By Jess Taylor – In late summer 2007 we decided to drive due south from Istanbul to Antalya. On day three, driving deep into central Turkey from Iznik – the modern name for ancient Nicaea but later famous for its Iznik ware porcelain in the Ottoman period – we detoured […]
By P. F. Sommerfeldt – I’ve always found the Homeric sorceress Circe in the Odyssey to be fascinating in her power that transcends the feminism of any era. Having looked at many artists over five hundred years in their attempts to depict Circe, I was generally frustrated with nearly all […]
By Leanne Ogasawara – 1. A glance at Hobson-Jobson, the historical dictionary of Anglo-Indian words in use during the British rule in India, will show that the word “loot” comes into English from Hindi, ultimately deriving from Sanskrit. It entered the English language around the time of the Opium Wars, when the […]
By Garth C. Hall – This paper addresses the African stone age somewhat myopically, focusing on artifacts and not much on the hominins who made and used them. It also focuses geographically on South Africa, yet, at least in the Early and Middle Stone Ages, the literature indicates that the […]
By P. F. Sommerfeldt – The Morgan Library and Museum – formerly known as Pierpont Morgan Library – on Madison Avenue has to be one of my favorite visits in New York City. A world-class collection of medieval manuscripts and related medieval relics is certainly known and appreciated, but there’s […]
By Jess Taylor – Mapping the Greek Polis (Poleis in plural) Where were the ancient Greek cities located? What was their sphere of influence? And what did it mean to be a polis? A pioneering body of work analyzed 1,035 ancient Greek settlements from the archaic and classical periods (c. […]
The phenomenon of unscrupulous politicians stoking tensions in society for their own ends is as old as democracy itself. By John Leonard – “[T]he main cause of the overthrow of democracies is the outrageous behavior of demagogues†Aristotle, Politics I.1304b.20 As ancient Athens moved away from kingship and Archaic-era […]
By Chelsea Glickman – The rise of nationalism in Egypt is often associated with the political agenda espoused by President Gamal Abdel Nasser in the fifties and sixties, yet it may also be possible to view the politically-charged artistic practices that transpired in Cairo in the preceding decades as attempting […]
By P. F. Sommerfeldt – Admittedly, I’m a tough nut to crack in terms of political theory – my castle has a hard and high wall and I’m difficult to impress – but Michael Anderson has done it yet again. His newest book THE CONSERVATIVE GENE: How Genetics Shape the […]
By Andrea M. Gáldy – Until recently, many of us were used to considerable mobility. Weekends away, summer holidays, conferences: all of those were part of our lives; we were modern and cosmopolitan. When we think of the past, however, “mobility†is not really the keyword coming to our minds […]