We live in an ever-changing world, but our culture, our systems of belief, action, etc., have roots that stretch far back into history. The ancient Greeks and Romans are commonly seen as the originators of Western civilization, and while their contributions are significant and not to be overlooked, these people were part of a larger world, one that was far older than either of these two cultures. Neither the developments of Greece or Rome, nor the development of the West, were things that occurred in isolation. Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa were part of a larger system, one that consisted of interactions and interrelations between various cultures.
As an historian of the ancient world, I am interested in exploring the earliest beginnings of the interactions between ancient cultures. My research is primarily focused on ancient Anatolia and northern Syria during the Late Bronze Age (c. 1900-1200 BCE). These regions were important to the movement of technology, science, philosophy, and the arts out of the ancient Middle East and into Greece. As a teacher I cast my net wider. I currently teach on ancient Middle Eastern History at Columbia College, the largest art college in the USA, but I have prepared syllabi for several other courses, including introductions into ancient Greece and Rome, as well as more specific topics such as international relations and pirates and piracy.
I’ve always been interested in the ancient world, but it wasn’t until I transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in 1996 that I was able to take courses on this topic. I combined undergraduate and graduate level course on anthropological/archaeological topics (my major) with those on the history and languages of the ancient Near East. Two years later I began my graduate studies at the University of Chicago, focusing on the history, culture and languages of ancient Anatolia, with an emphasis on the Hittites.
I chose to write my dissertation on the modal system of Hurrian, a comparatively poorly attested language spoken by one of the major population groups of the Late Bronze Age (c. 2100-1200 B.C.). I received a Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) research grant for the 2002/2003 academic year to do research and coursework at the Julius-Maximilians Universität Würzburg. I spent my time in Germany doing intensive work on Hurrian, which proved to be invaluable for my dissertation. After I returned to Chicago, I combined philological, linguistic, and historical work to determine the function of the many modal morphemes in the language. The end result was a work that furthered our knowledge of Hurrian and set the stage for me to begin to do actual historical research into the documents written in it.
I defended my dissertation Mood and Modality in Hurrian with honors in early 2007 and graduated that March. Since graduation I have been employed by two major research projects at the University of Chicago: the Persepolis Fortification Archive (a salvage project) and the Chicago Hittite Dictionary (in particular the electronic, on-line dictionary). I have also offered occasional courses at the university as a lecturer. In March 2008 I was hired as an adjunct professor at Columbia College, the largest art college in the country.
I am currently focused on two major lines of research: the interrelation between orality and literacy and the use of network analysis in ancient history.
My studies into literacy and orality are primarily focused on the ancient Near East. I am currently looking specifically at the material from the Hittite capital of Hattusa, but I plan on eventually including Syria and Mesopotamia into this study. Despite this focus on the ancient Near East, research into this topic requires study into literacy and orality in the Classical world, especially ancient Greece, Medieval Europe, and China. My initial foray into the topic concerns a tangential topic: dictation. In the study of literacy and orality it is important to discover, if possible, the form of the spoken word. This is especially relevant to the study of the nature of text copying: were they copied by sight or by dictation? I have recently presented on the visual traces of the spoken word (i.e. the sight of sound) in certain Hittite texts. I plan on using the model that I am developing with this work on the larger Hittite corpus.
Network analysis allows for new ways to visualize various connections within a dataset. In the Persepolis Fortification Archive we have more than three thousand text and even more sealed, but uninscribed, tablets from the ancient Persian site of Persepolis. The archive is economic in nature and involves the movement of a tremendous amount of material throughout the empire by a large number of individuals. Using network analysis programs, I hope to be able to show the complex relations between the various agents, the places with which they are involved, the material that they are moving, and even the language(s) used to write the texts.
Hurrian religion is a topic that has already received some important contributions from other scholars. I am currently preparing two papers that further explore the ties the Hurrian Theogony (the Kumarbi Cycle) to Hesiod's Theogony. In one paper I explore the celestial and chthonic origin of the Stormgod, who rose to the position of king of the gods. As such the Hurrian Teššub was similar to Greek Zeus, who was also a Stormgod with both celestial and chthonic properties. The second paper will explore the nature of the relationship between Teššub and his wife Hebat. A new reading of a Hurrian language text indicates that both Teššub and Hebat were born of the god Kumarbi, making them brother and sister. This is again comparable to the Greek where Zeus and Hera are not just husband and wife, but brother and sister as well.
I am currently an adjunct professor at Columbia College Chicago, the largest art college in the country. I am also an occasional lecturer for the University of Chicago.
My teaching at Columbia is currently limited to the course "Middle East History: To Muhammad" (49-1501). I have requested courses such as "Europe & the West: Ancient Civilizations" (49-1301) and "Comparative Religions" (51-1501) but due to the high number of
adjuncts in my department there have been no available openings. I typically fill two sections of my class every semester (25 students/section), but in Fall 2011, I will be teaching three sections. I use a combination of lecture, PowerPoint presentation (sample PowerPoint), online reading assignments and class discussion.
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I have prepared several syllabi for courses that I am ready to teach. These include courses on ancient Greece, ancient Rome, international relations in the ancient world, and pirates and piracy. Please click on the link to see the syllabi.
