Tasha Dobbin-BennettChair, Humanities Division; Associate Professor of Art History and Studio Art

Tasha Dobbin-Bennett is an Associate Professor of Art History and Studio Art at Oxford College.She earned her Ph.D. from Yale University in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations with a specialization in Egyptology. Prior to starting at Oxford College in 2015, she was the Papyrologist at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, where she worked on the ancient papyri collection.   

Dr. Dobbin-Bennett's dissertation research examined the ancient Egyptian conceptions of decomposition and putrefaction.  Her interdisciplinary study applied forsenic anthropological research to the ancient Egyptian medical and religious texts.  Having spent a number of years on archaeological excavations in Egypt, she is interested in how Egypt's unique climate contributed to the ancient Egyptian perception of the post-mortem human body. Her current research examines how 19th and 20th Century perceptions of ancient Egyptian mummification influenced collection practices of human remains in British and American museums, and how these practices predisposed the public in the United Kingdom and Civil War period America to the increasingly positive perceptions of modern embalming practices.