Sunday, December 07, 2008

Brent Shaw, Princeton

Phone: 609-258-6604
Email: bshaw@princeton.edu
Website:
http://www.princeton.edu/~bshaw

Background:

BA: University of Alberta '68; MA: University of Alberta '71; PhD: Cambridge
University '78

Professor Shaw works on and teaches the history of the high and later
Roman empire. His main regional focus is the North African provinces
of the empire.
He has also worked and published on the demography and social history
of the Roman family. His current research interest is the problem of
sectarian violence in Christian communities in Africa in the age of Augustine.
He has published articles in all of these areas and, more recently, a
sourcebook on Spartacus and the Slave Wars. He is also currently
involved in the first volume of Worlds Together, Worlds Apart,
a new world history
text that is being written by faculty in the Department of History at
Princeton.

Recent articles:

“War and Violence,” [in] G. W. Bowerwock, Peter Brown & Oleg Grabar eds., Late
Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World, Cambridge, Mass. – London,
Harvard University Press (1999), pp. 130-69 [revised version [in] G. W.
Bowersock, Peter Brown & Oleg Grabar eds., Interpreting Late Antiquity:
Essays on the Postclassical World, Harvard, Havard University Press (2001),
130-69]

“The Seasonal Birthing Cycle of Roman Women,” chap. 2 [in] W. Scheidel ed.,

Debating Roman Demography, Leiden, Brill (2000), pp. 83-110

“Rebels and Outsiders,” chapter 11 [in] A. K. Bowman, P. D. A. Garnsey &
D. Rathbone eds., The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 11: The High
Empire, A.D. 70-192, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000,
pp. 361-403.

“Raising and Killing Children: Two Roman Myths,” Mnemosyne: A Journal of
Classical Studies vol. 54 (2001), pp. 31-77

“Challenging Braudel: A New Vision of the Mediterranean,” Journal of Roman
Archaeology, vol. 14 (2001), pp. 19-53 [review article of P. Horden & N.
Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History, Oxford,
Blackwell, 2000]

“Räuberbanden,” [in] Der Neue Pauly: Enzyklopädie der Antike, vol. 10 (Stuttgart-
Weimar, 2001), cols. 758-63

“’With Whom I Lived’: Measuring Roman Marriage,” Ancient Society, vol. 32 (2002),
pp. 195-242

“Judicial Nightmares and Christian Memory,” Journal of Early Christian Studies,
vol. 11 (2003), pp. 533-63

“A Peculiar Island: Maghrib and Mediterranean,” Mediterranean Historical Review,
vol. 18 (2003), pp. 93-125

“Who Were the Circumcellions?” chap. 11 [in] A. H. Merrills ed., Vandals,
Romans and Berbers: New Perspectives on Late Antique Africa (London,
Variorum, 2004), pp. 227-58

“Seasonal Mortality in Imperial Rome and the Mediterranean: Three Problem
Cases,” chap. 4 [in] Glenn R. Storey ed., Urbanism in the Preindustrial World:
Cross-Cultural Approaches (Tuscaloosa, The University of Alabama Press,
2006), pp. 86-109

Brent Shaw


Bob Kaster, Princeton

Phone: 609-258-3963
Email: kaster@princeton.edu
Web site: www.princeton.edu/~kaster

Background:

B.A. Dartmouth College ’69, M.A. Harvard University ’71, Ph.D. Harvard University ’75.

Professor Kaster has taught and written mainly in the areas of Roman rhetoric, the history of ancient education, and Roman ethics.
His annotated translation of Seneca's De ira and De clementia is due to appear in the 'complete works of Seneca' project of The University of Chicago Press. His current major project is an edition of Macrobius's Saturnalia for the Loeb Classical Library, which will be followed by an edition for the Oxford Classical Texts series. His commentary on Cicero's Pro Sestio appeared in Summer 2006
His book Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity was awarded the Goodwin Award of Merit in 1991. In May 2007 he received Princeton's Behrman Award for distinguished achievement in the Humanities.


Numerous articles and reviews on Roman education, literature, and cultural psychology: an archive of downloadable post-prints in PDF format is available through Professor Kaster's personal website.

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Harriet I. Flower, Princeton

Phone: 609-258-5572
Email: hflower@princeton.edu

Background:

B.A. University College, Oxford ’83, Ph.D. Penn ’93.

Professor Flower is teaching and writing about Roman social and cultural history, with a special emphasis on material culture. Her previous research has focussed on various facets of the study of memory and of spectacle in Roman culture, notably during the Republic. She has published Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture and The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture as well as many articles. She is the editor of Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic. Her current research is a book on the city of Rome during the Republic.

Books:

The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture, (University of North
Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, Studies in the History of Greece and Rome, eds. P. J. Rhodes, R.
Osborne, and R. J. A. Talbert). 2006.

The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic, (ed). H. I. Flower (Cambridge, 2004).

Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture, (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1996,
paperback edition 1999).

Roman Women: Selected Readings, (Providence, Rhode Island, 1986), a Latin reader published
through a grant from the Rhode Island Committee for the Humanities.

Recent Articles:

"Spectacle and Political Culture in the Republic," in H. I. Flower (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to the Roman Republic (Cambridge, 2004) 322-43.

Book Review: BMCR 2003.12.20: Egon Flaig, Ritualisierte Politik. Zeichen, Gesten und
Herrschaft im Alten Rom. Historische Semantik Band 1 (Göttingen, 2003).

"Memories of Marcellus: History and Memory in Roman Republican Culture," in Formen
römischer Geschichtsschreibung von den Anfängen bis Livius: Gattungen – Autoren - Kontexte,
edited by U. Eigler, U. Gotter, N. Luraghi, U. Walter (Darmstadt 2003), 1-17.

"Were Women ever 'Ancestors' in Republican Rome?" in Images of Ancestors, ed. J. Munk Højte,
Aarhus Studies in Mediterranean Antiquity 5, University of Aarhus Press, (Aarhus, Denmark,
2002), 157-82.

"Roman Historical Drama and Nero on Stage," a commentary on P. Kragelund, "Historical
Drama in Ancient Rome: Republican Flourishing and Imperial Decline?" Symbolae Osloenses 77
(2002), 68-72.

"Rereading the Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus of 186 BC: Gender Roles in the Roman
Middle Republic," in Oikistes: Essays in Honor of A. J. Graham, edited by Vanessa B. Gorman
and Eric W. Robinson, (Leiden, 2002), 79-98.

Review of C. W. Hedrick Jr., History and Silence. Purge and Rehabilitation of Memory in Late
Antiquity (Austin, TX, 2000), Classical Journal 97 no. 2 (December 2001-January 2002), 207-
209.

"A Tale of Two Monuments: Domitian, Trajan, and some Praetorians at Puteoli (AE 1973, 137),"
American Journal of Archaeology 105.4 (2001), 625-48.

"Fabula de Bacchanalibus: the Bacchanalian Cult of the Second Century BC and Roman
Drama," in G. Manuwald (ed.), Identität und Alterität in der frührömischen Tragödie (Identitäten
und Alteritäten, vol. 3, Altertumswissenschaftliche Reihe vol. 1, Würzburg, 2000), 23-35.

"Damnatio Memoriae and Epigraphy," in E. R. Varner, (ed.) From Caligula to Constantine:
Tyranny and Transformation in Roman Portraiture (Atlanta, 2000) 58-69, the catalogue of an
exhibition at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, (Fall 2000), and at the Yale
University Art Gallery (Spring 2001).

"The Tradition of the Spolia Opima: Marcus Claudius Marcellus and Augustus," Classical
Antiquity 19.1 (2000), 34-64.


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Andrew Feldherr, Princeton

Phone: 609-258-3953
Email: feldherr@princeton.edu

Background:

Professor Feldherr graduated from Princeton in 1985 and received his Ph.D. from Berkeley in 1991. He is the author of Spectacle and Society in Livy's History (Berkeley, 1998) as well as articles on Vergil, Ovid, and Catullus and is currently at work on a book exploring the political aspects of fictionality in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Teaching interests include Roman Drama and Satire, as well as Roman Cultural History.



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Denis Feeney, Princeton

Phone: 609-258-7060
Email: dfeeney@princeton.edu

B.A., M.A. Auckland University ’76; D. Phil. Oxford University ’82

Professor Feeney teaches in the area of Latin poetry in particular, and has published two books on the interaction between Roman literature and religion (The Gods in Epic; Literature and Religion at Rome), with another on Roman representations of time (Caesar's Calendar). He is currently working on a book tentatively entitled Roman Horizons, on the way the Romans modernised themselves in the third and second centuries BCE.

Books:

The Gods in Epic: Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition (Oxford University
Press, 1991)

Literature and Religion at Rome: Cultures, Contexts, and Beliefs (Cambridge
University Press, 1998) trans. Claudio Salone, ed. Piergiorgio Parroni, Letteratura e religione nell’antica
Roma: culture, contesti e credenze (Salerno Editrice, Rome, 1999)

Caesar’s Calendar: Ancient Time and the Beginnings of History (University of
California Press, forthcoming, May 2007)

Recent Articles:


‘Leaving Dido: the appearance(s) of Mercury and the motivations of Aeneas’, in
A Woman Scorn’d: Responses to the Dido Myth, ed. M. Burden (London, 1998),
105-27

‘Epic violence, epic order: Killings, catalogues, and the role of the reader in
Aeneid 10’, in Reading Vergil’s Aeneid: An Interpretive Guide, ed. Christine
Perkell (Oklahoma, 1999), 178-94

‘Mea tempora: Patterning of time in Ovid’s Metamorphoses’, in P. Hardie, A.
Barchiesi and S. Hinds (eds.), Ovidian Transformations: Essays on Ovid’s
Metamorphoses and its reception (Cambridge Philological Society,
Supplementary vol. 23, Cambridge, 1999), 13-30

‘The odiousness of comparisons: Horace on Synkrisis’, in M. Paschalis (ed.),
volume on Horace, forthcoming, University of Crete

‘Una cum scriptore meo: poetry, principate, and the traditions of literary history
in the Epistle to Augustus’, in T. Woodman and D. Feeney (eds.), Traditions and
Contexts in the Poetry of Horace, forthcoming, Cambridge University Press

‘Introduction’, in Ovid: Metamorphoses. A New Verse Translation, tr. D.
Raeburn (Penguin, 2004), xiii-xxxvi

‘Interpreting sacrificial ritual in Roman poetry: disciplines and their models’, in
A. Barchiesi, J. Rüpke and S. Stephens (eds.), Rituals in Ink: A Conference on
Religion and Literary Production in Ancient Rome held at Stanford University in
February 2002 (Stuttgart, 2004), 9-29

‘Tenui…latens discrimine: spotting the differences in Statius’ Achilleid’,
Materiali e Discussioni 52 (2004), 85-105

‘The beginnings of a literature in Latin’, Journal of Roman Studies 95 (2005),
226-40 (Review Article of W. Suerbaum (ed.), Handbuch der lateinischen
Literatur der Antike. Erster Band: Die archaische Literatur. Von den Anfängen
bis zu Sullas Tod. Die vorliterarische Periode und die Zeit von 240 bis 78 v. Chr.
(Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft VIII.1, Munich, 2002))

‘Two Virgilian acrostics: certissima signa?’, with Damien Nelis, Classical
Quarterly 55 (2005), 644-6


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Edward Champlin, Princeton

Phone: 609-258-3959
Email: champlin@princeton.edu





B.A. Toronto ’70, D.Phil. Oxford ’76.


Professor Champlin works
on Roman social and literary history of the late Republic and early
Empire, and on Roman law. His books include Fronto and Antonine
Rome
; Final Judgments: Duty and Emotion in Roman Wills;
and Nero. He is currently interested in the uses of myth
in Roman public and private life.

Other Publications:

“Phaedrus the Fabulous”, Journal of Roman Studies 95 (2005) 97-123






Yelena Baraz, Princeton University

Phone: 609-258-3956
Email: ybaraz@princeton.edu

B.A. Brooklyn College, CUNY '97; Ph.D. UC Berkeley '04.

Professor Baraz specializes in Latin literature and Roman culture. She is interested in how literary texts shape, and are in turn shaped by, social and cultural forces. She is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Cicero's Philosophical Politics that locates the body of philosophical work Cicero produced in the 40s BCE under Caesar's dictatorship in its historical and cultural context. She is also working on a new project that explores the meaning of pride and related concepts in Roman society (a paper on this subject is forthcoming in "Kakos": Badness in Classical Antiquity, Ralph Rosen and Ineke Sluiter, edd., Brill 2008).



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Monday, August 25, 2008

Philip Freeman

Associate Professor of Classics, Luther College

Contact: freeph01@luther.edu
Department of Classics
Luther College
Decorah, Iowa 52101
USA
(563) 387-2144

"When I was a boy, I cared much more about comic books than Homer or Virgil. My father was stationed in Italy for a year when I was twelve. I spent the whole time earning Boy Scout merit badges and bowling with my friends rather than trekking around the country looking at Roman ruins. When I got back to the states and entered high school, I signed up for French rather than Latin because a dead language was the last thing I was interested in.

When I started my first year of college I thought Latin might be fun (and not too hard). I lasted a week before I dropped the class. I just couldn't understand the notion of declensions, verb-final syntax, and the dreaded ablative case. But I eventually gave it another try and persevered. Then I ended up adding Greek, mythology, and archaeology classes to my schedule until I figured out I might as well be a Classics major. By the time I was nearing the end of my undergraduate years, I decided that I wanted to teach in college even though I had never taught anything to anyone up to that point.

There's nothing quite as much fun as standing in front of a group of college students and opening new worlds to them. It's such a privilege that I would probably do it for free (don't tell the dean I said that). There's nothing better than sharing stories with bright young people about Achilles and how anger can destroy a person's life; or Odysseus and why he gave up immortality; or Dante and how the worst sin you could ever commit isn't murder, but betrayal of someone who loves you.

I've taught at Harvard University, Boston University, Washington University, and now Luther College in the beautiful hills (yes, hills) of northeast Iowa. I've also been a visiting scholar at the Harvard Divinity School, the American Academy in Rome, and the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. I've given talks on the ancient world at the Smithsonian Institution and interviews on National Public Radio, but my best audience ever was a class of enthusiastic elementary school students in St. Louis.

A few years ago, I decided that I wanted to share stories about the ancient world with an audience beyond my students, so I started writing books for anyone with a library card."

Freeman holds the Orlando W. Qualley Chair of Classical Languages at Luther College. He is an internationally recognized specialist in Greek, Roman, medieval culture and Celtic studies.

Publications include:

The Letters of St. Patrick - This is a bilingual Latin/English edition of St. Patrick's forthcoming from the Library of Early Christianity series published by the Catholic University of America Press. It will also include an early life of Patrick written by the seventh-century Irish churchman Muirchú.

War, Women, and Druids: Eyewitness Reports and Early Accounts of the Ancient Celts (University of Texas Press, 2002) - If you want to read in English almost every important passage about the ancient Celts that survives in Greek and Roman authors, you'll like this handy sourcebook.

The Galatian Language (Ancient Near Eastern Texts and Studies vol. 13) (Mellen Press, 2001) - A small collection of every scrap remaining from the language of the Galatians, migrating Celts who ended up in Asia Minor in the third century BC (St. Paul wrote to them in his New Testament letter).

Ireland and the Classical World (University of Texas Press, 2001) - Ireland interacted with Greece and Rome centuries before St. Patrick arrived. This book is a comprehensive study of all the literary, linguistic, and archaeological sources for this contact. Greek and Latin texts are included, but I also translate everything.

"Teaching the Bhagavad-Gita in a Traditional Great Books Program" in Uniting the Liberal Arts: Core and Context (B. Cowan, ed., University Press of America, 2002) 113-116 - I had such a great time teaching this ancient Indian text in the Core Curriculum program at Boston University that I wanted to share a few tips with anyone else who might want to include it in a course.

"The Survival of the Etruscan Language" Etruscan Studies 5: 75-84 (1999) - This article looks at the evidence for how long the language of the ancient Etruscans of Italy survived.

"The Earliest Greek Sources on the Celts" Etudes Celtiques 32: 11-48 (1996) - More than you ever wanted to know about Greek sources on the Celts dating from 500 to 300 BC. This article was based on part of my doctoral dissertation.

"Visions from the Dead in Herodotus, Nicander of Colophon, and the Táin Bó Cúailnge" Emania 12: 45-48 (1994) - We know from Posidonius and Caesar that the Celts believed in an afterlife, but the earliest evidence comes from a fragment of the Greek writer Nicander. He says the ancient Celts used to visit the graves of their ancestors seeking visions, a ritual also found in medieval Irish stories.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Susanna Elm, UC Berkeley


Susanna Elm
Professor of History and Classics


D.Phil. Oxon., Literae Humaniores (Ancient History) St. Hilda's College, 1986
Philosophicum, summa cum laude, Free University Berlin (BA-equivalent in Philosophy and education), 1982
Interim examination, summa cum laude, University Berlin, 1980
Music certificate, qualified flute teacher, North Rhine Westphalian Academy of Music, 1978
Valedictorian, Gymnasium Leopoldinum I, Detmold, 1978

Selected Publications:

Books:

Virgins of God. The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity. Oxford Classical Monograph Series. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994; Paperback, 1996, re-ed. 1999, 2003).

The "Holy Man" Revisited (1971-1997): Charisma, Texts, and Communities in Late Antiquity. Ed. Susanna Elm and Naomi Janowitz. Special Issue Journal of Early Christian Studies 6: 3 (1998).

Orthodoxie, christianisme, histoire - Orthodoxy, Christianity, History. Ed. Susanna Elm, Éric Rebillard and Antonella Romano. Collection de l'École française de Rome 270. Rome: École française de Rome, 2000.

Medical Challenges for the New Millennium - An Interdisciplinary Task. Ed. Stefan N. Willich and Susanna Elm. New York/Amsterdam: Kluver, 2001.

Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and Practices. Ed. H. Drake and co-ed. E. Albu, S. Elm, M. Maas, C. Rapp, M. Salzman. London: Ashgate, 2006.

Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Gregory of Nazianzus, Emperor Julian, and the Christianization of the Late Roman Elites. In preparation.

Quo Vadis - Medical Healing. Past Concepts and New Approaches. Ed. Susanna Elm and Stefan Willich. New York: Springer, forthcoming.

Articles:

"An Alleged Book theft in Fourth Century Egypt: P. Lips. 43." Studia Patristica 18 (1989): 209-215.

"Perceptions of Jerusalem Pilgrimage as Reflected in Two Early Sources on Female Pilgrimage (3rd and 4th Century A.D.)." Studia Patristica 20 (1989): 219-223.

"The Sententiae ad Virginem by Evagrius Ponticus and the Problem of Early Monastic Rules." Augustinianum 30 (1990): 393-404.

"Evagrius Ponticus' Sententiae ad Virginem." Dumbarton Oaks Papers 45 (1991): 265-295.

"Vergini, vedove, diaconisse - alcuni osservazioni sullo sviluppo dei cosidetti "ordini femminile’ nel quarto secolo in Oriente." Codex Aquilarensis 5 (1991): 77-89.

"Formen des Zusammenlebens mät;nnlicher und weiblicher Asketen im östlichen Mittelmeerraum wät;hrend des vierten Jahrhunderts nach Christus," in Doppelklöster und andere Formen der Symbiose mät;nnlicher und weiblicher Religiosen im Mittelalter. Ed. Kaspar Elm and Michel Parisse. Berliner Historische Studien 18; Ordensstudien 8. Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1992, 13-24.

"Athanasius of Alexandria’s Letter to the Virgins - who was its intended audience?" in Ricerche Patristiche in onore di Dom Basil Studer OSB. Ed. V. Grossi and A. di Berardino. Augustianum 33. Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustianum, 1993, 171-183.

"Priests ... shall not make any cuttings in their flesh (Lev. 21: 5)." Graven Images 2 (1995): 36-41.

"Schon auf Erden Engel:" Einige Berkungen zu den Anfät;ngen asketischer Gemeinschaften in Kleinasien." Historia 45 (1996): 483-500.

"The Polemical Use of Genealogies: Jerome's Classification of Pelagius and Evagrius Ponticus" Studia Patristica 33 (1996): 311-318.

"Pierced by Bronze Needles:" Anti-Montanist Charges of Ritual Stigmatization in their Fourth-Century Context." Journal of Early Christian Studies (Special Issue) 4: 4 (1996): 409-439.

"Isis' Loss: Gender, Dependence, and Ethnicity in Synesius' De Providentia or Egyptian Tale." in Journal of Ancient Christianity 1 (1997): 96-115.

"Der Asket als vir publicus. Die Bedeutung von Augustinus' Konzept des Christus iustus et iustificans für den spät;tantiken Asketen als Bischof," in: Recht, Macht, Gerechtigkeit. Ed. J. Mehlhausen. Veröffentlichungen der Wissenschaflichen Gesellschaft für Theologie. Gütersloh: Kaiser, 1999, 192-201.

"The Dog that Did Not Bark: Doctrine and Patriarchal Authority in the Conflict between Theophilus of Alexandria and John Chrysostom of Constantinople," in: Christian Origins I. Ed. L. Ayres and G. Jones. London: Routledge, 1998, 68-93.

"The Diagnostic Gaze: Gregory of Nazianzus' Theory of Orthodox Priesthood in his Oration 6 "De pace" and 2 "Apologia de Fuga sua," in:Orthodoxie, christianisme, histoire/ Orthodoxy, Christianity, History. Ed. Susanna Elm, Éric Rebillard and Antonella Romano. Rome: École française de Rome, 2000, 83-100.

"Inventing the Father of the Church: Gregory of Nazianzus' "Farewell to the Bishops" (Or. 42) in its Historical Context," in Vita Religiosa im Mittelalter. Ed. Franz Felten and Norbert Jaspert. Berlin: Dunker und Humblot, 1999, 3-20.

" 'Sklave Gottes' – Stigmata, Bischöfe und anti-hät;retische Propaganda im vierten Jahrhundert." Historische Anthropologie 8: 3 (1999): 345-363.

"A Programmatic Life: Gregory of Nazianzus’ Orations 42 and 43 and the Constantinopolitan Elites." Arethusa 33 (2000): 411-427.

"Orthodoxy and the True Philosophical Life: Julian and Gregory of Nazianzus." Studia Patristica 37 (2001): 69-85.

"Developments in Ancient Medicine - Models for Today's Challenges? Contemporary Medicine and the Christianisation of the Roman Elite – a Parallel," in Medical Challenges for the New Millenium - An Interdisciplinary Task. Ed. Stefan N. Willich and Susanna Elm. New York/Amsterdam: Kluver, 2001, 3-17.

"Historiographic Identities. Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus and the Forging of Orthodoxy," JAC/ZAC 7 (2003): 249-266.

"Inscriptions and Conversions. Gregory of Nazianzus on Baptism (or. 38-40)," in Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Seeing and Believing. Ed. Kenneth Mills and Anthony Grafton. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2003, 1-35.

"Hellenism and Historiography: Gregory of Nazianzus and Julian in Dialogue," Journal of Early Medieval Europe 33: 3, Special issue honoring Elizabeth A. Clark, 2003, 493-515; Italian version, “Ellenismo e Storiografia. Giuliano emperore e Gregorio Nazianzeno," in Societá e cultura nella tarda antichitá, Ed. A. Marcone. Florence: Le Monier, 2004, 58-76.

"Marking the Self in Late Antiquity: Inscriptions, Baptism and the Conversion of Mimes," in: Stigmata. Ed. Bettine Menken and Barbara Vinken. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2004, 47-68.

"A response," Reconsiderations. Augustine and his Time. Ed. W. Fitzgerald. Villanova University Press, 2005, 16-21.

" 'Oh Paradoxical Fusion:' Gregory of Nazianzus on Baptism and Cosmology (Or. 38-40)," in: Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions. Ed. R. A. Boustan and A. Y. Reed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 617-657.

"Gregory's Women: Creating a Philosopher’s Family," in Gregory of Nazianzus: Images and Reflections. Ed. Jostein Břrtnes and Tomas Hät;gg. Oslo: Oslo University Press, 2006, 171-191.

"Captive Crowds: Pilgrims and Martyrs," in CROWDS. Ed. Jeffrey T. Schnapp and M. Tiews, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2006, 133-148.

"Roman Pain and the Rise of Christianity," in Quo Vadis Medical Healing: Past Concepts and New Approaches. Ed. Susanna Elm and Stefan Willich. New York: Springer, forthcoming.

"Perpetua the Martyr – Perpetua the Saint. The Cultural Context of an Early Christian Phenomenon," In: The Imagined Worlds of Martyrdom. Ed. Christopher Ocker and Susanna Elm. Submitted to Cambridge Press.

"Family Men. Masculinity and Philosophy in Late Antiquity," Festschrift Peter Brown. Ed. Philip Rousseau, forthcoming.

Recent Invited Lectures:

Schloss Elmau: Interdisciplinary Conference on Medicine; Healing, Quo vadis?: "Roman Pain and the Rise of Christianity” (5/4-7/03).

Udine: Universitá di Udine, Societá e Cultura in eta tardoantica: “Ellenismo e Storiografia.” (5/29-30/03).

Oslo: Norwegian Institute of Advanced Studies, Oslo: Colloquium Gregory of Nazianzus:
“Gregory's Women” (6/16/03).

Tokyo: Keio University, Dept. of History: “Wandering Bishops” (10/6/03).
Villanova: Institute for Augustinian Studies: Saint Augustine-Reconsiderations: Comment (12/6/03).

Bielefeld: Dept. of History: “Becoming Roman in Rom: Malaria und Migration” (2/7/04).
St. Louis: Dept. of History, Washington University: “Both Mother and Father: Gregory of Nazianzus’ Philosophical Family and the Question of Masculinity in Late Antiquity”
(4/6/04).

Miami: University of Miami, Dept. of History: “Gregory’s Women” (4/15/04).
Stanford: Humanities Center: “A New Masculinity in Late Antiquity?” (5/17/04).
Princeton: IAS, “Prophecy and Divine Ascent” – The Late Antique Roots of the Koran
Colloquium (6/2-4/04).

Kiel: Dept. of History: ““Both Mother and Father: Gregory of Nazianzus’ Philosophical Family and the Question of Masculinity in Late Antiquity” (06/25/04).

Washington DC: Dept. of Classics, The Andrew Mellon Lecture: “Romanitas: Slavery,
Demography and Roman Identity.” (10/29/04).

Princeton: Dept. of History, Shelby Collum Davis Center Thirty Year Anniversary: “Why I do the History I do” (11/18/04).

Vancouver: Dept. of English, Center for Medieval Studies, Conference Performing the Past: “History and Histrionics” (10/28-10/29/06).

Berlin: American Academy, Ellen Maria Gorrison Lecture: “Pagan Challenge - Christian
Response - Transforming the Late Antique Elites” (02/06/07).

Frankfurt a. M.: Max-Planck Institut für Rechtsgeschichte: “Divine Decree and Imperial Enactment” (05/03/07).


Contact

Office: 2310 Dwinelle Hall
Hours: Tuesday 2-4pm
Phone: (510) 642-2238
Email: elm@berkeley.edu

Professor David Mattingly


Professor of Roman Archaeology, University of Leicester, BA PhD FBA FSA

Following a BA in History at the University of Manchester, he completed a PhD under the supervision of Professor Barri Jones at the same University.


He was a British Academy Post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford (1986-1989), then Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan before coming to Leicester in December 1991 as a Lecturer. He was promoted to Reader (1995) and Professor (1998).

Heheld a British Academy Research Readership award from 1999-2001 and was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2003.



Current Research Interests and Projects

His research has been wide-ranging in chronological and geographical terms, as well as in subject matter. There are strong unifying trends running through and he is essentially a specialist in the archaeology of the Roman empire. He is an active field archaeologist and has organised projects in Britain, Italy, Libya, Tunisia and Jordan.

A significant component throughout his career to date has been the study of Roman Africa. His main contributions to the advancement of Roman Africa studies have been in terms of study of rural settlement, farming technology and the economy; urbanism and the urban economy; post-colonial approaches to the impact of Rome; the evolution of the Roman military frontiers and, latterly, the study of native society beyond those frontiers. He was a major author of the final reports on the UNESCO Libyan Valleys Survey, and helped initiate work in 1990 at an important Tunisian harbour site called Leptiminus, leading to two published volume of reports, with a third co-edited volume in progress. Recently, the Fazzan Project in Libya has taken him beyond the boundaries of the Roman empire to research the Saharan heartlands of an important people called the Garamantes. This Sahara work has now entered a new phase as the Desert Migration Project.

A second research strand developed from his Oxford-based post-doctoral research into olive cultivation in the Roman world and the production of olive oil and its trade.

A third area of research has been rural field survey, where he has published final reports on multi-period work near Rieti in Italy and in Libya, whilst a monograph on co-directed work in Jordan (Wadi Faynan) is in an advanced state of preparation. Other areas of interest include Roman Britain, imperialism in the Roman world, Roman economic and social history and cartography of the ancient world.

He has authored, co-authored, edited or co-edited 18 monographs. Several others are in preparation. In addition he has written (or contributed to) 140 published articles/chapters, 8 review articles and about 150 other book reviews or minor works.

Recent Publications

  • (with G. Barker and D. Gilbertson et al.) Archaeology and Desertification: the Wadi Faynan Landscape Survey, southern Jordan. Oxbow, CBRL, Oxford (in press).
  • (with C.M. Daniels, J.N. Dore, D. Edwards and J. Hawthorne). The Archaeology of Fazzan. Volume 2, Site Gazetteer, Pottery and Other Survey Finds. London (2007). Pp xxx and 522. (edited by D. Mattingly).
  • (edited with G. Shipley, J. Vanderspoel and L. Foxhall,). The Cambridge Dictionary of Classical Civilization. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2006). Pp. xliv and 966.
  • An Imperial Possession. Britain in the Roman Empire. Penguin History of Britain Series. London (2006). Pp. xvi and 622. (Paperback edition 2007 with minor corrections).
  • (edited with S. McLaren, E. Savage, Y al-Fasatwi and K. Gadgood). The Libyan Desert: Natural Resources and Cultural Heritage. Society for Libyan Studies, London (2006). Pp. x and 338.
  • (with C.M. Daniels, J.N. Dore, D. Edwards and J. Hawthorne) The Archaeology of Fazzan: Volume 1 (Synthesis, London, 2003), pp. xxvi and 430, 460 figures (edited by D. Mattingly).
  • (with L. Stirling and N. Ben Lazreg). Leptiminus (Lamta): Report no. 2, The East Baths, Cemeteries, Kilns, Venus Mosaic, Site Museum and other studies Portsmouth, RI, JRA Suppl. 40. (2001), pp. 464. See also (with N. Ben Lazreg and contributions from others). Leptiminus (Lamta): a Roman port city in Tunisia, Report no. 1. Ann Arbor (1992), pp. 333
  • (edited with J. Salmon). Economies beyond Agriculture in the Classical World. (Leicester Nottingham Ancient History Seminar Series, Routledge. (2001 [2000]), pp. xii and 324
  • (edited with D. Potter). Life, Death and Entertainment in Ancient Rome. (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press). (1999), pp. xiv and 353
  • (edited). Dialogues in Roman Imperialism. Power, Discourse and Discrepant Experience in the Roman Empire (Journal of Roman Archaeology, Suppl. vol 23), Portsmouth, RI (1997), pp. 200
  • (with G.W.W. Barker, D.D. Gilbertson and G.D.B. Jones). Farming the Desert The UNESCO Libyan Valleys Archaeological Survey. Volume 1, Synthesis. (principal editor, G. Barker), UNESCO, Soc. for Libyan Studies, Paris/London (1996), pp. xx and 404; Volume 2, Gazetteer and Pottery (principal editor, D.J. Mattingly), UNESCO, Soc. for Libyan Studies, Paris/London (1996), pp. xxii and 394
  • Tripolitania. Batsford, London (1995), pp. xxii and 266

Contact Details:

Friday, May 02, 2008

Jon E. Lendon


Jon E. Lendon

Corcoran Department of History

The University of Virginia

Randall Hall

P.O. Box 400180

Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4180

lendon@virginia.edu


Education:

1991 Ph.D. Yale University, History.

1986 B.A. Yale University, History and Classical

Civilization, summa cum laude, Phi Beta

Kappa, with distinction in both majors.


A. Books:

Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005).

Empire of Honour: The Art of Government in the Roman World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).

B. Articles:

"War and Society in the Hellenistic World and the Roman Republic," forthcoming in H. van Wees, P. Sabin, and M. Whitby (eds.), Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pr.).

"Cavalry Formations in the Greek Tactical Tradition," forthcoming in N. V. Sekunda (ed.), Acts of the First International Conference on Hellenistic Warfare.

"Athens and Sparta and the Coming of the Peloponnesian War," in L. J. Samons (ed.), Cambridge Companion to the Age of Pericles (New York: Cambridge University Pr., 2007) pp. 258-281.

"The Legitimacy of the Roman Emperor: Against Weberian Legitimacy and Imperial 'Strategies of Legitimation'" in A. Kolb (ed.), Herrschaftsstrukturen und Herrschaftspraxis (Akademie: Berlin, 2006) pp. 53-63.

"Xenophon and the Alternative to Realist Foreign Policy: Cyropaedia 3.1.14-31," Journal of Hellenic Studies 126 (2006) pp. 82-98.

"Contubernalis, Commanipularis, and Commilito in Roman Soldiers' Epigraphy: Drawing the Distinction," Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 157 (2006) pp. 270-276.

"Historical Thought in Ancient Rome," in L. Kramer and S. Maza (eds.), A Companion to Western Historical Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002) pp. 60-77.

"Voting by Shouting in Sparta," in E. Tylawsky and C. Weiss (eds.), Essays in Honor of Gordon Williams: Twenty- Five Years at Yale (New Haven: Henry R. Schwab, 2001) pp. 169-75.

"Homeric Vengeance and the Outbreak of Greek Wars," in H. van Wees (ed.), War and Violence in Ancient Greece (London: Duckworth/Classical Press of Wales, 2000) pp. 1-30.

"The Rhetoric of Combat: Greek Theory and Roman Culture in Julius Caesar's Battle Descriptions," Classical Antiquity 18 (1999) pp. 273-329.

"Spartan Honor," in C. Hamilton and P. Krentz (eds.), Polis and Polemos: Essays on Politics, War, and History in Ancient Greece, in Honor of Donald Kagan (Claremont, California: Regina Books, 1997) pp. 105-26.

"Thucydides and the 'Constitution' of the Peloponnesian League," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 35 (1994) pp. 159-77.

"The Face on the Coins and Inflation in Roman Egypt,"
Klio 72 (1990) pp. 106-34.

"The Oxyrhynchus Historian and the Origins of the
Corinthian War," Historia 38 (1989) pp. 300-13.

C. Review articles and academic book reviews:

"Greek Art and Culture Since Art and Experience in Classical Greece" (review article) with E. A. Meyer, in J. M. Barringer and J. M. Hurwit (eds.), Periklean Athens and its Legacy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005) pp. 255-276.

Review of C. R. Whittaker, Rome and its Frontiers: The Dynamics of Empire (London/New York: Routledge, 2004)and T. S. Burns, Rome and the Barbarians, 100 B.C.-A.D. 400 (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), The Journal of Roman Studies 95 (2005) pp. 257-9.

Review of A. K. Bowman, H. M. Cotton, M. Goodman, and S. Price (eds.), Representations of Empire: Rome and the Mediterranean World in The Classical Review 54(2004) pp. 483-5.

"The Ignorance Factory" (review article), Arion 12 (2004) pp. 189-200.

"The Roman Army Now" (review article), The Classical Journal 99 (2004) pp. 441-9.

Review of J. P. Arnason and P. Murphy (eds.), Agon, Logos, Polis: The Greek Achievement and its Aftermath in The Classical Review 52 (2002) pp. 400-401.

"Primitivism and Ancient Foreign Relations" (review article), The Classical Journal 97 (2002) pp. 375-84.

"Gladiators" (review article), The Classical Journal 95 (2000) pp. 399-406.

Review of G. Anderson, Sage, Saint, and Sophist. Holy Men and their Associates in the Early Roman Empire in The International Journal of the Classical Tradition 5 (1998) pp. 114-6.

"Three Emperors and the Roman Imperial Regime" (review article), The Classical Journal 94 (1998) pp. 87-93.

"Social Control at Rome" (review article), The Classical Journal 93 (1997) pp. 83-8.

Review of P. Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire, in Speculum 69 (1994) pp. 1129-31.


Saturday, April 26, 2008

Robert Garland


Robert Garland
Colgate University
M.A., McMaster University Ph.D., University College London

Robert S.J. Garland, the Roy D. and Margaret B. Wooster Professor of the Classics at Colgate University, is Director of the Division of the Humanities there and has served 13 years as Chair of the Department of the Classics. He earned his B.A. in Classics from Manchester University, his M.A. in Classics from McMaster University, and his Ph.D. in Ancient History from University College London.

A former Fulbright Scholar and recipient of the George Grote Ancient History Prize, Professor Garland has educated students and audiences at a variety of levels. In addition to his 17 years teaching Classics at Colgate University, he has taught English and Drama to secondary school students and lectured at universities throughout Britain as well as the British School of Archaeology in Athens.

Professor Garland is the author of numerous articles in both academic and popular journals and books capturing details of all aspects of ancient Greek and Roman life, including The Greek Way of Life: From Conception to Old Age; Introducing New Gods: The Politics of Athenian Religion; and Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks. His expertise has been featured in The History Channel's "Last Stand of the 300," and he has repeatedly served as a consultant for educational film companies.

I also noticed that he wrote, "The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World", a "detailed investigation of the plight of those Greeks and Romans who, owing either to deformity or to disability, did not meet their society's exacting criteria for the ideal human form. Drawing on classical drama and poetry, historical works, medical tracts, vase painting and sculpture, mythology, and ethnography, Garland examines the high incidence of disability and deformity among the Greek and Roman population."

This subject really interests me. Recently, I viewed an exhibition of Roman art from the Louvre up at the Seattle Art Museum and was surprised by a reference to Caligula being somewhat deformed since I had never read that before. According to the Louvre, apparently most sculptures of Caligula are idealized and purposefully sculpted to emphasize his relationship to Augustus. The reason I find the idea of a deformed Caligula as somewhat incredulous is that he was adored as a child by the legions and Roman society was not terribly forgiving about physical shortcomings even in childhood - especially if you consider the treatment of Claudius

Friday, February 01, 2008

Michele R. Salzman, University of California at Riverside


Professor of History

College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
History

Degrees

B.A. Latin 1973
Brooklyn College of the City University of New York
M.A. Latin 1975
Bryn Mawr College
Ph.D. Latin & Greek 1981
Bryn Mawr College

Awards

Professor-in-Charge, Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome (administered by Duke University), 2003-2004.
Member of the Editorial Board, American Journal of Archaeology, 2004-2007
Organizer, Penates, and Steering Board of Multi-Campus Research Group for the Study of Late Antiquity in Southern California, 1998-present
American Council of Learned Societies Travel Grant, 1990
Mellon Fellow in Classical Studies, American Academy in Rome, 1986-87
ACLS Research Fellowship, 1983

Research Area

Ancient Greece & Rome; late antiquity; social and religious history

Publications

On Roman Time: The Codex-Calendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban Life in Late Antiquity.

"Because they list all the public holidays and pagan festivals of the age, calendars provide unique insights into the culture and everyday life of ancient Rome. The Codex-Calendar of 354 miraculously survived the Fall of Rome. Although it was subsequently lost, the copies made in the Renaissance remain invaluable documents of Roman society and religion in the years between Constantine's conversion and the fall of the Western Empire.

In this richly illustrated book, Michele Renee Salzman establishes that the traditions of Roman art and literature were still very much alive in the mid-fourth century. Going beyond this analysis of precedents and genre, Salzman also studies the Calendar of 354 as a reflection of the world that produced and used it. Her work reveals the continuing importance of pagan festivals and cults in the Christian era and highlights the rise of a respectable aristocratic Christianity that combined pagan and Christian practices. Salzman stresses the key role of the Christian emperors and imperial institutions in supporting pagan rituals. Such policies of accomodation and assimilation resulted in a gradual and relatively peaceful transformation of Rome from a pagan to a Christian capital. "

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
The Making of a Christian Aristocracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

"Christian Century : This fascinating and important book...discusses the social origins and career paths of the aristocratic men--and the family involvements of the women--who converted to Christianity, and concludes by exploring 'the emperor's influence on aristocratic conversion' and 'the aristocrats' influence on Christianity'...Salzman's work is important not just for the study of the early church but for the study of the whole history of Christianity. The class distinctions which she so ably explores were significant not only for early Christians, but also for the medieval church and the Reformation church."
--Robert M. Grant

Former Institution

Boston University

Biography

Michele Salzman received her B.A. in Latin (1973) from Brooklyn College of City University of New York and her M.A. (1975) and Ph.D. (1981) from Bryn Mawr College in Greek and Latin. Before joining the faculty at the University of California, Riverside in 1995, she taught at Swarthmore College, Columbia University, and, for thirteen years, at Boston University. Salzman's research focuses on the religious and social history of Late Antiquity. She is author of Roman Time: The Codex-Calendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban Life in Late Antiquity (UC Press, 1990), as well as several articles on Roman history and religion. Her new book, The Making of a Christian Aristocracy (Harvard University Press) examined the social and religious issues that bear upon the conversion of the Roman aristocracy from paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire in the West in the years after Constantine. Salzman is currently interested engaged in a commentary and translation of Book 1 of the Letters of the late Roman senator Symmachus. Salzman was Mellon Fellow in Classical Studies at the American Academy in Rome, 1986-87. In addition, she has received research fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, and the Whiting Foundation. In 2003-2004 she was professor in charge of the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome. She is currently on the editorial Board of the American Journal of Archaeology. She is one of the members of the Steering Committee for the Multi-Campus Research Group for Late Antiquity.

Contact information:

michele.salzman@ucr.edu

HMNSS Bldg. 6603
University of California
Riverside, CA 92521


(951) 827-1991 (Voice)
(951) 827-5299 (Fax)
(951) 827-5401 (Dept)

Monday, December 24, 2007

Thomas McGinn


Thomas A.J. McGinn
2933 Polo Club Road
Nashville, TN 37221-4346

(615) 371-5245 (tel.)
(615) 371-1301 (fax)

thomas.a.mcginn@vanderbilt.edu
tommcginn@comcast.net

Harvard College B.A. magna cum laude 1978
Cambridge University M.A. 1980
University of Michigan Ph.D. 1986

Title of Dissertation: Prostitution and Julio-Claudian Legislation: The Formation of
Social Policy in Early Imperial Rome

Special Areas of Interest: Roman Law and Social History

Recent Publications:

Books:
1. Prostitution, Sexuality, and the Law in Ancient Rome (Oxford University Press: 1998)
Paperback edition published by Oxford University Press in January 2003

2. A Casebook on Roman Family Law (coauthor with Bruce Frier: Oxford University Press: October 2003)

3. The Economy of Prostitution in the Roman World: A Study of Social History and the Brothel (University of Michigan Press: February 2004)

Recent articles and/or chapters:

Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte 53.2 ( 2004) 200-208: Missing Females?: Augustus’ Encouragement of Marriage Between Freeborn Males and Freedwomen

in J.-J. Aubert and A.J.B. Sirks eds., Speculum Iuris: Roman Law as a Reflection of
Economic and Social Life (University of Michigan Press 2002) 46-93: The Augustan
Marriage Legislation and Social Practice: Elite Endogamy vs. Male “Marrying Down”

Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 47 (2001) 81-102: Satire and the Law:
The Case of Horace

Abstract from work review:

"As an example selected very nearly at random, consider Case 8, "The ability to procreate" (29-30). Citing Justinian's Digest (D. 23.3.39.1, Ulpian in the thirty-third book on the Edict), the case examines whether a woman can validly marry a eunuch (spado, more generally a sterile or impotent male, as the authors point out on p. 363) and whether the latter may therefore receive a dowry. Ulpian distinguishes those whose infertility has been caused by castration, on one hand, from those whose condition results from unspecified (presumably natural) causes, on the other. The former cannot marry, concludes the jurist without further elaboration, but the latter can.

Ulpian's reasoning in this instance is elusive, to say the least. F/M describe the distinction as "odd," but point out that it is operative in other instances as well. Apparently there is some stigma attaching to castration, and not to infertility in general, that raises a bar to marriage. F/M ask: is Ulpian's objection founded upon morality? "Does Ulpian presume that the eunuch's castration was deliberate, not accidental? And if deliberate, who bears the blame?"

My own experiences in discussing this and comparable material with undergraduates suggest that the topic of deliberate castration in antiquity offers fodder for wide-ranging, if not always well-focused, discussions about cultural difference. F/M direct their reader instead to a topic of great cross-cultural interest and considerable contemporary political, legal, and social topicality: "in the Roman world, as in many other past and present societies, a strong tradition linked marriage to the procreation of children[...]. Nonetheless, as this Case shows, inability to beget children was not in itself necessarily a bar to marriage." To what extent does this concession undermine constructions of "traditional" marriages and families? Granting that the sources cannot definitively answer the question one way or other, F/M invite their reader to consider how a proposal to recognize same-sex marriage might fare in the hands of the Roman jurists: "are Roman policies linking marriage and procreation enough to make same-sex marriage impossible?"

While the approach of the cases as a whole in the volume is less hypothetical and speculative than this single instance might suggest, this case does illustrate the extent to which volume as a whole is conceived as an introduction to, and an exercise in, legal reasoning in general as well as Roman family law in particular. The authors suggest that to encounter this law is to encounter social and historical difference in a manner that challenges "the tacit presumptions of modern family life" and problematizes the claim of any particular family formation to be "authentically 'traditional,'" and they note the extent to which family relationships and the claims of nontraditional families have become subject to legal scrutiny in recent decades (3). At the same time, the reader is warned that the juristic sources "must always be appreciated as a set of primarily legal institutions, not as an anthropological description of actual Roman family life" (11) and that they concern themselves largely with the needs and interests of a landed elite (6)." - Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2005.04.32

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Marc Domingo Gygax, Princeton University


Marc Domingo Gygax,
Associate Professor,
Princeton University

Contact: Phone: 609-258-1084
Email: mdomingo@princeton.edu
Office: 163 East Pyne

Current Courses: CLA219 The Roman Empire (Precepting)
FRS103 Truth and Objectivity in Ancient and Modern Historiography

Background: Lic. Barcelona ’88, M.A. Tübingen ’90, Ph.D. Barcelona ’93.

Professor Domingo Gygax has taught and written mainly in the areas of Hellenistic history, Greek epigraphy, modern historiography and historical theory. He is the author of Untersuchungen zu den lykischen Gemeinwesen in klassischer und hellenistischer Zeit (2001), and currently he is working on a study of the origins and evolution of Greek euergetism.

Work abstract: "A passage of Plutarch’s biography of Alcibiades (Alc. 33.2) invites us to explore the way Athens rewarded its benefactors in the fifth and fourth century, especially the first awards of crowns to citizens. This article challenges the widespread assumption that Alcibiades’ crowning with gold when he came back to Athens from his exile is an invention by Plutarch or a previous source. First, there is evidence that the crowning was known to other ancient authors. Furthermore, if one takes into consideration not only inscriptions, but also literary sources, Plutarch’s report is not an isolated piece of information. It fits well in the history of the Athenian practice of bestowing honors. It has precedents in Athens, continuity after Alcibiades, parallels in other cities, and corresponds to the behavior one would expect from the dêmos as well as from a benefactor at the end of the fifth century. When viewed in this light, Plutarch’s information may help us to understand the first stages of the institution of honoring fellow citizens, which was to become so important in later times." - Plutarch on Alcibiades’ return to Athens, Springerlink.

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Patrick Hunt, Stanford University

Archaeologist, artist, poet, musician...the talents of Dr. Patrick Hunt of Stanford University seem boundless and he has applied those talents in a variety of arenas as he strives to share his passion about Rome and the ancient world with people worldwide through his research, his writings, his participation in educational broadcasts, his tours, his illustrations, and his musical compositions.

Current Research:

"Dr. Hunt has directed Stanford’s Alpine Archaeology Project since 1994, conducting high altitude research in the Great St. Bernard pass between Switzerland and Italy. In 1996 he found the 9000 ft. high quarry for the Temple of Jupiter in the Fenetre de Ferret pass adjacent to the Great St. Bernard Pass and has directed a team that found a Roman silver coin hoard in the Swiss Alps in 2003. Another of his research interests has been to track Hannibal who crossed the Alps in 218 BCE with an army accompanied by elephants. He has led annual teams across at least ten Alpine passes in search of topographic clues matching the texts of Polybius and Livy who wrote about Hannibal nearly two millennia ago, including multiple Stanford teams between 1996 and 2006.

Three of Dr. Hunt's lectures about Hannibal can be downloaded from Stanford's iTunes U directory.

He has lived in London, Athens and Jerusalem as well as annual time spent in Switzerland, France, Italy every year since 1994, among many other countries, and has also conducted archaeological research in Peru on Inca sites and on Olmec, Maya and Aztec cultures in Central America.

Dr. Hunt has been published on such diverse topics as monuments like the Pantheon, ancient notables such as Gyges from Herodotus, linguistics, biblical studies, the origin of Byzantine Silk, studies in Hebrew poetry and literary wordplay, Roman monuments in operas, calendrical megaliths, Olmec and Maya sculpture, iconography on Greek vases and myth palindromes, nautical exploration, art history, Egyptian stone working and Phoenician lore and geoarchaeology among many other topics.

His academic publications include many journal and encyclopedia entries in peer-reviewed articles such as WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY (1989), BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES (1988), PAPERS OF THE INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY, LONDON (1990), STUDIA PHOENICIA (1991), BEITRAGE FUR ERFORSCHUNG DES ALTEN TESTAMENTS (1992 & 1996), JOURNAL OF ROMAN ARCHAEOLOGY (1998), VOLCANOES, EARTHQUAKES AND ARCHAEOLOGY published by the Royal Geological Society (2000), ACTA of the XIIIth International Bronze Congress at Harvard University (2003), ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE ANCIENT WORLD (2003) and GREAT EVENTS IN WORLD HISTORY (2004). He has been a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society since 1989, named in WHO'S WHO IN BIBLICAL STUDIES AND ARCHAEOLOGY (1993) and he has also served as President of the Archaeological Institute of America’s Stanford Society since 1995. Patrick's primary archaeology book of 2007 is titled ALPINE ARCHAEOLOGY." -- Patrick Hunt.net

Many of Dr. Hunt's articles are featured on the website, "Philolog: Classical connections - commentary and critique", a rich resource for art historians, students and all lovers of classical art. His articles including "Arborisms in Ovid's Baucis and Philemon from Metamorphoses" are cited by the Cambridge School Classics Project in their efforts to promote classical studies. An excerpt:

"Perhaps to intensify the transformation of the two old people whose theoxeny - hospitality to their anonymous divine guests (Jupiter and Mercury) - is unique, Ovid fashions and foreshadows their future nature as trees by filling his poetic text with at least 30 references to wood or forest plants. This is a brief catalog of Ovid's passage with possible arboreal interpretations and allusions.

First, Ovid has his narrator (Lelex) tell about what he has seen growing side by side in the Phrygian hills, long after the transformation in their anonymous almost endless life as the yet-unnamed Baucis and Philemon are an oak (quercus) and linden (tilia) tree intertwined (tiliae contermina quercus 8.620).

Second, Philemon welcomes the gods to enter the poor couple’s forest hovel – whose roof is reeds and stalks of straw (stipulis et canna 8.630) - by way of a [wooden] gabled doorpost (vertice postes 8.638) (1). Baucis pulls off dry twigs and stems (ramaliaque arida 8.644) from the thatched roof as tinder for the meal’s fire. Then, using a forked stick (furca…bicornis 8.646) Philemon unhooks dried meat from a blackened wooden beam (nigro…tigno 8.648) and also unfastens a beech wood tub (alveus…fagineus 8.652-3) tub for bathing limbs.(2) Baucis sets up a couch of willow (salignus 8.656) and a wooden table for the fare. The mattress for the gods’ couch is also of soft sedge plants (molli…ulva 8.655). On the one hand, Ovid is accentuating their poverty, as Due mentioned - "praise of the poor but honest simplicity"(3) - so that all their furniture, old and battered, and all household accoutrements mentioned are of wood, hardly surprising given their meager resources, but the wood references are unnecessarily ubiquitous unless Ovid is creating an extended metaphor... More.

Dr. Hunt has been featured on The History Channel in one of my favorite series, "Engineering An Empire: Carthage" and "Engineering an Empire: "The Persians". His research on Hannibal's passage through the Alps will be featured in an upcoming program on The National Geographic Channel.

As a musician and composer, he has been awarded the ASCAPlus Award for Classical and concert music composed and performed in both 2007 and 2008, including several premiere arias from his opera BYRON IN GREECE.

Among many classical music works, he has written piano, choral and chamber music and is a Full Writer member of ASCAP since 1980 when some of his choral songs were published along with a movie score he composed. In 1999, a Duke University musical group performed his SONGS OF EXILE: By the Rivers of Babylon in Washington, DC, Raleigh and at Duke. He also set William Blake poems to choral music that was performed at Stanford in February, 2005.

"Dr. Hunt illustrated Richard Martin’s MYTHS OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS (New American Library-Penguin, 2003) and has illustrated his newest book of poems, HOUSE OF THE MUSE: Poems from the British Museum, newly published in the summer of 2005. His many poetry publications include poems in YOUNG AMERICAN POETS (1978), POET LORE (1978) and CLASSICAL OUTLOOK (1991). He is also translating Greek poets like Sappho and encyclopedists like Theophrastus.

Along with monographs, novellas, and other writing, Dr. Hunt wrote CARAVAGGIO, an art historical biography and critical book on the Baroque genius painter, published in London in 2004. It has been highly acclaimed in reviews including the ART NEWSPAPER International in London (December 2004) where it was described as “first-class” and “a rattling good yarn.” -- Patrick Hunt.net

He was invited to the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference in August, 2005, where he presented Myths Deeper Truths."

"Mythology is one of the deepest creative responses of humanity to the search for universals," Dr. Hunt observes, " Each great myth is often so profound and rich in mystery as to have not one but many possible meanings that are rediscovered and savored at different points in life. It is likely that each human who searches through myth is somehow elevated thereby."

To reintroduce myths to a modern audience Dr. Hunt is rewriting them, adding fictional dialog to the narrative. His retelling of Endymion was well received at the Writer's Conference and will be incorporated into a book due out later this year. An excerpt:

"While waiting for the moon, which would be full this night, Endymion turned and counted the brilliant stars on the other horizon. He looked at the familiar late winter constellations. Orion was already descending to the northwest and only his dogs still ran across the sky. Not far away the dim campfire was now silent as their wine stupefied the other sleeping shepherds. Endymion was sad over his loveless life. He remembered the goddess Artemis was also the moon, and he knew she was a virgin like himself, sworn to protect her chastity. He made a little prayer to the goddess.

“O Goddess of the Lonely Moon, hear my prayer. I know you have chosen your life, but I too am lonely. I ask your help to remain pure to the one I will love lifelong. Help me in my loneliness to wait for her.”

His latest book, "Ten Discoveries that Rewrote History," is due to be released later this month.

"If any global archaeologist were asked to name the top ten archaeological discoveries that have made the greatest impact on archaeology and history, most lists would be likely to unanimously mention the following huge impact discoveries: the Rosetta Stone, Pompeii, Nineveh, Troy, King Tut's Tomb, Machu Picchu, Thera-Akrotiri, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Olduvai Gorge starting with the Leakey Era and the Tomb of the Ten Thousand Warriors in China. This exciting book, written with a taut narrative, relates the dramatic moments of these discoveries, whether by professional archaeologists or by amateurs' accidents, and highlights their significance to history." - Penguin/Plume Publishers.

Contact Information: phunt@stanford.edu

Friday, July 27, 2007

Dr. Anise K. Strong



Anise K. Strong's primary areas of interest are Roman social history, gender and sexuality in the ancient world, and the reception of classical culture, especially in modern mass media. She is currently working on transforming her dissertation entitled, "Labeled Women: Roman Prostitutes and Persistent Stereotypes," into a book. She has published articles on ancient incest laws and sexuality in the HBO series "Rome," and has presented at multiple major conferences, including thrice at the American Philological Association annual meeting. She is an affiliate of the Classical Traditions Initiative.

Since I am passionately interested in the use of technology to facilitate the study of history, I was intrigued by a recent project she conducted within an introductory Roman Civilization course last spring.

"Each of the 115 students in the course edited or created a Roman history "stub" article on Wikipedia, ranging from the province of Gallia Aquitania to the house of Julia Felix in Pompeii. Each article contained references to at least one primary source from the ancient world (including images), one encyclopedic source, and one scholarly book or article. Each student also evaluated and commented on two-three other related student-written articles on their discussion pages.

Here's the link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects#Northwestern_University_.28Spring_2007.29

It was a wonderfully successful project, although it will be difficult to repeat. Numerous students
- juniors and seniors - told me it was the first time they had ever had to check an actual book out of the library in their college career. Rather than generating a generic, useless paper, they
contributed to the sum of readily accessible human knowledge.


Contact info: Anise-strong@northwestern.edu

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Roman scholar Annette Gieseck honored by University of Delaware


Annette Giesecke (second from the right), associate professor of foreign languages and literatures at the University of Delaware, received the institution's Outstanding Teaching Award May 24, 2007. The award is based on student and peer evaluations, alumni testimonials, the number and range of courses offered, involvement in individual instruction, quality of advisement and mentoring, demonstrated commitment to student welfare and development and an acknowledged reputation in teaching.

Giesecke is a professor in UD's classics program, teaching courses in ancient Greek and Latin as well as Greek and Roman literature and civilization in translation. She chaired Ancient Greek and Roman Studies and currently serves as director of Undergraduate Studies.

Her research interests are Latin and Greek poetry, Greek and Roman art and architecture and Utopianism in ancient Greece and Rome. She is the author of The Epic City: Utopia and the Garden in Ancient Greece and Rome and Atoms, Ataraxy and Allusion: Cross-Generic Imitation of the De Rerum Natura in Early Augustan Poetry.

Giesecke received her bachelor's degree in classics at the University of California at Los Angeles and her doctorate at Harvard University. She taught at Victoria University in New Zealand for four years and then taught at both UCLA and Loyola Marymount University before coming to UD in 1998.

At the ceremony on Honors Day, May 4, Giesecke was cited for her “deep passion for her subject [that] is inspiring to her students and colleagues.”

"

I am delighted to be part of the University of Delaware's dynamic Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, and I feel that in joining the UD faculty, I have somehow come full circle. Allow me to explain. I am a native of Los Angeles and received my Bachelor's Degree in Classics at UCLA. A degree in Classics was not at all what I had visualized when I enrolled in college, because I intended to pursue a career in genetic engineering. Thanks to my high school ancient history teacher, whose enthralling narratives of the exploits of Alexander the Great kept me quite literally on the edge of my seat, and to my father, who can still recite from memory the proem of Homer's Odyssey which he had learned as a child, I decided to take Ancient Greek just for fun. Once I read the Iliad and the fabulous tales of Herodotus in the original, I was hooked. Upon completing my undergraduate work, I was fortunate enough to be offered a full scholarship to pursue graduate studies in Classical Philology at Harvard. It was in graduate school that I first experienced the seasons, the culture, and the profound sense of history which distinguish the East Coast.

In order to explore the possibility of a career in the museum world, I returned to Los Angeles as a curatorial intern in the Department of Antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum before writing my dissertation. In the course of my internship, I decided to focus on language and literature and began working on one of my favorite authors, the Roman poet Lucretius, whose powerful verses remain our most complete exposition of Epicurean philosophy. After completing my dissertation on the profound influence of Lucretius on the poetry and ideology of Virgil and Horace, I accepted a position as assistant professor of Classics at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. There I taught courses ranging from Aeschylus' Agamemnon in Greek to Etruscan and Roman Art and Architecture. I also fell deeply in love with the rich Maori culture and the stunning scenery which make New Zealand a truly enchanted place. Four years later I returned to UCLA, this time on the opposite side of the podium. While I was dividing my time between teaching at UCLA and Loyola Marymount University, I was offered my present position at the University of Delaware and a chance to return to the East, now in a teaching capacity.

My interests have always been diverse, and as the field of Classics encompasses such a wide range of disciplines (history, philosophy, rhetoric, prose and poetry of all varieties, art, and archaeology included) it is the ideal field for me with respect to both research and teaching. My research interests are Latin poetry, particularly the epic poetry of Lucretius and Virgil; Greek tragedy; the Homeric epics; the relation between texts and images; and ancient painting. It is, however, Lucretius and his keen observation of phenomena in the natural world, the fervor of his essentially utopian vision, and the magnitude of his influence which remain the focus of my work. Strangely, Lucretius has never been regarded as a utopian author, and in applying the increasingly popular theories of utopics to the analysis of his verses, my aim is to demonstrate just how timely and relevant Classical antiquity remains.

As a teacher, I am a strong believer in the holistic approach to Classical antiquity. That is, I attempt to give students the broadest possible vision of the Greek and Roman world in literature, language, and myth courses alike by mingling historical material with ample illustrations of material culture as expressed in the arts, architecture, and other physical remains. Above all, my desire is to ensure that the study of Classics-the very roots of the Western heritage-remains alive and to demonstrate the versatility and usefulness of Classics as a major. Students who have had a Classical education are increasingly sought after by professional schools and businesses because they demonstrate the ability to write and reason, and this makes it especially exciting for me to be an integral part of the University's Classics program. "

Publications:

The Epic City: Urbanism, Utopia, and the Garden in Ancient Greece and Rome (Hellenic Studies Series)

"As Greek and Trojan forces battled in the shadow of Troy's wall, Hephaistos created a wondrous, ornately decorated shield for Achilles. At the Shield's center lay two walled cities, one at war and one at peace, surrounded by fields and pasturelands. Viewed as Homer's blueprint for an ideal, or utopian, social order, the Shield reveals that restraining and taming Nature would be fundamental to the Hellenic urban quest. It is this ideal that Classical Athens, with her utilitarian view of Nature, exemplified. In a city lacking pleasure gardens, it was particularly worthy of note when Epicurus created his garden oasis within the dense urban fabric. The disastrous results of extreme anthropocentrism would promote an essentially nostalgic desire to break down artificial barriers between humanity and Nature. This new ideal, vividly expressed through the domestication of Nature in villas and gardens and also through primitivist and Epicurean tendencies in Latin literature, informed the urban endeavors of Rome."

Journal for the Society for Utopian Studies:

Giesecke, Annette Lucia, Beyond the Garden of Epicurus: The Utopics of the Ideal Roman Villa 12.2 (2001): 13-32.

Giesecke, Annette Lucia, Lucretius and Virgil's Pastoral Dream 10.2 (1999): 1-15.


Office: 111 Jastak-Burgess Hall
Phone: 831-0545
E-mail: alg@udel.edu