The University of British Columbia
Vancouver campus
WHEN CLASSICAL WORLDS COLLIDE
From the pyramids to the Colosseum, from the Olympic Games to Mecca, our department offers a unique opportunity to link different disciplines and study ancient civilizations in a wider context.
EXPLORE THE PAST AND GAIN INSIGHT INTO THE PRESENT
Our unique program opens the door to three thousand years of language, literature, art, philosophy, religion and history, revealing their influence on modern culture.
UNEARTHING ANCIENT CULTURES
We pursue research into the cultures of ancient Egypt, the Near East, Greece and Rome, with ample archaeological fieldwork opportunities for our students, like the Centre for the Study of Ancient Sicily.
AIA Lecture: Cultural heritage in danger (Regine Schulz)
15th May 2018Cultural heritage is worldwide increasingly in danger. There are many different reasons, such as natural disasters, collateral damages by war and actions of terror, intentional destruction to annihilate the cultural roots and traditions of opponents as well as looting, thefts and illegal sale for profit. However, in the same way destructive are neglect, repressions and...
Pharos Lecture: “Female Justice: Getting Revenge on Terrible Men in Ancient Greece”
26th Mar 2018Speaker: Dr. Siobhan McElduff, UBC CNERS Pericles told the men of Athens that the best thing for a woman was not be spoken about, either in blame or praise; the women of Athens surely had other ideas. This lecture will look at how, in a time long before #metoo, women in ancient Greece tried to...
AIA Norton Lecturer: “Mistaken Identities: Tracking down Roman Emperors in Modern Art” (Mary Beard)
20th Mar 2018Speaker: Dr. Mary Beard, Professor of Classics, University of Cambridge Classical Roman emperors were often represented in Renaissance and later art, despite their collectively thuggish and often murderous natures. In her lecture, “Mistaken identities: tracking down Roman emperors in modern art“, Professor Mary Beard explores why were they such a popular subject, whether they just...
17th Mar 2018
TONY KEDDIE Triclinium Trialectics: Jewish and Christian Reactions to the Emergence of the Triclinium in Early Roman Palestine This paper draws on critical spatial theory to analyze the earliest literary constructions of the triclinium, or Roman dining room, in Jewish and Christian sources from Early Roman Palestine. It begins by examining the archaeological evidence of triclinia with stone benches in Palestine, addressing...
TONY KEDDIE Triclinium Trialectics: Jewish and Christian Reactions to the Emergence of the Triclinium in Early Roman Palestine This paper draws on critical spatial theory to analyze the earliest literary constructions of the triclinium, or Roman dining room, in Jewish and Christian sources from Early Roman Palestine. It begins by examining the archaeological evidence of triclinia with stone benches in Palestine, addressing...
15th Mar 2018
Speaker: Dr. Eric Cline, Professor of Classics and Anthropology, George Washington University Excavations and survey from 2005-2017 at the site and environs of Tel Kabri, located in the western Galilee of modern Israel, have shown that the Middle Bronze Age Canaanite palace there is at least three times as large as previously thought, with much...
Speaker: Dr. Eric Cline, Professor of Classics and Anthropology, George Washington University Excavations and survey from 2005-2017 at the site and environs of Tel Kabri, located in the western Galilee of modern Israel, have shown that the Middle Bronze Age Canaanite palace there is at least three times as large as previously thought, with much...
“Book Illustration in Antiquity”: Dr. Cillian O’Hogan with Alcuin Society
7th Mar 2018Illustration of books in the ancient Graeco-Roman world: Cillian O’Hogan The Alcuin Society is pleased to announce its first lecture of 2018. Join us for an evening with lecturer Cillian O’Hogan of UBC about the illustration of books in the ancient Graeco-Roman world. This lecture will give an overview of the surviving fragments of ancient...
“The Kassite Conundrum – Mystery or Not?” (Tim Clayden with Green College)
27th Feb 2018Dr. Tim Clayden OBE, Green Templeton College, Oxford “The Kassite Conundrum – Mystery or Not?”
Pharos Lecture: “Dynamic Humour in the Golden Age of Athenian Comedy”
26th Feb 2018CNERS PhD Candidate Justin Dwyer on “Dynamic Humour in the Golden Age of Athenian Comedy.” Humour, a quality that is intimately tied to distinct identities and human relationships, has real value in informing our understanding of ancient Athenian society. This lecture will explore elements of humour in Athenian comedy by tracing the development of this rich...
Polyglot/Polyglotte: Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference
24th Feb 201818th Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference Polyglot/Polyglotte Programme (Please note that scheduling adjustments may still take place.) Saturday, February 24th, 2018 14:00-15:30 Panel 1: Using Words Laura R. Bevilacqua, Queen’s University “A noun a.k.a. a god” Josh Allbright, University of Southern California “Athenian Prostitution Laws and the Female Voice: the Case of Timarchus” Marie-Hélène Trepanier,...
15th Feb 2018
Prof. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Horace W. Goldsmith Visiting Associate Professor in Judaic Studies at Yale University and Yale Divinity School Abstract: Stories portraying heretics (minim) in rabbinic literature are a central site of rabbinic engagement with the “other.” These stories typically portray interactions between a rabbinic figure and...
Prof. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Horace W. Goldsmith Visiting Associate Professor in Judaic Studies at Yale University and Yale Divinity School Abstract: Stories portraying heretics (minim) in rabbinic literature are a central site of rabbinic engagement with the “other.” These stories typically portray interactions between a rabbinic figure and...
Dr. Thomas Schneider elected Visiting Professor of Halbert Centre
Dr. Thomas Schneider has been elected as a Visiting Professor of the Halbert Centre for Canadian Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He will spend up to one month during the 2018-9 academic year at the Hebrew University, delivering two public lectures, a workshop for students, as well as the annual Hans Jakob Polotsky […]
Dr. Robert Cousland has published a new book, “Holy Terror. Jesus in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.” (Bloomsbury, 2017) About The Infancy Gospel of Thomas (or Paidika) is one of the most unusual gospels in the Christian tradition. Instead of revealing the compassionate Jesus so familiar to us from the biblical Gospels, it confronts its readers with a […]
Kevin Fisher, Roger Wilson receive SSHRC Insight Grants
Dr. Kevin Fisher has been awarded a large SSHRC Insight Grant for “Investigating the Socio-environmental Dynamics of an Ancient Urban Landscape”. The grant will fund five years of excavation and related work at the Late Bronze Age (c. 1650-1100 BCE) city of Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios, Cyprus. Recent research suggests that new urban landscapes that were created […]
Graduate Student Success: Gillian Glass, Emma Ramsden receive scholarships
CNERS is very pleased to announce that PhD Religious Studies student Gillian Glass has won a Killam Doctoral Scholarship! This is an extremely competitive and, therefore, prestigious award – and CNERS now has two Killam Doctoral Scholarship holders after Ryan Schroeder, also a PhD Religious studies candidate, received one last year. We also congratulate MA ACRE student […]
Dr. Gregg Gardner receives Halbert Centre grant for workshop on charity in classical Jewish law
Gregg Gardner has been awarded a grant from the Halbert Centre for Canadian Studies at Hebrew University! The funds will go towards co-organizing a workshop between academics from UBC and other universities in Canada, and the Israel Matz Institute for Jewish Law of the Law School of Hebrew University, on the topic of “Charity in […]
Dr. Michael Griffin receives UBC Killam Research Fellowship
Dr. Michael Griffin, Associate Professor of Greek Philosophy, has received a UBC Killam Research Fellowship for his project, “The Puzzle of Virtue: Indian Contributions to a Greek and Modern Theory.” We are excited to hear more about this research in the future!
Dr. Kevin Fisher, Assistant Professor of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology, has been working with the UBC Emerging Media Lab (EML) to develop the 3D visualization of Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios (more of the KAMBE project here). EML has connected Dr. Fisher with a group of students from the UBC Game Developer’s Association, who are working on ways of using augmented reality […]
Sara Milstein Receives Award for Book, “Tracking the Master Scribe”
Image: http://www.asor.org/news/2017/11/awards?utm_content=buffer03917&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer Dr. Sara Milstein, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near Eastern Studies, received the Frank Moore Cross Award at the meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research last week in Boston for her book Tracking the Master Scribe: Revision through Introduction in Biblical and Mesopotamian Literature (Oxford UP, 2016). This award is […]
Lisa Cooper runner-up for British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Award
Dr. Lisa Cooper, Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology, has just been awarded the runner-up book award prize from the British-Kuwait Friendship Society for her book In Search of Kings and Conquerors: Gertrude Bell and the Archaeology of the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2016). The prize is awarded annually to the best scholarly book on the Middle […]
Emma Ramsden (MA ACRE) a Highly Commended Entrant in the Undergraduate Awards
One of our new students in the MA in Ancient Culture, Religion and Ethnicity, Emma Ramsden, has had her paper, “Which Witch is Which: Understanding the Use of the Roman Witch in the Early Imperial Period”, ranked in the top 10% of all submissions in the category of Classical Studies and Archaeology in the Undergraduate […]
Assistant Professor Without Review in Latin Language and Literature
The Department of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies (CNERS) at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver) invites applications for an Assistant Professor Without Review in Latin language and literature. The successful candidate must be able to teach Latin at all levels, and courses on topics such as Latin literature, myth, ancient women, classical reception, […]
The Department of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies (CNERS) at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver) invites applications for an Assistant Professor Without Review in Latin language and literature. The successful candidate must be able to teach Latin at all levels, and courses on topics such as Latin literature, myth, ancient women, classical reception, […]
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