John Bodel
Professor:
Classics and History
Phone: 401-863-3815
Phone 2: 401-475-6946
john_bodel@brown.edu
My research centers mainly on Roman social and cultural history and on certain Latin authors, especially the novelists Petronius and Apuleius, the historian Tacitus, and the epistolographer Pliny the Younger. Much of my work involves Roman inscriptions in one way or another, and I have a broad general interest in epigraphy, ancient funerals and burial customs, Roman religion, ancient slavery, and the editing of Latin texts.
Biography
Before joining the Brown faculty in 2003, I taught at Rutgers and Harvard and held visiting appointments at Brown, Berkeley, and Princeton. In 1991 and 1995 I co-directed (with Richard Saller) NEH Summer Seminars for College Teachers at the American Academy in Rome, and in 2004 I co-directed (with Graham Oliver) the Epigraphy Summer School at Oxford University's Center for the Study of Ancient Documents. Since 1995 I have directed the U.S. Epigraphy Project, the purpose of which is to gather and share information about ancient Greek and Latin inscriptions preserved in the United States.
I teach undergraduate courses in Latin language and literature and in Roman history, religion, and culture and graduate seminars in Latin epigraphy, Pompeii (topography and the configuration of space), "The Book" (the Roman book trade, the sociology of reading, and the influence of ancient publication practices on Roman literary forms), and on the Latin authors Petronius, Apuleius, and Tacitus.
My research centers mainly on Roman social and cultural history and on certain Latin authors (especially Petronius). Much of my work involves inscriptions in one way or another, and I have a broad general interest in epigraphy, as well as a special interest in Latin texts.
Interests
My research centers mainly on Roman social and cultural history and on certain Latin authors, especially the novelists Petronius and Apuleius, the historian Tacitus, and the epistolographer Pliny the Younger. Much of my work involves Roman inscriptions in one way or another, and I have a broad general interest in epigraphy, ancient funerals and burial customs, Roman religion, ancient slavery, and the editing of Latin texts.
Current projects include a book-in-progress on the Roman funeral, two co-edited volumes, one (with a Brown colleague, Saul Olyan) on household and family religion in the Mediterranean and South West Asian antiquity, the other (with Mika Kajava, professor of Greek literature at the University of Helsinki) on religious dedications in classical antiquity, and articles on Roman slave labor, on the architectural form of collective burial monuments during the first three centuries, and on the Roman concept of the genius loci, the guardian spirit of a place.
As founder and director of the U.S. Epigraphy Project (http://usepigraphy.brown.edu), the goal of which is to gather and distribute information about ancient Greek and Latin inscriptions preserved in the United States of America, I continue to oversee development of an XML-based search engine and photographic archive of the 3,000 ancient Greek and Latin inscriptions catalogued in our online database. I also continue to participate on an international team of epigraphists in the development of a set of guidelines and semantic markup tools for the editing and publication of inscriptions in digital form (see EpiDoc at http://epidoc.sourceforge.net/index.shtml).
Degrees
B.A, Classics, Princeton University, 1978, M.A., Classical Philology, University of Michigan, 1979, Ph.D., Classical Philology, University of Michigan, 1984
Awards
- Lucy Shoe Meritt Resident in Ancient Studies, American Academy in Rome, spring 2006
- Co-Director (with Graham Oliver), British Epigraphy Society Summer School, University of Oxford, Center for the Study of Ancient Documents, 2004
- Resident, Bellagio Center, The Rockefeller Foundation, August 2002
- Co–Director (with Richard Saller), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminar for College Teachers, American Academy in Rome: "Death, Commemoration, and Society in Ancient Rome," 1995
- Co–Director (with Richard Saller), NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers, American Academy in Rome: "The Roman Family and Household," 1991
- Fellow, American Academy in Rome, 1983
Affiliations
American Philological Association
Archaeological Institute of America
American Academy in Rome
American Society of Greek and Latin Epigraphy
Association Internationale d'Epigraphie Grecque et Latine
Teaching
I teach undergraduate courses in Latin language and literature and Roman history and religion and graduate seminars on Latin epigraphy, the social configuration of space at Pompeii, "The Book" (on the Roman book trade, the sociology of reading, and the influence of ancient publication practices on Roman literary forms), and on my favorite Latin authors: Petronius, Apuleius, and Tacitus.
Funded Research
1993
National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship for University Teachers, "The Business of Death in the Roman World" ($30,000)
1994-2002
"The U.S. Epigraphy Project," Rutgers University, Research Council ($10,000 per annum)
1996, 1997
Magie Publications Fund Committee, Princeton University ($3,000)
2004-2005
Scholarly Technology Group Faculty Grant, Brown University ($30,000)
