Kostis KourelisAssociate Professor of Art History

Biography

Kostis Kourelis is Associate Professor of Architectural History with special interests in the archaeology of migration, the Mediterranean, cultural heritage, and historic preservation. His surveys of architectural history span prehistory to the present. He teaches Medieval and Islamic Art, and thematic courses on the architecture of health, home, migration, and counterculture. In the summers, he directs archaeological field schools in the Peloponnese, Greece. Dr. Kourelis is the academic advisor to students pursuing careers in architecture, design, and art history; he also contributes to the Health Humanities and the Forced Migration certificate programs.

Education

Ph.D. Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World, University of Pennsylvania, 2003

Master of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania, 1993

B.A. in Philosophy and Desing of the Environment, University of Pennsylvania, 1990

Publications

MEDIEVAL ARCHAEOLOGY

“Ethnicity and Identity in Byzantine Archaeology,” in The Cambridge Handbook of Byzantine Archaeology, ed. Michael Decker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025), pp. 614-636.

“Religion in the Byzantine Countryside,” in The Cambridge World History of Religious Architecture, vol. 1, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, ed. Richard A. Etlin, Ann Marie Yasin, and Stephen Murray (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2023), pp. 159-165.  

“Wool and Rubble Walls: Domestic Archeology in the Medieval Peloponnese,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 73 (2019), pp. 407-427.

“Zaraka Surrounded: The Archaeology of Settlements in the Peloponnesian Countryside,” in The Cistercian Monastery of Zaraka, Greece, ed. Sheila Campbell (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Western Michigan University, 2018) pp. 193-213. 

“The Rural House in the Medieval Peloponnese: An Archaeological Reassessment of Byzantine Domestic Architecture,” in Archaeology in Architecture: Studies in Honor of Cecil L. Striker, ed. Judson J. Emerick and Deborah Deliyannis (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 2005), pp. 119-129.

Houses of the Morea: Vernacular Architecture of the Northwest Peloponnesos (1205-1955), with Frederick A. Cooper, Helen B. Foster, Mary Coulton, and Joseph D. Alchermes (Athens: Melissa, 2002). 

ARCHAEOLOGICAL HISTORY

Beyond Icons: Theories and Methods in Byzantine Archaeology, co-edited with William R. Caraher, and Darlene Brooks-Hedstrom (New York: Routledge, 2025). 

“Walter S. George and the Byzantine House: Ruskin’s Greek Shadow,” in Byzantium and British Heritage: Byzantine Influences on the Arts and Crafts Movement, ed. Amalia G. Kakissis (New York: Routledge, 2024), pp. 159-188.

“Byzantine Houses and Modern Fictions: Domesticating Mystras in 1930s Greece,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 65 & 66 (2011–2012), pp. 297-331.

“Flights of Archaeology: Peschke's Acrocorinth,” Hesperia 86, no. 4 (2017), pp. 723-782.

“Byzantium and the Avant-Garde: Excavations at Corinth, 1920s-1930s,” Hesperia 76 (2007), pp. 391-442.

“Urban Legend: Architecture in The Lord of the Rings,” with Steven Woodward, in From Hobbits to Hollywood: Essays on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, ed. Ernest Mathijs and Murray Pomerance (New York: Rodopi, 2006), pp. 189-214 

“Early Travelers in Greece and the Invention of Medieval Architectural History,” in The Architecture of Tourism: Perceptions, Performance and Space, ed. D. Medina Lasansky and Brian McLaren (New York: Berg, 2004), pp. 37-52. Translated into Spanish

MIGRATION HISTORIES

“Greek American Feminist Artists: Radical Traditions,” with April Kalogeropoulos Householder, The Journal of Modern Greek Studies 44, no. 2, (forthcoming, October 2025)

Two Hundred Years of Hellenism in Philadelphia: The History of Saint George Greek Orthodox Cathedral (Exton, Pa.: Apple Press, 2025). 

“Architecture, Abolition, Revolution: Greek American Revival (1920s) of the American Greek Revival (1820s),” in The Greek Revolution and the Greek Diaspora in the United States, ed. Maria Kaliambou (New York: Routledge, 2023), pp. 38-57. 

“Style and Real Estate: Architecture of Faith among the Greek and Italian Immigrants, 1870-1925,” in Redirecting Ethnic Singularity: Italian Americans and Greek Americans in Conversation, ed. Yiorgos Anagnostou, Yiorgos Kalogeras, and Theodora Patrona (New York: Fordham University Press, 2022), pp. 105-140.

“The Greek Communities of Harrisburg and Lancaster: A Study of Immigration, Residence, and Mobility in the City Beautiful Era,” with David Pettegrew, Pennsylvania History 87, no. 1 (2020), pp. 66-91.

“Closing the Window on Cavafy: Foregrounding the Background in the Photographic Portraits,” Journal of Greek Media and Culture 1, no. 2 (2015), pp. 227-252. 

“The Immigrant Liturgy: Greek Orthodox Worship and Architecture in America,” with Vasileios Marinis, in Liturgy in Migration: Cultural Contexts from the Upper Room to Cyberspace, ed. Teresa Berger (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 2012), pp. 155-175.

ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

“House Archaeology: Ethnographies of Forced Migration in Modern Greece,” Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association (forthcoming 2025).

The Art of Wild Drawing (WD): Context and Content (Grand Forks, N.D.: The Digital Press of the University of North Dakota, 2025).

“Archaeology of Forced Migration in Greece: A Layered Pedagogy,” in Migration, Displacement, and Higher Education: Now What? ed. Brittany Murray, Matthew Brill-Carlat, and Maria Höhn (Cham Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), pp. 151-162.

“Drones and Stones: Mapping Deserted Villages in Lidoriki, Greece,” with Todd Brenningmeyer and Miltiadis Katsaros, in Deserted Villages: Perspectives from the Eastern Mediterranean, ed. Rebecca M. Seifried and Deborah E. Brown Stewart (Grand Forks, N.D.: The Digital Press of the University of North Dakota, 2021), pp. 347-388.

“Three Elenis: Archaeologies of the Greek American Village,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 38, no. 1 (2020), pp. 85-108.

“Sites of Refuge in a Historically Layered Landscape: Camps in Central Greece,” Change Over Time 9, no. 1, (2019), Special Issue, Heritage of War, Conflict and Commemoration, pp. 88-113. 

“If Place Remotely Matters: Camped in Greece’s Contingent Countryside,” in The New Nomadic Age: Archaeologies of Forced and Undocumented Migration, ed. Yannis Hamilakis (London: Equinox, 2018), pp. 215-226.

“The North Dakota Man Camp Project: The Archaeology of Home in the Bakken Oil Fields,” with William R. Caraher, Bret Weber, and Richard Rothaus, Historical Archaeology 52, no. 1 (2017), pp. 267-287.

Punk Archaeology, with William R. Caraher, and Andrew Reinhardt (Grand Forks, N.D.: The Digital Press of the University of North Dakota, 2014).

“The Archaeology of Xenitia: Greek-American Material Culture, 1873-1924,” in Archaeology and History in Roman, Medieval and Post-Medieval Greece: Studies on Method and Meaning in Honor of Timothy E. Gregory, ed. Linda J. Hall, William R. Caraher, and R. Scott Moore (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 411-453.

Teaching

Kostis Kourelis has taught architectural history at Franklin & Marshall since 2009. He has also taught at Connecticut College, Wesleyan University, Swarthmore College, and Clemson University. Every summer, Prof. Kourelis teaches archaeological field methods in Greece at sites including Corinth, Isthmia, Mount Lykaion, Lidoriki, and Athens. 

Introduction to Architecture I (Ancient-to-Medieval) (HAA 121)

Introduction to Architecture II (Renaissance-to-Contemporary) (HAA 123)

Migration Architecture: Introduction to Spatial Analysis (HAA 175)

Islamic Art & Architecture (HAA 211)

Castles & Cathedrals (HAA 219)

Lancaster Architecture (HAA 227)

Architecture & Health (HAA 271)

Philly: Punk, Jazz, Cinema (HAA 279)

Urban Heritage, Tourism & Development (BOS 271, with Prof. Podoshen)

The Digital City (CNX 110)

Archaeologies of Home (CNX 183)

Grants, Awards, Fellowships

Penn Museum, Consulting Scholar, 2016-present

Teaching Art in Context Grant, Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 2023

Wolf Humanities Center Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania, 2022-2023 

National Parks Service, Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant, 2022 

North Dakota Humanities Council Grant, 2015

Stanley J. Seeger Research Fellowship, Hellenic Studies, Princeton University, 2007

George H. Forsyth, Jr. Memorial Lecture Award, Archaeological Institute of America, 2007-2008

Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Pontifical Institute, University of Toronto, 2004-2005

National Endowment of the Humanities, Summer Research Grant, 2004