Assistant Professor of Classical Studies and Archivist of the Papyrology Collection
About
I hold a split position at U-M, serving as both an Assistant Professor of Classical Studies and as the Archivist of the Papyrology Collection. As a researcher, my primary field of interest is the environmental history of Graeco-Roman and early Islamic Egypt (ca. 3rd cent. BC to 13th cent AD). My first book project, currently in preparation, is a study of sociocultural relationships with water in the Fayyum. Inspired by the concepts of “space” and “place” in human geography, the project explores how the Fayyum’s residents used water both to construct their physical environment and to interpret their place within it.
I am also interested in the history of Egyptology during Egypt’s colonial period and am currently at work on two long articles. The first describes how the history of ancient Egyptian irrigation was written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in a manner designed to justify revolutionary new forms of modern colonial water governance. The second article draws upon my work as Archivist of the Papyrology Collection and narrates the building of the Collection in the 1920’s and 1930’s against a backdrop of rising Egyptian nationalism and the contested politics of antiquities ownership.
At the undergraduate level I teach courses in koine Greek, Graeco-Roman Egypt, and the Environmental History of the ancient Mediterranean world. At the graduate level I offer a seminar on Greek papyrology, a course designed to introduce students in philology, history, and archaeology to the field and teach them how to utilize its resources in their own research. As a member of the IPGRH faculty, my goal is to model how a diverse and eclectic set of interests can be combined to illuminate ancient society in ways irrecoverable by traditional methodologies.
Fields of Study
- Graeco-Roman and early Islamic Egypt
- Environmental History
- Papyrology
- History of Egyptology
Forthcoming Publications
Predictably Unpredictable: Water Rights, Community, and Conflict in Fayyūm Irrigation,” forthcoming in a volume of Studia Hellenistica.
“Roman Egypt,” in David Hollander and Timothy Howe (eds.), A Companion to Ancient Agriculture. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
