- Historical Linguistics, Ancient Historiography, Papyrology, Textual Criticism, History of Christianity, Historiography, and 27 moreClassical Traditions, Ancient Philosophy, Lexicology, Greek Papyrology, Renaissance Historiography, Classical philology, Byzantine Paleography and codicology, History of Classical Scholarship, Antiquarianism, Lexicography, History, Late Antiquity, Byzantine Studies, Carlo Ginzburg, Cognitive Historiography, Microhistory, Folk Psychology, Intersubjectivity, Empathy (Psychology), Ancient magic, Autobiography, Memory Studies, Memory (Cognitive Psychology), Extended Mind, Complexity Theory, Cultural Heritage, and Talal Asadedit
- I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the ARC funded Discovery Project 'Forging antiquity: Authenticity, Forgery and... moreI am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the ARC funded Discovery Project 'Forging antiquity: Authenticity, Forgery and Fake Papyri' (ARC DP 120103738, 2017–2019, under A/Prof. M. Choat and Dr. R. Ast) in the Department of Ancient History at Macquarie University.
My main research interests converge on questions about how knowledge is created, shared, and preserved by communities.
My doctoral work (Historical Lexicology and the Origins of Philosophy: Herodotus' use of *philosophein*, *sophistes* and cognates) examined the way developments in word use reflect emerging communities. As an ancient historian who works on papyrus manuscripts, I have pursued these interests by looking at scribal practice in a range of domains.
I have worked on the mechanics of how scribes reproduced and edited texts, what manuscripts can tell us when we look beyond the level of content to their format, script, and layout about the communities that produced and used them, and how authenticity is cultivated and signalled by particular scribal choices. I have experience working on several papyrological projects focused on scribes, readers, the reception of manuscripts, and the creation of canons. She has worked on the ARC funded projects 'Papyri from the Rise of Christianity in Egypt' and 'Knowledge Transfer and Administrative Professionalism in a Pre-Typographic Society'. I have also worked on a number of projects on magical papyri including 'Reading Content and Format in the Greek Magical Papyri from Roman Egypt' (Australian Academy for the Humanities Travelling Fellowship, 2014) and 'Authority and Artefact: Magic, scripture and administration in papyrus manuscripts from Graeco-Roman Egypt' (Postdoctoral Fellowship in the History of Early Christianity, Macquarie University, 2016) and am currently working on a re-edition of PGM XIII in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Richard Gordon, under the direction of Sofia Torallas Tovar, Christopher Faraone, and Janet Johnson (https://neubauercollegium.uchicago.edu/faculty/magical_knowledge/).
In addition to these interests, I am also pursuing cross disciplinary work on intersubjectivity and historical practice, memory and cognition, psychoanalysis, microhistory as well as cultural heritage and the history of ancient history itself.
In these domains I have explored questions about the rights of the dead, what constitutes cultural continuity, how selfhood is constructed, why privacy matters and how it relates to intimacy: that is, how and why we connect or fail to connect with others.
Over the last eight years have been running an interdisciplinary masters level course in historiography (ancient and modern) at Macquarie University. I have also given guest lectures on papyrology at the Australian National University, and taught at UNSW and UNE in Greek and Roman History.
Together with Malcolm Choat and Lauren Dundler, I run an interdisciplinary seminar series, Markers of Authenticity, through Macquarie University. (https://markersofauthenticity.wordpress.com/)
I am a founding member of the society for Australasian Women in Ancient World Studies and a member of the Association Internationale de Papyrologues.
Education:
B.Arts (hons), University of Sydney 2001; Phd (2013), Macquarie University.edit
Abstract:This paper examines at the physical traces of cognition left on papyrus manuscripts from Graeco-Roman Egypt. It borrows from theories developed in the cognitive sciences and philosophy which extend cognition beyond the brain to... more
Abstract:This paper examines at the physical traces of cognition left on papyrus manuscripts from Graeco-Roman Egypt. It borrows from theories developed in the cognitive sciences and philosophy which extend cognition beyond the brain to view it as a cooperation between mind and environment. Examined from this perspective, the classic opposition between scribe as wilful editor and scribe as pure medium for transmission breaks down. The invective of literary sources against the scribe as corruptor of text sits awkwardly with papyrus evidence which shows scribes acting as trusted allies in composition. This binary way of thinking of the scribal contribution to the transmission of knowledge might be alleviated by thinking of scribal practice as a cognitively rich collaboration between material and mind and by attending to physical traces of this engagement. In particular, this paper suggests that patterns of re-inking the stylus may correspond to sense breaks if the scribe is particular...
Research Interests: History and Book History
ASCS 38, Wellington, Feb. 1, 2017 This paper will review current trends in cognitive science and philosophy of mind and assess their potential for ancient historical research. While the influence of the ‘cognitive turn’ is now apparent... more
ASCS 38, Wellington, Feb. 1, 2017
This paper will review current trends in cognitive science and philosophy of mind and
assess their potential for ancient historical research. While the influence of the ‘cognitive
turn’ is now apparent in many other humanities disciplines, its reach into ancient world
studies seems most developed in the history of religions (Martin 2014). As it stands,
memory research in ancient history has been concerned with reconstructing the ancient ‘art
of memory’, with appropriations from earlier psychological and sociological research into
collective / cultural / social memory, or with redescriptions of old preoccupations (tradition,
orality, reception, identity) into the language of remembering. Advances in the cognitive
sciences have provided new ways of understanding how collective memory actually works
‘in the wild’.
Beginning with Wegner’s model of transactive memory systems (1986), attempts to address
psychological portraits of memory within philosophy of mind have aimed at bridging the
gap between theory and lived experience. Recent developments in the extended mind thesis
(Sutton / Michaelian among others) speak to how individuals integrate objects and other
people into their cognitive systems. Such work offers a model through which we might
understand materiality and community in antiquity. This paper will outline significant
interdisciplinary developments in philosophy and cognitive science for the study of
memory, consider the applicability of these models to our evidence, and identify points of
conflict with our disciplinary commitments.
References:
1. L.H. Martin, Deep History, Secular Theory: Historical and Scientific Studies of Religion (Berlin 2014).
Abstracts: Wednesday, 11-12:30
2. J. Sutton, K. Michaelian, ‘Distributed cognition and memory research: history and current directions’, Review of
Philosophy and Psychology 4.1 (2013) 1–24.
3. D.M. Wegner, ‘Transactive memory: a contemporary analysis of the group mind’, in B. Mullen, G.R. Goethals (eds),
Theories of Group Behaviour (New York 1986) 185–208.
This paper will review current trends in cognitive science and philosophy of mind and
assess their potential for ancient historical research. While the influence of the ‘cognitive
turn’ is now apparent in many other humanities disciplines, its reach into ancient world
studies seems most developed in the history of religions (Martin 2014). As it stands,
memory research in ancient history has been concerned with reconstructing the ancient ‘art
of memory’, with appropriations from earlier psychological and sociological research into
collective / cultural / social memory, or with redescriptions of old preoccupations (tradition,
orality, reception, identity) into the language of remembering. Advances in the cognitive
sciences have provided new ways of understanding how collective memory actually works
‘in the wild’.
Beginning with Wegner’s model of transactive memory systems (1986), attempts to address
psychological portraits of memory within philosophy of mind have aimed at bridging the
gap between theory and lived experience. Recent developments in the extended mind thesis
(Sutton / Michaelian among others) speak to how individuals integrate objects and other
people into their cognitive systems. Such work offers a model through which we might
understand materiality and community in antiquity. This paper will outline significant
interdisciplinary developments in philosophy and cognitive science for the study of
memory, consider the applicability of these models to our evidence, and identify points of
conflict with our disciplinary commitments.
References:
1. L.H. Martin, Deep History, Secular Theory: Historical and Scientific Studies of Religion (Berlin 2014).
Abstracts: Wednesday, 11-12:30
2. J. Sutton, K. Michaelian, ‘Distributed cognition and memory research: history and current directions’, Review of
Philosophy and Psychology 4.1 (2013) 1–24.
3. D.M. Wegner, ‘Transactive memory: a contemporary analysis of the group mind’, in B. Mullen, G.R. Goethals (eds),
Theories of Group Behaviour (New York 1986) 185–208.
Research Interests:
with Ass. Prof. Malcolm Choat, ANZAMEMS 2017, Wellington. In his de re Diplomatica (first ed. 1681), Jean Mabillon included in the section on “Roman scripts of the earliest age” a papyrus which read C. Julii Caesaris Testamentum L.... more
with Ass. Prof. Malcolm Choat, ANZAMEMS 2017, Wellington.
In his de re Diplomatica (first ed. 1681), Jean Mabillon included in the section on “Roman scripts of the earliest age” a papyrus which read C. Julii Caesaris Testamentum L. Pisone socero recitatum in domo. Idibu septembris. Although Mabillon soon realised something was wrong, it was not until the 2nd edition in 1709 that he apprehended the extent of the deceit, and the identity of its perpetrator: Pierre Hamon, a scribe of Charles IX working in the Kings Library at Fontainebleau in the mid 16th century, who had added the title to a genuine Latin papyrus from the time of the Emperor Justinian. As part of a wider project on forged papyri, this paper situates an analysis of this papyrus and the episode within the history of the discovery of ancient papyri and the development of criteria for authentication of documents begun by Mabillon in the de re Diplomatica.
In his de re Diplomatica (first ed. 1681), Jean Mabillon included in the section on “Roman scripts of the earliest age” a papyrus which read C. Julii Caesaris Testamentum L. Pisone socero recitatum in domo. Idibu septembris. Although Mabillon soon realised something was wrong, it was not until the 2nd edition in 1709 that he apprehended the extent of the deceit, and the identity of its perpetrator: Pierre Hamon, a scribe of Charles IX working in the Kings Library at Fontainebleau in the mid 16th century, who had added the title to a genuine Latin papyrus from the time of the Emperor Justinian. As part of a wider project on forged papyri, this paper situates an analysis of this papyrus and the episode within the history of the discovery of ancient papyri and the development of criteria for authentication of documents begun by Mabillon in the de re Diplomatica.
Research Interests:
'Scripture, Reception, and Authenticity', Museum of Ancient Cultures, Macquarie University, 9th of September, 2016
Research Interests:
Australasian Egyptology Conference, IV, Monash, 18th of September, 2016 A small group of papyrus letters from Graeco-Roman Egypt use either the verbal form holoklerein (‘to be in full health’) or the noun holokleria (‘full health’) in... more
Australasian Egyptology Conference, IV, Monash, 18th of September, 2016
A small group of papyrus letters from Graeco-Roman Egypt use either the verbal form holoklerein (‘to be in full health’) or the noun holokleria (‘full health’) in the formulaic expression of greetings which began most letters. The use of these cognates in the papyri begins in the third and fourth centuries A.D. and ends in the fifth. An unusually high proportion of these letters were written by women or between close family members. Moreover, a significant number of these letters appear to have been written by Christians. Epigraphic evidence, on the other hand, points to the association of the term with classical cults. This paper will examine the distribution of instances to determine whether the cognates mark a specific religious affiliation or a particular level of intimacy between sender and recipient. If the use of these terms is associated strongly with Christianity, a number of additional letters might be assigned to a Christian milieu, giving us further information about the early Christian community in Egypt and its adaptation or interaction with pre-Christian religious traditions.
A small group of papyrus letters from Graeco-Roman Egypt use either the verbal form holoklerein (‘to be in full health’) or the noun holokleria (‘full health’) in the formulaic expression of greetings which began most letters. The use of these cognates in the papyri begins in the third and fourth centuries A.D. and ends in the fifth. An unusually high proportion of these letters were written by women or between close family members. Moreover, a significant number of these letters appear to have been written by Christians. Epigraphic evidence, on the other hand, points to the association of the term with classical cults. This paper will examine the distribution of instances to determine whether the cognates mark a specific religious affiliation or a particular level of intimacy between sender and recipient. If the use of these terms is associated strongly with Christianity, a number of additional letters might be assigned to a Christian milieu, giving us further information about the early Christian community in Egypt and its adaptation or interaction with pre-Christian religious traditions.
Research Interests:
Wednesday 19th of October, SSEC paper, Macquarie University, 2016
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
As an introduction to the 'Markers of Authenticity' seminar series, this paper will set out some inter- and intradisciplinary entanglements – particularly those between the humanities and sciences – which are taken to herald the future of... more
As an introduction to the 'Markers of Authenticity' seminar series, this paper will set out some inter- and intradisciplinary entanglements – particularly those between the humanities and sciences – which are taken to herald the future of ancient history. By exploring these accounts of progress and refinement, it seeks to challenge the science fiction of our disciplinary narrative. The seminar series will track how different disciplinary stances identify and police authenticity. By way of framing the issues to be addressed in the series, this paper will touch on questions of authenticity in the re-enactment, restoration, recognition, and recollection of the past.
Research Interests:
When asked to describe the purpose and method of history, students and scholars alike plot their responses against the axes of subjectivity and objectivity, often demonising the former as the unkempt domain of emotion. According to the... more
When asked to describe the purpose and method of history, students and scholars alike plot their responses against the axes of subjectivity and objectivity, often demonising the former as the unkempt domain of emotion. According to the popular myth, the modernisation of the discipline may be viewed as a transition from subjectivity to objectivity, from a personal and emotional engagement to one of dispassionate reasoning aimed at an eternal and universal truth. By this narrative, history is assimilated to science – or rather to a science of history’s imagining, one firmly rooted in the nineteenth century settlement of Enlightenment turmoils. The fate of the emotional experience of the past is sidelined in favour of processes which formalise and idealise the distance between observer and observed. The proliferation of instrumenta (microscopes, maps, diagrams, statistics; see Daston/Galison) offered a kind of prelapsarian purity of vision: the world unmuddied by affect. Newspapers hijacked this distinction, dressed it up with polemic and embedded it into popular consciousness.
Many today would have us believe that an emotional encounter with the materia of history interferes with perception and thus corrupts its purpose. Yet, school curricula regularly identify empathy as one of the key skills required and cultivated by the discipline. Are we really in the business of teaching empathy? Or of stripping it out of our engagement with the past?
To overcome these entrenched prejudices against an emotional reading of the past, we ought to be mindful of current research into the place of emotion in cognition (for example, in recollection), to make use of developments within phenomenology (Zahavi) and resources within psychoanalysis. This requires becoming aware of the emotional entanglement involved in receiving other people’s memories and viewing it not simply as an impediment to historical analysis, but as its ally and tool. This paper will set out an account of the historical prejudice against subjective engagements with the past and propose some resolutions to this drawn from cognitive science, phenomenology, and psychology.
Many today would have us believe that an emotional encounter with the materia of history interferes with perception and thus corrupts its purpose. Yet, school curricula regularly identify empathy as one of the key skills required and cultivated by the discipline. Are we really in the business of teaching empathy? Or of stripping it out of our engagement with the past?
To overcome these entrenched prejudices against an emotional reading of the past, we ought to be mindful of current research into the place of emotion in cognition (for example, in recollection), to make use of developments within phenomenology (Zahavi) and resources within psychoanalysis. This requires becoming aware of the emotional entanglement involved in receiving other people’s memories and viewing it not simply as an impediment to historical analysis, but as its ally and tool. This paper will set out an account of the historical prejudice against subjective engagements with the past and propose some resolutions to this drawn from cognitive science, phenomenology, and psychology.
Research Interests:
The influence of the ‘cognitive turn’ is now apparent in many disciplines within the humanities, but its reach into ancient world studies has been haphazard. By contrast, isolated adaptations of memory research have been taken up with... more
The influence of the ‘cognitive turn’ is now apparent in many disciplines within the humanities, but its reach into ancient world studies has been haphazard. By contrast, isolated adaptations of memory research have been taken up with considerable enthusiasm for the analysis of cultural transmission and collective identity (e.g. Assmann). However, the appropriation of memory theory by ancient historians has not always been sensitive to the disciplinary commitments of the fields from which such theory has been exerpted. These borrowings can sometimes treat psychology, philosophy and cognitive science as a static repository of convenient aphorisms which can be opportunistically reinterpreted. Their attempts to explain the workings of memory are selectively coopted to redescribe older preoccupations of historical research (as tradition, orality, reception, and identity). A truly interdisciplinary response to memory requires ancient history to be more self-conscious about its own commitments through a sympathetic encounter with those of the disciplines it plunders. This paper will explore how an engagement with current developments in the study of memory (transactive memory and distributed cognition) can transform the methods and aims of ancient history, the skills of the ancient historian, and open up the discipline to an intersubjective engagement with the past.
Research Interests:
Little explicit information is known from the literary record about the production of Greek magical texts on papyrus in Egypt during the Roman period. What may be recovered about the individuals who produced and used these manuscripts... more
Little explicit information is known from the literary record about the production of Greek magical texts on papyrus in Egypt during the Roman period. What may be recovered about the individuals who produced and used these manuscripts must be deduced from the physical characteristics of the manuscripts themselves. These manuscripts fall into two distinct categories; those single-use manuscripts which were produced for an applied, unique and personalised magical operation, and the formularies comprised of multiple, anonymised spells designed to be a repository of magical knowledge. The sophisticated use of paratextual aids (marginalia, formatting, ekthesis, abbreviation, supralineation, etc.) to guide the user through these complex compilations are often lacking in the single-use manuscripts. In the close attention to the organisation, reception, and transmission of magical material, these composite texts are suggestive of something we might characterise as a professionalised trade. However, the use of paratextual aids is not uniform across the formularies, nor across all the texts preserved in a single formulary. In this paper, a close examination of the paratextual elements in PGM XIII will be used to look at how scribes balanced the heterogenous conventions of their models with the organisational principles they imposed on their formularies.
The papyrological evidence offers a counterpoint to the grand narratives of educational celebrity characteristic of the literary tradition. In contrast to the theoretically dense and ideologically contested territory of the literary... more
The papyrological evidence offers a counterpoint to the grand narratives of educational celebrity characteristic of the literary tradition. In contrast to the theoretically dense and ideologically contested territory of the literary picture of educators, the haphazard testimony of the papyri illuminate a different stratum of social discourse on education. Here philosophoi, sophistai and didaskaloi appear in a range of civic contexts; paying taxes, witnessing agreements and signing land declarations among others. Private letters, contracts of apprenticeship and petitions illuminate the expectations and responsibilities placed on educators by their students, their colleagues and society at large. This sort of evidence also allows the economics of education to be seen and placed against that of other professions. What seems a meagre attestation in the banal genre of administrivia provides a valuable challenge to our expectations of ancient education.
On the 2nd of January, 1872, Friedrich Nietzsche published his Die Geburt der Tragödie aus der Geiste der Musik. The book had no footnotes and did not contain a single quotation in Greek. This first monograph from the twenty eight year... more
On the 2nd of January, 1872, Friedrich Nietzsche published his Die Geburt der Tragödie aus der Geiste der Musik. The book had no footnotes and did not contain a single quotation in Greek. This first monograph from the twenty eight year old professor of classical philology at the University of Basel was met with five months of silence from the academy – a silence broken finally with an invective pamphlet by the young Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. Eschewing both a detailed analysis of Nietzsche's work and the minutiae of Wilamowitz' refutation, this paper will instead let a cumulation of contextual detail restore a human dimension to this clash of the Titans.
The first 31 pages of the codex were used for business. On pages 51–52, the first line of the Lord’s Prayer is written at the top and across the fold! Later, the codex was turned upside down and further used for business documentation (CE... more
The first 31 pages of the codex were used for business. On pages 51–52, the first line of the Lord’s Prayer is written at the top and across the fold! Later, the codex was turned upside down and further used for business documentation (CE 311 –314). When the scribe/recorder came to the page(s) containing the first line of the Lord’s Prayer, the space under it (ie, on top of it) was left blank. Thus, the documentary codex is a 4th century witness to the Lord’s Prayer and evidence of Christians in social context.
Scribes are paradoxically both central and invisible in most societies before the typographic revolution of the 15th century, witnessed by every manuscript, but often elusive as historical figures. The act of writing is a quotidian and... more
Scribes are paradoxically both central and invisible in most societies before the typographic revolution of the 15th century, witnessed by every manuscript, but often elusive as historical figures. The act of writing is a quotidian and vernacular practice as well as a literary one, and must be observed not only in the outputs of literary copyists or reports of their activities, but in the documents of everyday life. This volume collects contributions on scribal practice as it features on diverse media (including papyri, tablets, and inscriptions) in a range of ancient societies, from the Ancient Near East and Dynastic Egypt through the Graeco-Roman world to Byzantium. These discussions of the role and place of scribes and scribal activity in pre-typographic cultures both contribute to a better understanding of one of the key drivers of these cultures, and illuminate the transmission of knowledge and traditions within and between them.