This paper explores activities of cleaning and disposing because they represent key principles of social organization. Close attention to discard behavior helps us to understand how people related to the material goods and places that once made up their object worlds – their material habitus (c.f. Meskell, 2005: 3). Human relationships to defilement, in particular, must be seen in in the context of how human identity as a rational being is established and maintained (Kristeva, ...

We live in a world of maps and networks. GPS enabled phones allow us to instantly locate ourselves on the earth’s surface, guide us to stores or restaurants, or announce to the world our location through social media. Likewise, programs like Google Earth and desktop Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have revolutionized our engagement with maps, map-making, and have challenged traditional notions of space and place. The proliferation of GIS technologies and the “spatial turn” in ...

Book of the Dead of the Priest of Horus, Imhotep (Imuthes), ca. 332-200 B.C. From the poetry of Sappho to the New Testament, texts written on papyrus have been preserved for millennia by arid conditions in Egypt, excavated, and collected in archives. This timely colloquium examines the legal and ethical problems surrounding these papyrological archives. Roberta Mazza will tell the story of how ancient papyri of unknown provenance were acquired by the Museum of the ...

“Voices of Ancient Palmyra” began as an online public humanities project that explored how different publics engaged with ancient history and the destruction of ancient objects. The original goal was to encourage people of all ages and education levels to artistically rewrite words from ancient Palmyrene inscriptions, while learning about the history of the site. Artistic recreations were then uploaded to the website and social media. The project became a museum exhibition at the Fullerton ...

The Roman emperor Jovian (363-364) only ruled for eight months and has not received much attention in scholarship. However, he is more than a footnote in history. After the reign of Julian, he returned to the policies of Constantius II and Constantine the Great. His peace agreement with the Sassanid king Shapur II also had great impact for Roman-Persian relations. The first part of this presentation evaluates the peace agreement, the responses to it, and ...