Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group

New Graduate Seminar • Int 594AB: Ancient Borderlands, 2 credits
Alternate Fridays, 11-1 • IHC Seminar Room, HSSB 6056 • Profs. Digeser, Thomas

List of presenters and topics

October 5: General introduction, reception
October 19: Elizabeth Digeser: Fragments and the Ancient Historian

• Reading: Glenn Most, "A la recherche du texte perdu: On collecting philosophical fragments," in Fragmentsammlungen philosophischer Texte der Antike (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998) 1-15.

November 2: Erich Gruen: Fictitious Kinships and the Dissolution of Boundaries

• Reading: Irad Malkin, "Introduction," in idem, Ancient Perceptions of Greek Identity (Cambridge: Harvard, 2001) 1-28.

November 16: Tony Barbeiri-Low and Robin Yates: Qin and Han borderlands

• Reading: Selections from The World Order of Han China, McLeod and Yates, Forms of Ch'in Law, and archival materials.

November 30: Roberta Mazza: Papyrology

Reading: R.S. Bagnall, 'Decolonizing Ptolemaic Egypt', in P. Cartledge, P.Garnsey, E.S. Gruen (eds), Hellenistic Constructs: Essays in Culture,History, and Historiography (Berkeley: University of California, 1997), 225-42.

Prof. Mazza's presentation

January 11: Christine Thomas: Hybrid Identities and Strategies of Display in the Archaeology of Traditional Mediterranean Religion

Reading: Homi Bhabha, "The Commitment to Theory," in idem, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994) 28-56.

Prof. Thomas' presentation

February 15: Emily Schmidt: The Res Gestae Divi Augusti as Monument

• Reading: Jas Elsner, "Inventing Imperium: Texts and the Propaganda of Monuments in Augustan Rome," in idem, Art and Text in Roman Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1996) 32-53.
• Reading: John Moreland, "Objects and Texts in Context," chapter four of Archaeology and Text (London: Duckworth, 2001) 77-97.
• Emily Schmidt's presentation
  

February 22: Matthew Recla: Martyrs, Hellenes, or Both? Religious Actors
in a Locus of Power

• Reading: Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Stanford, Cal.; Stanford University, 1980) 1-21, 25-29.
• Matthew Recla's presentation
  

February 29: Olivier Dufault: Borderlands Theory

• Reading: Frederik Barth, "Introduction," In Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference, idem, ed. (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 1998 repr. of 1968 ed.), 9-38.
  

March 7: Scott McGill, Rice University: Saving the Hero: Or Why Virgil Was No Plagiarist

April 9: Heidi Marx-Wolf: High Priests of the Highest God: Third Century Platonists as Ritual Experts

• Reading: David Frankfurter, "An Architecture for Chaos: The Nature and Fucntion of Demonology," and "Experts in the Identification of Evil," in Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Ritual Abuse in History (Princeton: Princeton University, 2006) 13-72.
  

April 16: Alexander Sokolicek, Ephesos Excavations, University of Vienna: The Magnesian Gate in Ephesos: New Research on the Main City Gate

• Reading: See topics History, Artemesion, Ayasoluk, Magnesian Gate, Tetragonos Agora, Church of Mary, and Epigraphy at the website of the ÖAI
  

April 30: Jessica Ambler: Contested Identity in the Republican Home

• Reading: Paul Zanker, Pompeii: Public and Private Life (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1998) 1-25.

May 14: Molly Bassett: Modern Náhuatl and Aztec Teteo:
A Search for Autochthonous Methods of Aztec Deity Identification & Classification

• Reading: Elizabeth H. Boone, "The 'Coatlicues' at the Templo Mayor," Ancient Mesoamerica 10 (1999) 189-206.
• Reading: William L. Barnes, "Partitioning the Parturient: An Exploration of the Aztec Fetishized Female Body," Athanor 15 (1997) 20-27.