Summer Programs

2012 Dates
June 25 - July 27, 2012

2012 Application Deadline
March 1, 2012

2012 Co-Directors
The seminar will be co-directed by Richard J.A. Talbert, RAAR'91, Kenan Professor of History and Classics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Michael Maas, FAAR'81, Professor of History and Classical Studies at Rice University.

To download Richard Talbert’s CV, click here. 

Program Details (printable PDF file with this information can be found at the end of this text.)

The principal focus of our interdisciplinary, collaborative seminar will be Rome itself as the communications hub of the most successful empire of the ancient Mediterranean world.  In seminar discussion and with numerous trips to museums and archaeological sites we will address questions fundamental to our understanding of pre-modern (and perhaps modern) empires:  What demands for communication does empire create?  How, in an age before telecommunications and rapid transportation, could an imperial system manifest its sovereignty and enable the circulation of personnel, ideas, and material goods? How were networks of communication structured and maintained? How did the multiplicity of networks function separately and together to make the empire work?

To answer these large questions we will consider the special circumstances of the Roman empire (ca. 31 BC – ca. AD 500) as our primary case, although a comparative approach is equally fundamental to our seminar. We will be based in the city of Rome, the hub of the ancient Roman empire, to consider at firsthand the monuments and texts that anchored its communications systems. Our approach, however, deliberately sets out to involve participants who study other pre-modern civilizations that flourished beyond the ancient Mediterranean world at different periods; the seminar is designed to invite comparative study on a global level.  We successfully attracted an interdisciplinary range of scholars of many eras to our two previous seminars, and we aim to do so again in 2012.

The city of Rome is in many respects a template ideally suited to comparative study of imperial communications. It stood as the symbolic and practical center point of the ancient world’s most successful and long-lived imperial system. The metropolis on the river Tiber anchored an array of communication networks of very different sorts that were foundational to the practice of its empire.  Rome’s communication networks ranged from its famous roads for soldiers and the transport of goods and people, to social and religious movements, to less tangible routes for the circulation of ideas of every sort.  Above all, these multiple networks were essential for the expression of imperial power and the practice of government.  Yet all of the different routes of communication did not lead only from Rome; they also were the conduits by which the outer regions of the empire came to Rome – and to one another.  The city of Rome, therefore, was at the center of a cat’s-cradle of interconnected, two-way streets.  With their city as the hub (or central node), the Romans’ multi-tiered communication networks bound the vast empire together.  This complicated infrastructure of communications on which it rested forms our seminar’s focus. 

 The seminar has four main objectives:

First, the participants will gain new perspectives on the communication networks of the Roman empire, and they will become aware of current developments in network and communication theory.  With these fresh approaches applied within the fabric of the ancient city of Rome as it survives today, they will uncover the interrelationships of material culture and political ideology of empire, as well as the economic, social, and religious formations of a pre-modern empire at its very hub.

Second, the participants will expand and deepen their understanding of the Roman empire in general and its capital in particular.  In this environment they may choose to focus their individual projects exclusively upon the city of Rome or upon its empire (or both); equally, they will be encouraged to make their project a comparative one, relating the Roman experience to that of another empire.

Third, the participants will have the opportunity to develop pedagogical ideas and methods for bringing the material back home to disseminate productively in the college or university classroom. The experience of both our previous NEH summer seminars has proven this to be one of the most rewarding stimuli for the group.

Fourth, the seminar will generate invaluable and long-lasting intellectual community among all participants. This bonding will be seeded naturally, not just in site visits and seminar discussions, but also in more informal settings such as dinner in the Academy courtyard.  It is plain to us that the forging of intellectual community has been one of the most valued fruits of our previous seminars.  Post-seminar contact is maintained by email in particular.   

Seminar Co-Directors

Richard J.A. Talbert, RAAR'91, is Kenan Professor of History and Classics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  As well as being an expert on Roman government, he is currently preoccupied with Greek and Roman spatial perceptions (physical and cultural), and with mapping the classical world.  These interests are advanced by his 2010 book Rome’s World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered.  Three books co-authored or edited by him are in press: The Romans from Village to Empire (expanded second edition); Highways, Byways, and Road Systems in the Pre-Modern World; and Ancient Perspectives: Maps and Their Place in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome.  With Grant Parker, he is currently writing Travel in the Roman Mind, and with Eva Winter a book about sundials that reflect ancient worldviews.  With Fred Naiden, he is editing the Oxford Handbook of Communications in the Classical World. 

Michael Maas, FAAR'81, is Professor of History and Classical Studies at Rice University, where he directs the Program in Ancient Mediterranean Civilizations and has won numerous teaching awards. The interplay of cultures is a central theme in his writing and teaching. His most recent books include The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian (2005) and Exegesis and Empire in the Early Byzantine Mediterranean (2003). He is interested in instruction at all levels, and has co-authored a “western civ” text, The West. Encounters and Transformations (2004). Currently he is engaged in two major projects, completing a monograph entitled Ethnography and Empire at the End of Antiquity and editing The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Attila. He currently heads the Managing Committee of the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome, where he was Professor in Charge in AY 2005/06.

Talbert and Maas both know Rome and the American Academy well. They co-directed NEH seminars there in 2000 and 2006. Talbert was Resident in Classics at the Academy in 1991. As a winner of the Prix de Rome, Maas was a Fellow in Classics there in 1980/1. In addition, the distinguished Roman archaeologist Prof. Simon Keay (University of Southampton, U.K.) will contribute to the seminar’s work as Guest Lecturer in Week 3.

Organization of the Seminar

Topics:

Week 1: Creating the Center: Rome, Hub of Multiple Networks

Participants will be introduced to chief elements of the topography of the ancient city of Rome relating to our theme. Site visits will be made to the Roman Fora, the Tiber granaries, and certain museum collections.

Week 2: Rulers and Ruled: Cities and Administrative Networks

How the ancient city became the central node of an intricate web of administrative networks will be investigated, with special attention to the reign of Augustus, which is well documented in the textual and archaeological record. We will make visits to the Campus Martius and the Forum of Augustus.

Week 3: Economic and Operational Networks: Resources and Costs of Empire

This week’s discussion will focus on the networks that enabled the vast empire to function, in particular by exploiting and moving resources, with attention to their environmental and social costs. Visits will be made to Ostia, Portus, and the Museum of Roman Civilization in EUR.                             

Week 4: Religious Networks

Religious networks across the empire linked communities, spread ideas, and enabled sophisticated argument and public debate. We will consider indigenous religions, the imperial cult, and religions that came to the city from other lands (e.g. Christianity, worship of Isis). Visits will include San Clemente, the Vatican, and other martyr sites.

Week 5: Shifting the Center of the Networks: Rome, Constantinople, and Ravenna

This week will consider how in the Late Antique period (ca. 250-700) new centers of imperial power and communication developed in the Roman empire that displaced the primacy of the city of Rome. Our main excursion will be an overnight field trip to Ravenna.

The seminar lasts for five weeks to allow participants extended opportunity to acclimatize and to pursue their independent projects. The weekly rhythm of the seminar will be one long morning discussion/report session, lasting for four hours including a break, with one half- to full-day local field trip. At each session, designated participants will take the lead in opening discussion of readings. The trips will typically proceed on foot for most of the time, and all of them will provide further valuable opportunities for interchange. Some participants may give their project reports in the field. We anticipate arranging an additional session or two for reports towards the end of the seminar. Every week, the opportunity will be given for co-directors and all participants to eat at least two main meals together in order to continue their discussion of seminar topics and field trips in a less formal atmosphere.

On arrival, participants will each confer with the co-directors about their independent projects. As the seminar progresses, participants will have further individual meetings with the co-directors.

In Rome

The seminar will be hosted by the American Academy in Rome, whose magnificent structure and gardens overlook the city from the Janiculum (Gianicolo) Hill. The Academy is home to about 40 Fellows and Residents in classics, music, visual arts and architecture, other branches of the humanities, and writing. It offers a community of scholars and artists who are engaged with Rome and its monuments from multiple perspectives.

A room will be reserved at the Academy for our meetings. Seminar participants will have full use of the Academy’s excellent library at all times, and books especially useful for our seminar will be kept in our study room.  Participants will be invited to take the Academy’s midday and evening meals at subsidized rates, and they will be able to receive mail and faxes there. Participants must bring their own computer. The Academy will provide WiFi connection to the internet. Participants will have access to their personal or university e-mail accounts by this means.

Participants will be offered accommodation in rooms at the Academy. Space will not be available there, however, for partners or families. Participants may choose to live elsewhere, but will have to make their own arrangements to do so. Rates per person per week at the Academy are 475 euros for a single room.

It is each participant’s responsibility to have a valid passport. No visa is required by a U.S. citizen. To obtain a passport can take considerable time; so prompt action will be essential. 

The neighborhood of the American Academy is an exceptionally pleasant, upper-middle-class district with many amenities. For more excitement, Trastevere, a busy district of shops, cafés and outdoor restaurants, is only a ten-minute walk down the hill. Rome is a safe, marvelously walkable city; it also has an extensive system of buses and trams. The city can be quite hot during June and July, however. If you are very dependent upon air-conditioning to function in the summer, this may not be the seminar for you.

NEH offers each participant a stipend of $3,900, which will be paid in full in advance prior to departure from the U.S.  At the current US$/euro exchange rate, this stipend of $3,900 may cover travel and basic expenses. Remember, however, that in many respects Rome is liable to prove an extremely expensive city. Additional funds are sure to be required for special meals, souvenirs, books, and emergencies. A few hundred dollars should suffice, depending upon your lifestyle.

Who Should Apply

In selecting among applicants, we will be on the lookout for a diversity of interests, skills, and approaches to the seminar’s themes. It is not necessary to know Latin or to be a classicist, although we hope some will apply. We encourage applications from colleagues with interests in anthropology, archaeology, art, cartography, economics, epidemiology, government, language, network theory, religion, sociology, and town planning. Any eligible U.S. college teacher, independent scholar, or graduate student (as defined by NEH below) with a substantial contribution to bring to the themes outlined above is welcome to apply. We do not discriminate on the basis of age, gender, national origin, political affiliation, physical disability, race or color, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status. The American Academy is fully accessible to persons with disabilities. Participants should be aware, however, that Rome, like most European cities, is not as prepared as cities in the U.S. to handle physical disabilities, especially on public transportation. Physical stamina matters for field trips and excursions.

How To Apply

Read through the Application Information and Instructions from the NEH which (among much else) direct you to a ‘cover sheet.’ Applications must include the completed cover sheet, a current c.v., and an essay in which you describe your project and what you can contribute to the seminar. In addition, two letters of recommendation should be sent separately by colleagues who can comment specifically on what you might contribute, and how the seminar might enhance your teaching, scholarship, and/or other professional development.

Be sure to follow NEH’s guidelines for writing the application essay, because it is the most important part of the application.  The essay should explain your reasons for applying to this particular seminar. It should include relevant personal and academic information about yourself, as well as clarifying your qualifications for accomplishing the work of the seminar and making a contribution to it.  The essay should also outline what you hope to achieve by taking the seminar, and how this work relates to your teaching.  Some form of independent project that will be undertaken as part of your work for the seminar should be described. This project might be an article, or a chapter of a book; short papers or reports; translation and commentary on a relevant text; a visual or digital endeavor; or a project relating to curricular development.

Please send three copies of all application materials to Michael Maas at the address below. Applications must be in hardcopy, not fax or e-mail. Questions may be sent by e-mail to either Talbert or Maas.

The postmark deadline for applications is March 1, 2012. Selection will be determined by a panel comprising the co-directors and one other professor in a related field. Successful applicants will be notified by April 2.

Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this website do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities

Program Details (PDF)