THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF IDENTITY AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE CLASSICAL AND MEDIEVAL WORLDS
The Routledge Handbook of Identity and the Environment in the Classical and Medieval Worlds explores how environment was thought to shape ethnicity and identity, beginning from developments in early natural philosophy and historical ethnographies. Defining environment broadly to include not only physical but also cultural environments, natural and constructed, the volume considers the multifarious ways in which environment was understood to shape the culture and physical characteristics of peoples, as well as how the ancients manipulated their environments to achieve a desired identity. This diverse collection includes studies not only of the Greco-Roman world, but also ancient China and the European, Jewish and Arab inheritors and transmitters of classical thought.
In recent years, work in this subject has been confined mostly to the discussion of texts that reflect an approach to the barbarian as other. The Routledge Handbook of Identity and the Environment in the Classical and Medieval Worlds takes the discussion of ethnicity on a fresh course, contextualizing the concept of the barbarian within rational discourses such as cartography, medicine, and physical sciences, an approach that allows us to more clearly discern the varied and nuanced approaches to ethnic identity which abounded in antiquity. The innovative and thought-provoking material in this volume realizes new directions in the study of identity in the classical and medieval worlds.
Rebecca Futo Kennedy is Associate Professor of Classics at Denison University.
Molly Jones-Lewis is Lecturer in Ancient Studies at University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF IDENTITY AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE CLASSICAL AND MEDIEVAL WORLDS
Edited by Rebecca Futo Kennedy and Molly Jones-Lewis
First published 2016
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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2016 R. Kennedy and M. Jones-Lewis
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ISBN: 978-0-415-73805-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-68662-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
CONTENTS
Rebecca Futo Kennedy and Molly Jones-Lewis
PART I
Ethnic identity and the body
Rebecca Futo Kennedy
Clara Bosak-Schroeder
Robert Garland
Max L. Goldman
Eran Almagor
Claire Weeda
Abraham Melamed
PART II
Determined and determining ethnicity
Anabasis
Rosie Harman
Laurence M. V. Totelin
Diana Spencer
Molly Jones-Lewis
Jared Secord
Kathleen Gibbons
Georgia Irby
Shlomo Sela
Christine D. Baker
PART III
Mapping ethnicity
Philip Kaplan
Jacquelyn H. Clements
Daniela Dueck
Joanna Komorowska
Maja Kominko
Shao-yun Yang
Galia Halpern
There are books you can write alone, and books that take a village to write. This is one of the latter. The scope of the topic is so vast and the source material so dispersed that it is hardly possible for one person to cover it all adequately. Thus was born this project and now, nearly four years after proposing the volume, it is done.
With that in mind, thanks are due first and foremost to our contributors, both for the work you hold in your hands and the inspiration and education they gave us both as editors and scholars. The range of expertise here represented is truly vast, and we are proud to have worked with such a group of passionate and insightful scholars.
The early drafts were passed through peer review, both that of the editors and outside readers. Thanks to the press reviewers: Benjamin Isaac, Paul Keyser, and Michela Sassi for their thoughtful and astute comments on the proposal and abstracts. Thanks also to Max Goldman, Duane W. Roller, and Laurence Totelin for the extensive time and thought they put in to giving us and our co-contributors valuable feedback. Thank you to other reviewers who wish to remain anonymous. We appreciate your time and comments.
Thanks to Matthew Gibbons for taking on the project with us. Without Lola Harre, we would not have finished in so timely a manner. The editors and typesetters at Routledge all deserve huge thanks for their work as well. We also ask your forgivenessthere are a lot of languages and scripts in this volume.
Finally, thanks to our families and friends for their support and understanding through the years-long process of bringing this project to print. Elly Kennedy has been especially patient with her mother through all of this and is owed a trip to Rome as proper repayment for her help. Rob Lewis has, as always, been a bedrock of sanity and common sense whose big-picture advice and reminders to eat have vastly improved his wifes work and life. There were also numerous cats who deserve our gratitude for their calming presences.
Eran Almagor is the author of papers and articles on ancient ethnography and historiography, the image of ancient Persia in Greek literature, Greek Imperial literature, Josephus, Lucian, Strabo, Plutarch (in particular the Lives) and the reception of antiquity in modern popular culture. He is the co-editor of Ancient Ethnography: New Approaches (Bloomsbury, 2013).
Christine D. Baker is Assistant Professor of History at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the formation of different forms of Muslim identity in the tenth century and how these identities were remembered in medieval Islamic historical narratives.
Clara Bosak-Schroeder is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include Greek and Roman natural historiography, Science and Technology Studies, and posthumanism.
Jacquelyn H. Clements completed her PhD in the History of Art at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, with a focus in Classical Archaeology. Her research interests lie primarily in the iconography and topography of classical Greece. She was the Graduate Curatorial intern at the Getty Villa in 201415 and is currently the CLIR/Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Data Curation for Visual Studies at the University of Toronto Department of Art & Jackman Humanities Institute.
