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AHMA Newsletter
The newspaper of the Graduate Group of
Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology
May 2006
Eds. Jason Schlude and Jeffrey Pearson
-----Letter from the Chair----
The year has been a fruitful and exciting one. AHMA's reputation continues to grow. A surprising number of people from abroad as well as elsewhere in this country refer to us familiarly as "the Group." Our alumni occupy teaching positions in all parts of the land and some beyond its borders, and students and former students regularly appear in colloquia and offer papers to international conferences. The quantity of publications by our graduates (the quality goes without saying) has reached very impressive proportions.
We are greatly pleased to have added three new faculty to our ranks: Emily Mackil in Greek history, Carlos Norena in Roman history, and Kim Shelton in Bronze Age and Classical Archaeology. They add important dimensions to our overall strength and have already begun to work with several of our students.
Our annual Pritchett Lecturer, Professor Margaret Miller of Sydney University, delivered a very successful talk to a packed audience on "Greek Hate: Athenian War Propaganda and the Persians," captivating faculty and students alike. The coming Pritchett Lecturers are Professor Lawrence Stager of Harvard University, one of the premier archaeologists of Palestine, in 2006/7, and the distinguished Greek historian Paul Cartledge of Cambridge University in 2007/8.
Nearly sixty candidates applied to AHMA this year, the large majority fully qualified and acceptable. But we could admit no more than a tenth of that number. We will welcome three new students in the fall, whose combined interests include Near Eastern and Classical Greek archaeology, Roman history and topography, gender studies, numismatics, and cultural interactions in the classical, Jewish, and Near Eastern worlds-a decidedly appropriate assemblage for the Group.
At the other end of the spectrum, six of our students, a record number, will have attained their PhDs in 2006: Jorge Bravo, Jon Frey, Kieran Hendrick, Ken Jones, Jessica Nitschke, and Isabelle Pafford. All of them have obtained positions for next year. Jorge will begin teaching in the fall at Carleton College, Jon at Michigan State, Kieran at Vanderbilt, Ken at Whitman College, Jessica at De Pauw University, and Isabelle at San Francisco State. Four others obtained their MA degrees: Ryan Boehm, David DeVore, Brendan Haug, and Emily Haug. Three of our alumni will be moving to new tenure-track positions: Bridget Buxton to the University of Rhode Island, Celina Gray to Wesleyan University, and Leah Johnson to a tenured Associate Professorship at John Cabot College in Rome. Congratulations to all!
This year also saw the award of the first annual Joan B. Gruen Prize for the best paper composed by an AHMA student in the course of the previous year. The award honors the memory of Joan Gruen for her many years of service to the university in fund-raising, especially for her staunch (and successful) advocacy of support for graduate students. The winner of the first annual Joan B. Gruen Prize is Elisabeth O'Connell for her paper on "Transforming Monumental Landscapes in Late Antique Egypt."
It has been quite a remarkable year. We wish nothing but the best for those who have completed their studies. And we look ahead to welcoming an exciting group of new students in the fall. —Erich Gruen
-----Spotlight on Nemea and Mycenae-----
The Nemea Center for Classical Archaeology has now been established by the Classics Department to carry on and expand the important work of now-retired Professor Stephen Miller at Nemea, one of the most important archaeological sites in Greece. It will continue to provide opportunities for students and scholars to learn about and do research in classical archaeology both on the Berkeley Campus and in Greece. Under the new director, Dr. Kim Shelton, who will oversee and coordinate the teaching, research and education activities of the Center, the educational program will expand with the Berkeley Summer Session Field Schools, which will provide experience for undergraduate students on the site, as well as create research and teaching opportunities for graduate students, the future leaders and educators in the field.
In June 2006, students will be working on two major projects in the Nemea Museum: the conservation, registration and cataloguing of architectural fragments from the Temple of Zeus and an in-depth study of the characteristic ceramic deposits recovered through past excavations that will define the chronological history of the site. This work will be undertaken primarily by graduate and undergraduate students and will involve pottery identification, cataloguing and conservation. Research will be encouraged into the regional styles and chronologies as well as analyzing the local ceramic character in different periods and what that means for the settlement history of the site and its use pattern. Ultimately this work will be published as Nemea X: Chronology. This material and its publication will greatly enhance the understanding of the site, will provide several graduate students the opportunity to study and publish chronologically and regionally specific ceramics, and will become the foundation of a study collection, housed in the Nemea Museum, accessible for instruction and comparison by scholars and students throughout the region and beyond.
Dr. Shelton also brings with her to UC Berkeley an on-going excavation and research program at Mycenae that can provide students additional experience in the field, exposure to prehistoric culture and additional material for study and publication. In July 2006, students will work in the field at the site of Petsas House in the settlement of Mycenae. The building is a habitation structure combined with a ceramics factory and storage facility destroyed late in the 14th century BC. Excavation will be undertaken in several rooms used for the storage of ceramics, in a well filled with destruction debris and in a possible pottery kiln, the first ever identified at Mycenae. Students will participate in the cleaning and conservation of finds in the Mycenae Museum.
The field schools at Nemea and Mycenae will introduce students to all major elements of methodology and analysis currently used in classical archaeology and will teach them practical archaeological skills in a real research environment. They will also provide valuable research time and insight into materials while stimulating publication potential. The Center will work to create an environment of teaching and scholarly cooperation, bringing together specialists of various backgrounds, interests, and experiences. It will serve as a model in the field of classical archaeology, giving undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to experience archaeological excavation and museum study first-hand. —Kim Shelton
-----New Students-----
Noah Kaye writes, "I have spent my first year as a Group student getting to work on two of my three fields, 'Hellenistic History and Material Culture' and 'the History of the Jews in the Graeco-Roman World' in seminars with Erich Gruen and Andrew Stewart. I plan to study German this summer at Berkeley and transition to an apartment in San Francisco. On the horizon may be a visit to the American Numismatic Society in New York, as my third field of interest is Roman Economic History with an emphasis on numismatics and focusing particularly on the Empire. I have enjoyed getting to know both my colleagues and the Bay Area this year. I've managed to fit in a bit of food tourism, hiking, and I hope to see as many A's games as possible."
Greg Smay reports, "It has been good to be back in Berkeley after a ten year hiatus. It has been an odd experience (but of course it's Berkeley after all) since the place hasn't changed much in a decade, but I have. Now that I've gotten my feet wet in the program I'm off to Italy with the generous support of the department to do the American Academy in Rome's summer session, along with fellow Groupie Carolynn Roncaglia. Having done my year in the International House on the von Bothmer scholarship I'll be moving into the co-ops next year along with another ancient historian, David DeVore."
-----Continuing Students-----
Jorge Bravo, who is nearing completion of his dissertation, is excited to report that he has accepted a two-year replacement position in the Department of Classical Languages at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. In addition to making arrangements to move sometime over the summer, Jorge is also planning on assisting Nemea Director Kim Shelton by representing UC Berkeley at Nemea during the month of July.
Amelia Brown is happy to report that since last year's issue she has passed her exams and advanced to candidacy. Now she is in Malta with her boyfriend Graham while he finishes building the Grand Excelsior Hotel in Valletta. She is starting in on a dissertation on Greek cities in Late Antiquity with a focus on Corinth and Thessaloniki. She is also finishing up an article on Late Antique portrait statues from Corinth, and has two forthcoming Shifting Frontiers articles. She is looking forward to going to Albania for the first time next month with the American School, and to returning there this fall to continue her dissertation. In the meantime she is still finding time for sailing, reading science fiction and following Hollywood.
David DeVore is finally figuring out how to succeed in graduate school, having gotten enough Max Weber under his belt to pass Susanna Elm's rigorous master's exam in Early Christianity last fall. This spring, he has concentrated on his other ancient historical loves—Classical Greek history and literature—while preparing for his Greek exam. After swimming in the Mediterranean for the first time (and losing his glasses!) at Dor last summer, he will be visiting Greece and Rome for the first time in one fell swoop, including pottery work at Nemea, while also taking a pit stop in Paris in between to learn French.
Timothy Doran passed his master's examination in archaic and classical Greek history in April. He taught Classics 10B, Introduction to Roman Civilization, all by himself as sole lecturer in the summer of 2005. He designed his own syllabus, assigned his own reading list, and came up with all the discussion and lecturing material himself. He loved it. He will be doing the same thing again for Summer 2006 which will be considerably easier this time around as he will not have to do it all from scratch. He spent August 2005 with his wife in an apartment in Krakow's Podgorze district studying and visiting the city's numerous beautiful brick-vaulted beer cellars as well as the underground cathedral carved out of salt, Wieliczka. He is delighted that Berkeley has finally offered a seminar in classical Greek history after a long hiatus, and is working on the oligarchical coups of 411. He has, alas, had no time for radio disc-jockeying.
Having recently passed the MA exam, Brendan Haug is planning to start the ancient language exams with Greek in August (and perhaps even pass it). Before then, he will attend the American Society of Papyrologists' Summer Seminar held this year at Columbia University, New York from June 19 to July 28. The instructors will be professors Roger Bagnall and Rafella Cribiore of Columbia and Heike Behlmer of Macquarie University in Sydney Australia. He has no further plans beyond this except coming back to Berkeley to cram for his exam.
Last semester, Emily Haug completed her master's exam on Early Christianity and is now focusing on her languages. She also had the opportunity to GSI for L&S 44: "Western Civilization" and had the good luck of meeting some really enthusiastic students in her first time teaching. This semester she is a GSI for Classics 10B: "Roman Civ." and finds it to be enjoyable again. This summer she will participate in the American Numismatic Society's Summer Seminar and, as it turns out, spending time in the program and in New York City won't be her only joyful experience. Coincidentally her husband, Brendan Haug, will be attending the papyrology seminar at Columbia University at the same time so they will get to explore the city together.
Ken Jones and his wife welcomed their first child, Elena Diane, into the world last May. This new incentive prompted Ken to apply himself even more diligently to finishing his dissertation "Provincial Reactions to Roman Imperialism: The Aftermath of the Jewish Revolt, A.D. 66-70" which is now in the revision stage. Ken will be joining the history faculty at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash. next fall for a renewable visiting professorship in ancient history. The beginning of his professional career and the departure from Berkeley, where he spent ten of the last eleven years as both undergraduate and graduate, will be bittersweet indeed. His paper "The Figure of Apion in Josephus' Contra Apionem" appeared in Vol. 36 (August 2005) of the Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period.
Michael Laughy writes, "This past year has been consumed with taking all three written exams and preparing for my impending orals. After nine years of excavating in the Athenian agora, I am finally staying home this summer and will use this unemployed time to work on my dissertation proposal. In other news, I got engaged recently to a girl named Amber Sue and my cat Flavius gained two pounds."
Jessica Nitschke reports, "It's been a busy year. Last summer, as many readers will already know, Geoff and I got married on the lovely isle of Mauritius. We spent the rest of the summer in Athens, Istanbul and Beirut, where I was able to finish up the necessary field research for my dissertation (which is on acculturation and identity in Persian and Hellenistic Phoenicia). Following that, I returned to the Berkeley campus after a two-year hiatus to bulk up my teaching experience and finish the dissertation. Geoff is normally resident in Amsterdam, where he's working on a PhD in Artificial Intelligence at the Free University of Amsterdam, so we've been trying to juggle work with the occasional trans-Atlantic visit. In the fall I had the great opportunity to teach a History 101 seminar (it's the class in which undergraduate history majors write their senior thesis). I also gave a paper at the annual meeting of ASOR, in Becky Martin's session on the Persian Levant (Berkeley grads were well-represented in this session - Amelia Brown presented a paper as did Stephanie Langin- Hooper of NES). I'm now desperately trying to finish up by the beginning of fall, as I have a one-year faculty position at DePauw University starting in August, where I'll be teaching courses on Mediterranean archaeology and upper level Latin and Greek."
Elisabeth O'Connell reports a productive year. After spending spring 2005 in New York working with ostraka excavated by the Metropolitan Museum of Art from Western Thebes (Egypt), she gave a paper at the North American Patristics Society's annual meeting in Chicago in June as part of Berkeley History Department alum, Kristina Sessa's panel on domestic space in Late Antiquity. The panel was well received and the participants were invited to publish their papers together as a special volume of the Journal of Early Christian Studies. Over the summer, she had a MRG in Late Antiquity summer grant to undertake dissertation research at the Griffith Institute, Oxford and returned to Berkeley in July to help move the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri to temporary quarters while the Bancroft Library undergoes renovations. In the fall, she gave a paper at Roger Bagnall's inaugural Sather conference, "Papyrology: New Directions in a New Generation" before setting off to Egypt as an ARCE fellow. Having just returned from Egypt, she will be busy in the library (shhhh!) until she finishes her dissertation this fall, inshaalah.
Jeffrey Pearson writes, "My studies this year have concentrated on Greek and on one of my minor fields, Greco-Roman Egypt, including a month of excavation at Tebtunis, Egypt in November. Now, I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of the summer months, during which I will teach intensive Latin at Gonzaga University in Spokane for the second time and participate in the wedding of my brother Tom in Sacramento. Though I will miss digging—and the annual chance to renew my tan and tone my lower back muscles—the time will be well spent catching up on some music and preparing for exams."
Jason Schlude says, "Since participating in the American Academy's 2005 Summer Program in Archaeology, which proved rejuvenating and rewarding on many levels, I have enjoyed (or should I say endured) a year of wedding planning and PhD exam preparation. I took my French exam in August, Latin exam in October, and major field exam, Roman History and Latin Epigraphy, in January. Before the July 8th wedding, I hope to have completed my other two field exams: Jews of the Graeco-Roman World and History and Material Culture of Greeks in the Near East. Then, it will be time to relax by watching my immediate family of sixteen (parents, siblings, nieces, nephews) collide for the first time with Katrina's immediate family of three (parents, sibling) on the weekend of our nuptials! Well, if we can't relax then, perhaps our honeymoon in Hawaii will help. There we plan to explore volcanic rocks and beaches. I have been informed that my bags will be searched for academic paraphernalia before we leave."
Laura Steele is working on completing her dissertation on Mesopotamian slave women, and she has been collaborating with Marian Feldman on creating three-dimensional digital reconstructions of Bronze Age Syrian palaces. Her partner Amanda Littauer has accepted a tenure-track joint appointment in history and in women's studies at St. Mary's College in Indiana (across the street from Notre Dame), and so Laura and Amanda will be moving east in June. In fact, St. Mary's might become a destination for the whole family: Laura's four-year-old daughter Zoe will attend preschool on the St. Mary's campus during the next academic year, and Laura may be asked to teach a course—appropriately entitled "Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology"—at St. Mary's this fall. Laura and her family will find it difficult to say goodbye to their friends in the Bay Area and to the vibrant Berkeley community; but of course, Laura will return to file her dissertation! She extends her thanks to all the Group students, professors, and staff with whom she's worked.
Cai Thorman reports, "I have taken an unexpected leave of absence this year. A certain little boy, whom I have yet to meet, hijacked my body last summer in Turkey as his vehicle into this world. The struggle has risked both our lives, but we have made our peace, and expect to meet around May 10th. He is a robust, long-legged, extraordinarily active 31-week fetus today, who has- despite great adversity-managed to attain twice the weight he should have, largely by subtracting it from me. His father, Frank Osterloh, and I were finally married, after four years, on September 28th. Frank just received tenure at UC Davis in the Chemistry department, and we continue to live comfortably but distantly in Sacramento. Despite this surprise (yet ultimately inevitable) hiatus to found a family, I have continued to correspond and work with professors on crucial projects, as I am able. My MA exam preparation continues remotely under the gentle supervision of Crawford Greenewalt, exploring the 'Archaeology of Western Anatolia in the 1st millenium BC, with emphasis on interconnections between Greece and Rome', as does my independent study of German. I expect to take both exams in the Fall. I have also resumed working on Marian Feldman's project to reconstruct the Near Eastern palaces at Atchana, Kabri, Qatna and Sakka in digital 3D with the guidance of Laura Steele. I will begin my 2nd year in the AHMA program when I return�and I SHALL return! During this interim, I can be contacted at cthorman@pobox.com."
-----Post-doctoral Researchers-----
Ana Rodriguez Mayorgas finished her PhD in Ancient History in 2005 at Complutense University of Madrid (Spain), with a dissertation focusing on oral memory and the beginnings of history writing in the Roman Republic. She currently holds a postdoctoral fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Culture and the Fulbright Foundation. She will stay at Berkeley for two years to work on a project on Roman education during the Republic, with Erich Gruen as her advisor. Her interests include education, literacy and orality, classical historiography, and the hellenization of the Roman Republic.
-----Faculty-----
Marion Feldman's main news is that her new book, Diplomacy by Design: Luxury Arts and an 'International Style' in the Ancient Near East, 1400-1200 BCE, appeared this spring, published by the University of Chicago Press. It includes drawings of ivories by AHMA student Marcia DeVoe. In other news, Marian presented a paper on frescoes, exotica and the reinvention of Levantine kingdoms in the Middle Bronze Age at the AIA meetings in Montreal (brrr!) and will be attending the 5th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (5ICAANE) in Madrid in early April.
Erich Gruen writes, "It has been a busy and rewarding year. I am especially gratified that our students are moving through the program at a good clip, producing fine dissertations, and getting desirable jobs. I have been doing a fair bit of traveling, last summer in Europe and Israel, this year in various parts of the USA. It is particularly pleasurable to accept invitations to places where former students are now teaching (in tenure-track positions) and to see them on their own turf—this spring at Claremont, LSU, and Colorado State. I also delivered the Martin Lectures at Oberlin, four lectures in five days, a real punishment for the audience. Three new pieces appeared in print, on very different subjects: 'Augustus and the Making of the Principate,' 'Subversive Elements in Pseudo-Philo,' and 'Persia through the Jewish Looking-Glass.' A book that I edited, based on a conference held in Germany nearly three years ago, finally saw the light of day: Cultural Borrowings and Ethnic Appropriations in Antiquity. Most gratifying is the posthumous publication of Representing Agrippina by Judy Ginsburg, one of my first students, who died tragically of cancer with the manuscript nearly finished. I was able to prepare it for publication and add an introduction as a tribute to her. It is available for purchase through the APA Monograph series! I highly recommend it."
Ron Hendel taught the AHMA graduate seminar with Erich Gruen in Fall 2005 on "Divisions and Convergences: Ancient Jewish External and Internal Boundaries" and has recently published an article on "Genesis 1-11 and Its Mesopotamian Problem," in Erich Gruen, ed., Cultural Borrowings and Ethnic Appropriations in Antiquity. He has just corrected the proofs for "The Archaeology of Memory: King Solomon, Chronology, and Biblical Representation," in a Festschrift for William Dever. He is giving a talk on "Purity and Danger in the Priestly Torah" in a Berkeley symposium on Folklore in Judaism on April 9 at the Sultan Room of the CMES, and he will be spending the summer doing Feng Shui and philology.
Candy Keller (NES faculty and AHMA PhD 1978), along with UC Berkeley NES PhDs Catharine Roehrig (Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Renee Dreyfus (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco), spent 2002-2005 organizing the international loan exhibition "Hatshepsut, from Queen to Pharaoh," which debuted at the new de Young Museum this past fall. The exhibition, which includes some 270 objects, opened at the Metropolitan Museum on March 21, 2005. For those of you who missed it in SF, it will remain at the Met until mid-summer and then move on to the Kimball Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. The three also co-edited, as well as made major contributions to, the exhibition catalogue, which contains contributions from around twenty scholars (mostly essays) and entries for all of the objects. She adds, "As Faculty Curator of Egyptian Art and Epigraphy at the Hearst Museum (whew!), I have been participating in a major push to restore the Egyptian materials in the museum's collection, with Hearst Museum conservator Jane Williams carrying out the work. She has just about completed the panel paintings. Recently, we prioritized the corpus of Egyptian limestone stelae needing treatment, and Jane has had some impressive results already. Ultimately, the goal is to ensure that the materials not only receive badly needed treatment, but also are able to withstand exhibition. I am currently finishing an article on the effects of close-contact village life on personal religious preference at Deir el-Medina and hope to spend 2007-2008 on leave, completing two major research projects."
Robert Knapp, after a busy five years, four heading the Classics Department and last year chairing the Berkeley Academic Senate, is on leave this year working on his Roman social history project, Invisible Romans; a contribution on "The Poor, Latin Inscriptions, and Social History" will appear in the Acta of the recent Congress on Greek and Latin Epigraphy. He has also been active in advising the Berkeley Chancellor on diversity strategies, as well as helping the Nemea Center for Classical Archaeology get off to a good start under its new Director, Kim Shelton. Part of the Nemea work involves publishing the excavation's coins, which have been discovered since 1996; he will work on that this spring in Nemea. The previous coins appeared last year in "Nemea III: The Coins" (with John Mac Isaac) (UC Press). His daughter Abigail is married and working for University Advancement at UC Irvine; his daughter Hannah lives and works in San Francisco, pursuing a budding acting career. Knapp will retire in June after 33 years in the business, over 30 of them at Berkeley. It's been a great run and he looks forward to continuing to work on his projects in retirement. He will be teaching for the Classics Department in Fall 2006.
Leonard Lesko, former professor of Egyptology from 1966 to 1982 in Berkeley's Near Eastern Studies Department, retired from Brown University on June 30, 2005 after 23 years of teaching. He had held the Wilbour Chair Professorship in Egyptology and Chairmanship of the Department of Egyptology there since 1982. On June 29, 2005 his colleagues and former students presented him with a Festshrift at a surprise retirement party. The book, which Brown University will publish as part of the Brown Egyptological Studies series, consists of 24 articles, mostly from the field of Egyptology and Egyptian archaeology, but also including articles by Guitty Azarpay, Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Art at Berkeley, and Brown scholars in the fields of Classical and Near Eastern archaeology. Malcolm Mosher, who received his PhD in Egyptology from Berkeley's Near Eastern Studies Department, is also among the contributors.
-----Alumni-----
Ory Amitay reports "plenty of teaching, to be sure. Myth and religion in the Hellenistic world, Julio-Claudians, Archaic and Classical Greece and plenty of freshman seminars. Good fun, all in all. On the publication front things are going slowly, but there is some good news: my article "Why Did Alexander the Great Besiege Tyre?" will be published in 2007's Athenaeum. Deo volente, by the time this gets published, others will have been accepted as well. My project on Jewish holidays got bogged down in a mind-boggling amount of research. However, the chapter on Hanukkah yielded some interesting conclusions about Yehudah haMaqabi and the earlier initial stages of the revolt. Another article. The girls are growing up and becoming more beautiful and articulate with each day. The joy they bring is equaled only by the amount of caretaking necessary."
Bridget Buxton writes, "My husband Rohan and I are expecting the arrival of our first child, a boy, next month (April), so I am currently taking extended parental leave from Auckland this year. Our family has already expanded by the addition of an elderly Jack Russell terrier called Lolly, who is far cuter than a baby. The last couple of years have mainly been about finding my feet in a new job, and new city, a bit of research, and lots and lots of teaching."
Merilyn Copland (AHMA PhD 1992) reports, "I am teaching at William Jessup University in the fields of Hebrew Bible, Hebrew language, and archaeology. I had a heart attack during the summer of 2004, but I was able to teach by the fall. I continue to take students for field studies to Israel, Turkey, and Greece during summers. Last summer I had a wonderful time writing and doing some research in the Greek Isles and Turkey."
Alison Futrell says, "Greetings from the desert! Home of Suessian vegetation. I am pleased to have surrendered the mantle of Director of Graduate Studies at Arizona's History Dept. this year, but found that any time freed up from administration was rapidly sucked away by something else. In January, Blackwell published The Roman Games: A Sourcebook, a project that I've been working on for a few years. For the APA/AIA this year, I organized a panel on 'Nationalisms, National Identity and the Classical Tradition' for the APA's Committee on the Classical Tradition. It was well attended and generated some interesting discussion, especially among the panelists. January also saw my operetta debut as Pretteia in Gilbert and Sullivan's Thespis, staged at the APA/AIA meetings in Montreal. Rollicking musical hijinx, indeed, but now I yearn even more for a soundtrack to accompany my daily life. I was featured on 'Boudica: Warrior Queen,' which premiered in March on the History Channel; this was an Indigo Productions documentary for which I acted as consultant (and talking head) over the past two years or so. Boudica herself is close to my heart, as one of the foci of my current monograph project Barbarian Queens, to which I hope to devote my energies during next year's sabbatical. Best to all; see you in San Diego!"
Leah Johnson writes, "I am very happy to share the news that I have two books that will be appearing soon, Romani Facti: The Romanization of Italy from the Gracchi to Caesar, 133-44 BC and The Fifth Century Athenian Standards Decree: Texts and Contexts. Furthermore, I am greatly pleased to announce that I have just accepted a tenured appointment as associate professor of Greek and Roman history at John Cabot University in Rome, Italy. In addition to looking forward tremendously to working with the faculty, staff and students there, I will now be able to easily make more headway on my current research on Mithridates VI of Pontus, the Cilician pirates and the origins and spread of Mithraism in Rome and the western empire. While I have these visions of exploring mithraic sanctuaries in my head, my ten-year old son Luc and my 10-month old puppy Argos have dreams of virtually non-stop indulgence in the younger set's 'holy triad': pasta, pizza and gelato! Okay, truth be told, I plan to eat my fair share too, but I'll hike it off."
Brady Kiesling writes, "I'm living in the Plaka (Athens) with Regina, my Brazilian consort, earning a few bucks a month with a foreign policy column for the Athens News. We travel to Brazil in April to meet Regina's family and give a couple of talks. I am bound for Tehran in May, again for a talk and to do some research for an article on building domestic political constituencies for less counterproductive U.S.-Iranian relations. My book Diplomacy Lessons: Realism for an Unloved Superpower is due out from Potomac Books in June/July 2006, once the State Department and CIA decide what parts of it to 'redact.' The prepublication response from liberal pundits has been positive. Negotiations are under way with a Greek publisher as well. In September I hope to visit Berkeley for a book tour. On the classical front, I've signed up with John Cherry and Sue Alcock (now of Brown University) to take part in their Vorotan Project archaeological survey in southern Armenia this July/August. Meanwhile, I attend as many ASCSA lectures as I can. An article in The Nation ('An Olympian Scandal,' March 20, 2006) put me briefly in the Greek headlines: sophisticated bugging of Greek government and other mobile phones with embarrassing U.S. fingerprints. I am doing research in my spare time for a short book on the 17 November terrorist group. In my spare time, I'm webmaster and steering committee member of a little political organization, the Hellenic-American Democratic Association (www.helada.org). I recently put up www.bradykiesling.com with info on the book and the text of old articles. Rediscovering Armenia, my 2000 guidebook, is back in print, though only in Armenia I think. Daughter Lydia is teaching English in Istanbul this year, after graduation from Hamilton College. Visitors are welcome!"
Michael Maas reports, "This academic year I am professor-in-charge at the Intecollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome. This summer, I will be co-director with Richard Talbert of an NEH Summer Seminar on 'Trajan's Column: Narratives of War, Civilization, and Commemoration in the Roman Empire' to be held at the American Academy in Rome. In May a book I edited appeared: The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian (CUP, 2005)."
Jeremy McInerney says, "I am thriving at Penn, where we hope to add a third ancient historian to our programme this coming year. I am due for a sabbatical next year, which I'll be spending in France with my wife, Maud, an alum of the Comp Lit programme at Berkeley, and our two kids. I am currently working on sanctuaries, economics and cattle raising in the Greek world, which is a fancy way of describing the history of the barbeque. I enjoy the applied research particularly. Best to all at berkeley and abroad!"
John Pollini writes, "I have been appointed Whitehead Professor of Archaeology at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (2006-2007), where I shall be working on my book project, Christian Destruction and Desecration of Images of Classical Antiquity: A Study in Religious Intolerance in the Ancient World. For this project I also received two fellowships for next year: a Guggenheim and an American Council of Learned Societies. Last spring I was a recipient of a Mellon Foundation Award for Excellence in Mentoring and a Taggart Foundation grant for a virtual reality project on the Augustan monuments of the northern Campus Martius. With other faculty at USC, I helped set up this past fall a new undergraduate major in archaeology. I also presented papers at international conferences at the University of Michigan, University of Chicago, Stanford University, and the University of London and lectured at Cambridge University. Last spring I gave a series of distinguished lectures at the University of Oklahoma at Norman, and this summer I shall be giving a paper at Aix-en-Provence at an international conference (ASMOSIA) on the study of marble in antiquity. This past year I published three articles on Roman sculpture: two in Romische Mitteilungen and another in Antike Kunst, with two others forthcoming in Revue Archeologique. In addition, I edited and contributed to Terra Marique: Studies in Art History and Marine Archaeology and submitted a book manuscript co-authored with J. Rufus Fears titled Rome: The Religion and Rhetoric of Empire. My wife Phyllis continues her work in real estate, with the help now of our older son Gaius. Our younger son Drusus is studying this year at the London School of Economics, prior to completing his senior year at USC."
Beth Severy-Hoven writes, "I will be chair of the Classics department at Macalester starting in the fall. I am guest editing a special issue of the journal Arethusa, called Reshaping Rome: Space, Time and Memory in the Augustan Transition, currently in production. Contributors include Groupie Eric Orlin and Groupie-Groupie Andrew Riggsby. And I'm working on an article interpreting the paintings in the House of the Vettii in Pompeii. Otherwise I am mostly trying to get used to being a professor and a mom at the same time, but enjoying both immensely."
Pamela Vaughn reports, "I spent Spring 2005 as a sabbatical fellow at Oxford University, living at St. Stephen's House (an Anglican theological college of the university) and doing research in the Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum—a complete change of pace and focus for me and wonderfully exhilarating. My intention is to produce a translation and commentary on two of the home synods of the 5th century. The sabbatical turned out to be a career-changing experience as well, since as of February 1, I am the new associate dean for faculty development at San Francisco State University. That meant a tough choice, as I love my classics courses and chairing my two departments (classics and comparative literature), but this was the right opportunity at the right time in my life. I am looking forward to finding ways to improve life for faculty (and, by extension, students!) on our campus—not always an easy thing to do when one is dealing with a standard 4-4, 4-3 or 3-3 teaching load. My experiences as a presenter at a few of UC's Summer Institutes for graduate students will certainly be helpful in this new endeavor."