. Green, F. S. Tappenden, A. Ashtari, M. Muthukrishna, R. Spicer. 2018–2019. “Historians Respond to Whitehouse et al. (2019), “Complex Societies Precede Moralizing Gods Throughout World History.” Journal of Cognitive Historiography 5 (1-2): 1–16.
“Emotion and the Ancient Arts: Visualizing, Materializing, and Producing States of Being.” In Visualizing Emotions in the Ancient Near East, ed. S. Kipfer, 219–261. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017.
“Divine (Re-)Presentation: Authoritative Images and a Pictorial Stream of Tradition in Mesopotamia.” In The Materiality of Divine Agency, ed. B. Pongratz-Leisten and K. Sonik, 142–193. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015.
“Between Cognition and Culture: Theorizing the Materiality of Divine Agency in Cross-Cultural Perspective” (with B. Pongratz-Leisten). In The Materiality of Divine Agency, ed. B. Pongratz-Leisten and K. Sonik, 3–69. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015.
“Pictorial Mythology and Narrative in the Ancient Near East.” In Critical Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Art, ed. M. Feldman and B. Brown, 265–293. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014.
“The Monster’s Gaze: Vision as Mediator Between Time and Space in the Art of Mesopotamia.” In Time and History in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 56th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at Barcelona, 26–30 July 2010, ed. Ll. Feliu, J. Llop, A. Millet Albà, and J. Sanmartín, 285–300. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2013.
“Mesopotamian Conceptions of the Supernatural: A Taxonomy of Zwischenwesen.” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 14 (2013): 103–116.
“From Hesiod’s Abyss to Ovid’s rudis indigestaque moles: Chaos and Cosmos in the Babylonian Epic of Creation.” In Creation and Chaos: A Reconsideration of Gunkel’s Chaoskampf Hypothesis, ed. J. Scurlock and R. Beal, 1–25. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2013.
“Breaching the Boundaries of Being: Metamorphoses in the Mesopotamian Literary Texts.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 132.3 (2012): 385–393.
“The Tablet of Destinies and the Transmission of Power in Enūma eliš.” In Organization, Representation, and Symbols of Power: Proceedings of the 54th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at Würzburg, ed. G. Wilhelm, 387–395. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012.
“Gender Matters in Enuma eliš.” In In the Wake of Tikva Frymer-Kensky, edited by R. H. Beal, S. W. Holloway, and J. Scurlock, 85–101. Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2009.
“Bad King, False King, True King: Apsû and His Heirs.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 128.4 (2008): 737–743.