Monthly Archives: March 2013

Fieldwork Opportunity

Fieldwork Opportunity: UMass Amherst Field School at Akko: Archaeology, Conservation, and Heritage

The third season of our field school at the site of Akko, in Israel, will take place during the month of July 2013. This is a joint project coordinated by archaeologists at UMass Amherst, Penn State, Haifa University, Trinity College, Claremont University, and the Pacific College of Religion. Along with field excavation techniques, students in this field school have the opportunity to take part in courses of artifact and architectural conservation, as well as engaged heritage studies in the local communities.

Akko (historical Acre) is a coastal city that was first settled about 5000 years ago and has been continuously inhabited ever since. At various times the site has been home to Canaanites, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Mamluks, Crusaders, Ottomans, and just about everyone else who sailed the east Mediterranean sea in antiquity or recent history.

When enrolling in this field school, students will be able to select a course that focuses on training in archaeological fieldwork or a course that emphasizes both fieldwork and conservation of archaeological and architectural materials.

Our field training course focuses on methods of stratigraphic excavation, recording, and interpretation, and the study of ceramic typology and its applications. Staff specialists hold workshops on surveying, photography, ceramics, geology, faunal analysis, GIS analysis, and conservation of artifacts. Fieldwork is complemented by a series of lectures by staff and visiting or guest scholars.

Students in the conservation course work on projects ranging from the Bronze Age remains from the site, to the Crusader castle that is emerging from the rubble under the Old City, and on architectural features built during the period of Ottoman Imperial rule in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Along with the field and lab training, students in both of the class will take part in a month-long series of lectures and seminars focussing on: (1) the archaeology of Israel and the east Mediterranean coast; (2) the emergence of urbanism, states, and empires in the region; and (3) political economy and trade.

Issues of cultural heritage are woven in throughout the course. Students will be able to work with professionals (archaeologists, architectural historians, and conservators) and with members of the contemporary communities of Akko to develop plans for identifying, conserving, and presenting material and intangible cultural heritage.

Students at the field school live in the dormitory of the Akko Nautical Academy, an air-conditioned building in a walled campus with its own beach. Meals will be served both in the dining hall of the Nautical Academy and on the excavation site.

The field school will take place from June 30th to July 27th 2013, and will cost about $5200 (though we may be able to lower that cost if enough students apply). This is a 6 credit class.

The program is directed jointly by faculty from UMass Amherst, Trinity College, Penn State, Claremont University, and the Pacific School of Religion.

I am the director of the UMass program, so feel free to write back to me with questions.

You can find out about the field school and the site at http://people.umass.edu/sugerman/Akko

Enrollment information can be found at http://www.ipo.umass.edu/?go=IsraelFieldSchool

———————————————–
Michael O. Sugerman
Department of Anthropology
University of Massachusetts
Amherst MA 01003
t: 413 577 0783
f: 413-545-9494

http://people.umass.edu/sugerman/Home.html

 

Funding & Fellowships, Position Announcements

Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Program in Early Cultures

Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Program in Early Cultures

Brown University, Providence, RI

The Program in Early Cultures at Brown University (PEC) invites applications for a post-doctoral fellow to participate in a Mellon-Sawyer Seminar, “Animal Magnetism: The Emotional Ecology of Animals and Humans.”  This will be a one-year position, beginning on July 1, 2013.

Funded by the Mellon Foundation, this Sawyer Seminar addresses the emotional, symbolic, and social dimensions of past human relations with animals.  Three themes inform the year-long program—animals as symbolic resources for the human imagination, the emotional bond between humans and animals, and the nature of such bonds as both extensions and complications of human society.  The applicant’s specific research and teaching interests, geographical and temporal specializations and areas of expertise are left open, although—consistent with the mission of the PEC—these should focus on pre-modern cultures in the Old or New Worlds.

The successful candidate will probably be housed in the Departments of Anthropology or Classics or in the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World. The successful candidate will teach two courses—one each term—on topics related to the Mellon-Sawyer Seminar. The fellow will also help coordinate the activities of the Seminar during the academic year. In their applications, candidates should submit a proposal describing research to be done over the course of the fellowship. Applicants must normally have received their Ph.D. within the last five years, from an institution other than Brown.

All candidates should submit a letter of application, a list and brief description of proposed courses, and curriculum vitae by April 1, 2013. Applicants should arrange for three letters of reference to be submitted by the application deadline. Applications received by that date will receive full consideration, but the search will remain open until the position is closed or filled.

Application materials must be submitted online at https://secure.interfolio.com/apply/21245.

For further information:

Chair, Mellon-Sawyer Post-doctoral Search
Program in Early Cultures
Brown University
Box 1837, Rhode Island Hall, 60 George Street
Providence, RI 02912
[email protected]

Brown is an EEO/AA employer. Minorities and women are encouraged to apply.

Funding & Fellowships, Position Announcements

Postdoctoral Fellowship in Archaeology, Brown University – Deadline April 1, 2013

Postdoctoral Fellowship in Archaeology
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World

 

The Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University invites applications for post-doctoral fellowships.

We invite applications in four spheres, looking particularly for original and innovative work in:

1) the archaeology and art of the Late Antique and Islamic worlds;
2) environmental archaeology;
3) visual culture of the ancient world;
4) the material culture of the Brown University campus and of Providence, RI.

Other fields that complement the present strengths of the Joukowsky Institute community will also be considered.

In addition to pursuing their research, successful candidates will be expected to teach half time — i.e., one course per semester.  Teaching will be at both the undergraduate and graduate levels; interdisciplinary offerings are desirable.  Applicants must normally have received their Ph.D. from an institution other than Brown within the last five years.  Successful candidates will be expected to make substantive contributions to the ongoing development of the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, such as the organization of reading or working groups, a topical symposium, or another project intended to foster a stimulating intellectual environment in which to pursue research and to develop new interdisciplinary connections.  This will be a one-year position, with the possibility of a one-year renewal, beginning on July 1, 2013.

All candidates should submit a letter of application, a list and brief description of proposed courses, and curriculum vitae by April 1, 2013.  Applicants should arrange for three letters of reference to be submitted by the application deadline. Applications received by April 1, 2013 will receive full consideration, but the search will remain open until the position is closed or filled.

Please submit application materials online at https://secure.interfolio.com/apply/21243.

For further information:

Professor Susan E. Alcock
Chair, Search Committee
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World
Brown University
Box 1837 / 60 George Street
Providence, RI 02912
[email protected]

Brown is an EEO/AA employer.  Minorities and women are encouraged to apply.

CFP

CFP: Mapping the Mediterranean: Space, Memory, and the Long Road to Modernity

CALL FOR PAPERS

“Mapping the Mediterranean: Space, Memory, and the Long Road to Modernity”

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

11-12 October 2013

Keynote Panel: “The Present and Future of Mediterranean Studies”

Yasser Ellhariry, Dartmouth College

Gail Holst-Warhaft, Cornell University

Sharon Kinoshita, University of California, Santa Cruz

Karla Mallette, University of Michigan (chair)

The Mediterranean served as a site of transit, exchange, and interaction for well over two millennia, demonstrating tendencies towards both unification and dispersion. With the onset of modernity, however, linguistic, ethnic, and national boundaries solidified across the region. Language, history, memory, and space itself were literally reshaped by the tools of archaeology, architecture, tourism, mass print, national education, and transportation.

 

In recent years, scholarship has begun to excavate past connections and exchanges that belie our modern conception of the region, mapping out a diverse – yet united – series of Mediterranean identities centered on the connecting sea.

 

Mediterranean Topographies, the University of Michigan’s Interdisciplinary Workshop on Mediterranean Studies, is pleased to announce its second conference for graduate students and young faculty. Our symposium attempts to bring this new model – one that is deeply transnational and cross-cultural, yet situated primarily within the ancient, pre- and early-modern periods – into meaningful dialogue with modernity. We will engage the space of the Mediterranean through the cityscape, as seen through the lenses of literature, history, anthropology, cultural studies, architecture, and urban planning. Areas of focus will include (but not be restricted to):

 

* cartography and spatiality, city planning and historical narrative, architecture and collective memory;

* ideologies of the urban, relationships between city and peripheries (hinterlands, islands, deserts etc.);

* mobility, emigration, immigration, class-stratification, ghettoization, tourism;

* material history, consumption, trade, manufacturing, commodification, fashion;

* remembering the city, memoir, nostalgia;

* gendering and queering the city;

* (de)/(re)colonizing the city;

* and, in general, the destruction, re-construction, and re-imagining of the Mediterranean city space after the spread of nationalism.

 

Using these foci, we will explore the multiple Mediterraneans that have been built up and torn down since the onset of modernity. In short, this symposium will attempt to address the ways in which pre- and early-modern interconnectivities – both real and imagined – were destroyed, kept alive, or modulated over the long passage into modernity. Although our focus will be upon transitions stretching from the early modern to modernity (c. 1500 to today), we nonetheless encourage work that treats these same issues of urban transformation in the ancient world, especially within a diachronic, comparative framework. We also encourage contributions that focus on methodological debates and innovations for mapping and studying Mediterranean cities.

 

We seek to bring together work in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. We invite abstracts ranging from 200-250 words that relate to or expand upon the topics suggested above. Submissions are especially encouraged from disciplines such as literature, the history of art, history, anthropology, sociology, architecture and urbanism, gender and women’s studies, queer studies, African studies, and religious studies. Along with your abstract please suggest the category or categories to which you feel your submission is best suited. Please provide your institutional affiliation and mailing address, as well as telephone number. Indicate whether a/v equipment will be needed.

The presentation should be in English, twenty minutes in length (i.e., 10 double-spaced pages) and may address a topic from any relevant period(s) or discipline(s). Deadline for abstract submission: May 15, 2013.

 

Please direct questions and submissions to the Meditopos symposium co-chairs, Harry Kashdan and Will Stroebel, at [email protected] and [email protected].

Fieldwork Opportunity

Fieldwork Opportunity: Athens: Heritage and Modernity June 23 – July 4, 2013

Athens: Heritage and Modernity June 23 – July 4, 2013

Exploration of the coexistence between historic and modern Athens

 

Dear Colleague,

I would like to inform you about our program in Athens, Greece, this summer. This 12 day visit of Athens will be a thoughtful exploration of the history and preservation and conservation issues facing the city, organized around a series of lectures and visits lead by some of the top Athenian archaeologists, architects, historians, conservators and planners who have been dealing with the problem of preserving monuments and cultural heritage in the midst of a growing modern city. Our deadline for applying is April 30, 2013.

The faculty of our program includes Dr. Manolis Korres, Chief Architect on the Acropolis Restoration Project, who will lead lectures and visits to the Acropolis area. Please visit our website and syllabus to see a complete list of faculty, lectures and visits.

The program is intended for people studying, or professionally involved in, the fields of: History, Archaeology, Architecture Art History, Architecture, Urban Planning, Anthropology, Conservation and Historic Preservation, but is also open for people with a general interest in preservation.

If you, or someone you know, are interested in this program you can get further information at our website. Thank you.

You may also be interested in our other field school programs this summer in Italy, in particular our classes and workshop on the Conservation of Archaeological Ceramics (May 26 thru June 22nd). The deadline for this program has been extended to April 15th, 2013. Please visit our website for more information.

Cordially,

Prof. Nikos Vakalis
Director Athens Program
International Institute for Restoration & Preservation Studies
[email protected]