Assistant Professor of Assyriology
About
My work focuses on the languages and social and intellectual history of the ancient Middle East (Mesopotamia) and the Mediterranean. I am particularly interested in how scholars of cuneiform cultures practice their craft and manipulate the languages and writing systems of scribal cultures in the production of texts, literatures, translations, and knowledge. My research is influenced by theories and methodologies from multiple disciplines, especially sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, translation studies, history, comparative literature, analytical philosophy, sociology, and the history of science and technology. My current project tells the sociolinguistic history of the Sumerian language, one of the earliest recorded and most persevering languages (with a 3,000+ year history) and how various groups differentiated themselves through their use of Sumerian.
In first book, I demonstrated how cuneiform student scribes participated in scholarly discourse through innovative translations, substantiating their capabilities with their primary object of study, the cuneiform writing system. I have also written on how cuneiform scribal practices affect the production of texts, intertextual connections between compositions, and the reception of ideas of language and lexicography in modern scholarship. In addition to my work on language and scribal practices, I am continually developing a project called MetaScribe that focuses on computational networks of scribes and their practices (part of the ORACC consortium http://oracc.org). I am also collaborating on a project to edit and translate early Mesopotamian incantations and so-called magical texts. And with colleagues from the University of Chicago and Purdue University, I am part of a collaborative investigating how various cultures in the ancient world responded to changing climates.
I teach courses on Mesopotamian History, the History of Medicine in the Middle East, Science and Technology in the Ancient Middle East, and Languages and Writing in the Ancient Mediterranean.
