Megan Neely is a PhD candidate in Art History at the University of Georgia specializing in Italian Renaissance art. She received her BA in Art History from Georgia Southern University before enrolling in the Art History Master’s Program at UGA, where she graduated in 2015. Her thesis, “Federico Barocci’s Tale of Two Troys: Aeneas in Prague and Rome,” addresses issues of gift-giving and copies in Barocci’s only mythological work: Aeneas Fleeing Troy. Her current research examines the connections between self-portraiture and artistic identity, poetry, and mythological punishment in the Venetian painter Titian’s Flaying of Marsyas, believed to be one of his last works.

With the support of funding awarded by the Art History Faculty and donors at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, the UGA Graduate School, and the Willson Center for the Humanities & Arts, Megan has been able to travel extensively to see works of art and research in libraries and archives around the US and Europe. She was able to work as a teaching assistant in Italy on the Cortona Study Abroad Science Maymester in 2015, travelling with students to Cortona, Siena, Florence, Orvieto, and Rome, while also working in Perugia, Arezzo, and Urbino for her own research. In 2018, after passing her comprehensive exams, she was awarded funding to research collections in the Czech Republic, Austria, and the UK, and in 2019 to research in Madrid, Spain and Mantua and Venice in Italy.

Outside of her research, Megan taught the undergraduate art history survey, ARHI 2300, from August 2016 – May 2022. She has promoted research-based learning within the UGA community by co-organizing the biannual Emerging Scholars Symposium, in collaboration with the Georgia Museum of Art, in 2016—Icons of Modernism: Representing the Brooklyn Bridge, 1883-1950—and 2019—Life, Love, and Marriage Chests in Renaissance Florence. She volunteered as a graduate student member of the University Arts Council from 2016-2019, which supports community awareness and appreciation for the arts, and encourages interdisciplinary collaboration across the university. In 2023, Megan moved from Athens to Savannah, Georgia, where she is completing her dissertation. She will be graduating with her PhD this Fall 2023.