Six candidates for the directorship of the new Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World visited campus this month, according to Dean of the Graduate School Karen Newman, who chairs and organizes the search committee.
While here, the candidates meet with the committee to "discuss their vision," tour the University, give talks and meet some of the graduate students they may be working with, Newman said. The last candidate to visit campus, Michael Dietler, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, will speak on "Colonial Encounters, Entanglements, and Transformations in the Ancient Western Mediterranean: the View from Lattara" on Thursday.
The committee received a large number of applications for the directorship. It reviewed them and asked a few people to send in samples of their work, including two articles representative of their scholarship. The committee then decided on six candidates to bring to campus, Newman said.
Candidates hail from the University of Michigan, Stanford University, the University of California at San Diego, University College in London, and the University of Chicago.
Each candidate has spoken or will speak on campus as part of a lecture series entitled "Old World, New Archaeologies" that runs through Feb. 24.
The search for a new director began this past summer after the retirement of Professor Emerita Martha Sharp Joukowsky '58 P'87 from the position of director of the Center for Old World Archaeology and Art. After her retirement, Martha Joukowsky and husband Artemis Joukowsky '55 P '87, chancellor emeritus, gave a gift to the University to create the new Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World.
The Institute will serve as an interdisciplinary center with a focus on the ancient Mediterranean region and Western Asia. It will incorporate the existing Center for Old World Archaeology and Art and bring together faculty from departments as diverse as classics, history of art and architecture, anthropology, Egyptology, and religious and Judaic studies.
The Joukowskys' gift will also provide funding for research, including library resources, off-campus fieldwork and the renovation of Rhode Island Hall, where the Institute will be located, Newman said.
In addition, the gift provides for the hiring of a director for the center as well as one additional faculty per year for four years.
