Sarah Kielt Costello, PhD, has taught art history at UHCL since 2014. She was the recipient of the University of Houston Provost’s Teaching Excellence Award in 2012. Dr. Costello’s research focus is the visual culture of the early periods of the Ancient Near East. In her writing, she investigates the social contexts of visual culture, especially how people store and communicate ideas, and how imagery relates to religion. She is a project leader of a collaborative research initiative with Houston’s Menil Collection, focused on the art of the ancient Mediterranean world. She has conducted field research in Cyprus, Turkey, Israel, and Greece, and in 2013 studied in Greece as a Fulbright Fellow in the summer session at the American School of Classical Studies. Danielle Smotherman Bennett, PhD, is the curatorial associate of collections and is responsible for researching the ancient world collection, which includes objects spanning from 15,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. She received her BA in Art History and Archaeology from the University of Missouri and her MA and PhD in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College with a specialty in Athenian vase-painting. She has excavated multi-period sites in Greece, Italy, Turkey, and England spanning from the Bronze Age to the Medieval periods as well as taught at multiple universities, most recently San Diego State University.