Association of Ancient Historians Holds 2016 Meeting at University of Puget Sound

Puget Sound will host national and international speakers

The college’s digital humanities scholars will facilitate a workshop

TACOMA, Wash. – Historians from around the country and overseas will discuss issues as modern as digital tools and diversity, and as old as slavery and sundials, when they gather for the Association of Ancient Historians annual meeting at University of Puget Sound.

            The premier association for North American scholars of ancient history will hold its conference from Thursday, May 5, to Saturday, May 7, in the Tahoma Room, Commencement Hall, on campus. A closing banquet and lecture on “Nineteen Centuries of Ancient Glass” will be held at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma on Saturday evening. Registration is required, but all events are open to conference attendees and Puget Sound students and campus members. See below for more details.

            “This is an event I’ve wanted to see Puget Sound host for a number of years, and I’m excited that it is coming to Tacoma,” said Eric Orlin, Puget Sound professor of classics and lead organizer for the meeting. “It’s a great opportunity for our students to see the relevance of recent scholarship.”

            Panels will cover topics such as: gender in Roman writings; slavery and spectacle; ancient science and math; art as an historical source of information; the power of geography in the Roman Empire; space and interstate relations in ancient times; and popular protest and violence in the ancient world. 

“In addition we will have a lunchtime workshop on increasing diversity in our classrooms and in our courses, and a preconference workshop on the many new digital tools that have been developed that let us understand the ancient world more vividly than ever before,” Orlin said.

            The conference speakers come from as far away as New Zealand and England, and include scholars from Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, and Brown universities, among many others from schools spanning the country, from Florida to California.

            The Thursday, May 5 afternoon workshop on digital tools in the humanities will aim to help attendees upgrade their skills in some newer applications, such as mapping, three-dimensional modeling, and visualizing networks. The facilitators are Tim Lulofs, visiting associate professor in honors, humanities, and English, who is leading Puget Sound’s efforts to integrate digital tools and methods into the humanities curriculum; and Andrew Gomez, the Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities at Puget Sound, who has been working on digital projects covering topics ranging from U.S. labor history to the history of water rights in California.

The diversity workshop at lunchtime on Friday, May 6, will involve presentations and group dialogue, including the sharing of personal experiences, insights into successful means of diversifying classrooms, and ideas about ways to enhance interactions with undergraduate students, while recognizing unconscious biases or stereotyping.

            The final lecture on “Nineteen Centuries of Ancient Glass” will be presented by Bonnie Wright, curator of education and community engagement at Tacoma’s Museum of Glass.

For a schedule of events and registration visit: http://associationofancienthistorians.org/2016meeting

For directions and a map of the University of Puget Sound campus: pugetsound.edu/directions

For accessibility information please contact accessibility@pugetsound.edu or 253.879.3236, or visit pugetsound.edu/accessibility.

Photo on page: The Ptolemy world map, showing the world known to Hellenistic society in the 2nd century and based on the description contained in Ptolemy's book Geography.