Edward Watts

• Professor, Department of History

Education

• A.B. at Brown University, 1997
• Ph.D. at Yale University, 2002

Contact Information

Ballantine Hall, Rm. 835

(812) 855-6882

Background

To date, my research has concentrated on the intellectual and religious history of the later Roman Empire. My first book, City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria (University of California Press, 2006), details how the increasingly Christian upper class of the late Roman Empire used a combination of economic and political pressures to neutralize pagan elements of the traditional educational system. My second book, Riot in Alexandria: Historical Debate in Pagan and Christian Communities (UC Press, 2010) draws upon Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac sources to reconstruct the progression of a three-day long violent encounter between pagan intellectuals, Christian ascetics, and the bishop of Alexandria.  By examining the ideas and communal interactions that fueled this moment of urban violence, Riot connects the power of oral and written texts to the personal relationships that gave them meaning and to the actions that reshaped a city. I have currently begun work on a third book-length project, a monograph that reconstructs the generational history of the men and women born between 305 and 324 (the last group of Romans born before Constantine assumed full control of the Roman Empire).  I am additionally in the planning stages of a monograph examining the institutional and cultural history of Platonism from its origins until the early seventh century.  In addition to these larger projects, I have also published articles discussing violence in late antiquity, anti-Chalcedonian eschatology, the role played by oral traditions in late antique communities, Platonism in both the Hellenistic and late antique periods, and the process of Christianization in the Roman world. I teach a wide variety of graduate and undergraduate courses that present the political, cultural, and religious history of the ancient, late antique, and medieval Mediterranean world. In addition to a 2-course sequence of Roman history surveys, I also regularly offer undergraduate and graduate seminars exploring late Roman paganism, the evolution of the ancient biographical genre, hagiography in late antiquity, the late antique Near East, and Egypt in late antiquity.

Selected Awards

• Fellow, College Arts and Humanities Institute, Indiana University (2006, 2011)
• CAMWS Outstanding Publication Award (2007, for City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria)
• Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies (1997-1998)
• Phi Beta Kappa (1997)
• GTE Academic All-American (Spring 1997)
• Ivy League High Jump Champion (Winter 1997)

Research Interests

• Roman history
• Greek intellectual culture from the Second Sophistic to the reign of Heraclius
• Late Antique religious, social, and intellectual history
• Coptic Christianity
• Anti-Chalcedonian (Monophysite) culture

Courses Recently Taught

• Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
• Roman History Survey
• Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Medieval Mediterranean
• Late Antique Paganism
• Ancient Biography
• The World of Late Antiquity
• Beyond Rome: The Late Antique Near East

Publication Highlights

Books

Monographs:

The Last Pagan Generation, in progress

Riot in Alexandria: Historical Debate in Pagan and Christian Communities,(University of California Press, 2010).

City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria, Transformation of the Classical Heritage Series, (Vol. 41). Berkeley: The University of California Press, 2006.

Edited Volumes:

Shifting Cultural Frontiers, volume of articles co-edited with David Brakke and Deborah Deliyannis, Ashgate, forthcoming.

The Roman Empire from the Tetrarchy to Theodosius II, volume of articles co-edited with Scott McGill and Cristiana Sogno, (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

Selected Recent Articles

“Doctrine, Anecdote, and Action: Reconsidering the Social History of the Last Platonists (c. 430-c. 550 C.E.),” Classical Philology, forthcoming.

"The Enduring Legacy of the Iatrosophist Gessius," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 49 (2009), pp. 113-134.

"Interpreting Catastrophe: Disasters in the historical works of Pseudo-Joshua the Stylite, Socrates, Philostorgius, and Timothy Aelurus," Journal of Late Antiquity 2.1 (2009), pp. 79-98.

"Creating the Academy: Historical Discourse and the Shape of Community in the Old Academy," Journal of Hellenic Studies 127 (2007): 106-22.

"Winning the Intracommunal Dialogues: Zacharias Scholasticus' Life of Severus." Journal of Early Christian Studies 13, no. 4 (2005): 437-65.