Newsletter 20: Winter 2018

Shahnamah. Iskandar Encounters the Angel Israfi l (detail). Author: Abu al-Qasim Firdausi (940–1019 or 1025); Copyist: Muhammad al-Katib al-Qiwam Shirazi; Language: Persian. Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper, folio: H. 45.2 cm; W. 30.2 cm. Probably Turkey, 1562–1583. Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Purchase—Smithsonian Unrestricted Trust Funds, Smithsonian Collections Acquisition Program, and Dr. Arthur M. Sackler: S1986.256. Image © Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. ISAW Newsletter 20, Winter 2018, included the following contributions:

• From the Director
  Alexander Jones, Leon Levy Director and Professor of the History of the Exact Sciences in Antiquity
  
  
• Exhibitions
  
  Romance and Reason: Islamic Transformations of the Classical Past
  
  
• Faculty Focus
  
  Art, Archaeology and Museology
  Lillian Tseng, Associate Professor of East Asian Art and Archaeology, Jennifer Chi, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Brooklyn Museum
  
  Bone Working and the Chinese Bronze Age Economy
  Rod Campbell, Associate Professor of East Asian Archaeology and History
  
  
• Conferences
  
  
  • Future Philologies: Digital Directions in Ancient World Text
    Conference organized by by Patrick J. Burns (ISAW Assistant Research Scholar, Digital Projects)
  • Text and Image: Transmedial Inquiries into Ancient Near Eastern Cultures
    Conference organized by Beate Pongratz-Leisten (ISAW)
  • Appetite for the Past
    Conference organized by Yitzchak Jaffe (ISAW Visiting Assistant Professor) and Kelila Jaffe (NYU Food Studies)

• Lectures
  
  Ninth Annual M.I. Rostovtzeff Lecture Series
  The Sky over Ancient Iraq: Babylonian Astronomy in Context
  Mathieu Ossendrijver, Humboldt University Berlin
  
  
• Recent Publications: A selection of books by ISAW faculty and former scholars
  
  
  • Claudia Chang (ISAW Research Associate), Rethinking Prehistoric Central Asia: Shepherds, Farmers, and Nomads (London and New York: Routledge, 2017)
  • Damián Fernández (ISAW VRS 2009-10), Aristocrats and Statehood in Western Iberia, 300-600 C.E. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017)
  • Maya Maskarinec (ISAW VRS 2016-17), City of Saints: Rebuilding Rome in the Early Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018)
  • Willem Floor and D.T. Potts (ISAW Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology and History), The Persian Gulf: Khark: The Island’s Untold Story (Washington DC: Mage Publishers, 2017).
  • Valeriya Kozlovskaya (ISAW VRS 2008-9), ed., The Northern Black Sea in Antiquity: Networks, Connectivity, and Cultural Interactions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
  • Lidewijde de Jong (ISAW VRS 2010-11), The Archaeology of Death in Roman Syria: Burial, Commemoration, and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
• Community News
  
  
• Digital Programs
  Tom Elliott, Associate Director for Digital Programs
  
  
• Public Events (this Newsletter section is superseded by the website Events section)
  
  
• Become a Friend of ISAW
  
  
  

A PDF version of Newsletter 20, Winter 2018, which preserves the original print-oriented formatting of the content, is also available for download.