Scott J. McDonough

Scott McDonough is an assistant professor of History at the William Paterson University of New Jersey. He received his training at Cornell University (B.A. Classics, B.A. History, 1996) and the University of California, Los Angeles (Ph.D. History, 2005). His research interests lay in the social, institutional and religious history of late ancient west Asia, especially pre-Islamic Iran. During his year at ISAW he will be working on a monograph, "'We Pray for Our Glorious King': Power, Patronage and Piety in Sasanian Iran, 220-651 CE." This study examines the interactions of kings, Iranian "great families" and "outsider" elites, such as Christian bishops, through historical writing, hagiography, epistolography, epigraphy and material culture. In this Sasanian material may be seen the origins of the enduring institutions of centralized governance, communal identity and royal patronage of the medieval Near East.