"I will continue dissertation research on the Romanization of southern Italy using Larinum as a case study. This site, a non-Roman capital in the fourth and third centuries BCE, was incorporated into the Roman state in the first century BCE. In order to create a comprehensive picture of cultural change at this site, I will assemble the ancient sources and extant remains pertaining to Larinum from the fourth century BCE to the first century CE. I will conduct library research in Rome, and I will examine the settlement patterns around Larinum, the monuments and inscriptions at the site, and the unpublished votive and funerary artifacts in storerooms at Larino, Isernia, and Campobasso. I will explore how these remains illustrate the continuity and change of cultural elements. My unique study will provide valuable new information about processes of cultural change at this site before and after Roman conquest."
Current
Rome Prize Fellows and Projects
The American Academy in Rome awards the Rome Prize to a select group of artists and scholars, after an application process that begins in the fall of each year. The winners, announced in the spring, are invited to Rome to pursue their work in an atmosphere conducive to intellectual and artistic freedom, interdisciplinary exchange, and innovation. The 2011-12 Rome Prize winners are listed here with a brief project summary in their own words.
To download the brochure from the Rome Prize Ceremony held in New York on 13 April, 2011, announcing the 2011-2012 Rome Prize winners click here.
Ancient Studies
Graduate Group in the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World, University of Pennsylvania
“This project examines the topographical evolution of Rome's Subura district during the first millennium A.D. Ancient literary accounts describe a persistent elite occupation on the upper slopes of the city's eastern hills, but the valley between them is described as a socially marginalized, crowded residential and commercial area. Since the archaeology of the urban lower class has rarely been of great interest to scholars of Rome, we have an abridged reconstruction of the city's historical topography and an incomplete understanding of how the lower classes actually lived. My dissertation fills this gap, as it is the first systematic study of the area. In analyzing the district over the longue durée, its shifting character and fabric can be tied to the drastic social and religious changes that took place during the first millennium.”
Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame
“I intend to prepare a study of Prosper of Aquitaine's (fifth century) poetical synthesis of Augustine's thought accompanied by the first critical edition of the text, an English translation, and commentary. The libraries of Rome contain one of the richest collections of manuscripts containing the writings of Prosper. I would use my time at the Academy to study not only the text of Prosper, but the aesthetic and social dimension of the physical book.”
Assistant Professor, Department of Classics, Skidmore College
“I will use this fellowship to complete my book project on Apollonius' Argonautica. The date of this unique and influential epic has been a source of controversy for over a century. My research, however, introduces a new and more objective approach to the question. By using the references to astronomical phenomena in the epic with calculations verified by colleagues in astronomy and by astronomical software, I have been able to date the poem to a specific/significant year during the Ptolemaic period. The astronomical references in books 1 and 2 allude, I submit, to the year 238BCE, the year in which Ptolemy III celebrated his Jubilee and introduced a calendar reform, the first known calendar based on the solar year. My findings challenge the prevailing view that Apollonius' Argonautica was written sometime between 270BCE and 240BCE, during the reign Ptolemy II (284-246BCE).”
Departments of Religious Studies and Classics, Brown University
“My dissertation evaluates entrepreneurial religion at Rome during what appears to be its greatest efflorescence, from approximately the mid-first century BCE through the height of imperial expansion. The exchange of religious expertise for financial and symbolic capital constitutes a discrete phenomenon that warrants careful theorization. Entrepreneurs did not enjoy legitimacy through inherited channels and licit mechanisms, but purveyed novel or otherwise inaccessible practices to consumers with finite reasons for seeking them out. Though many of these practices comprise categories like magic, astrology, and mystery cults, I offer an analysis of specialist activity that cuts across its assorted permutations. Unlike publications that resort to dualisms between practical and 'spiritual' aspects of religion to explain their appeal, my approach situates the practices and strategies of entrepreneurs, as well as the conditions for their enthusiastic reception, in the city's material circumstances during this period.”
