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Field Librarian Beau David Case has joined the U-M faculty as the Field Librarian for Classical Studies. In addition to collection development responsibilities for the archaeology, history, and literature of the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine periods at the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library, he will also have oversight of the Kelsey Museum's library. Beau holds an undergraduate degree in English, with Italian and Classics minors, from UCLA, and graduate degrees in Comparative Literature, with Greek and Latin minors, and in Library and Information Science from Indiana University. He has sixteen years' experience working in academic libraries and museums, and for the past nine years he has been the Classics librarian at Indiana University (1993-95) and Ohio State University (1996-2001). Among his priorities is to build the Kelsey's library by means of fundraising for an acquisitions endowment and by developing a book exchange program with archaeology museums and institutes internationally, all in order to better support the Kelsey's exhibition and outreach programs, its curators, and the IPCAA students.
Curator of Hellenistic and Roman Collections Elaine Gazda has finished her edited volume The Ancient Art of Emulation: Studies in Artistic Originality and Tradition from the Present to Classical Antiquity (University of Michigan Press). In September she participated in a group discussion at Barnard College on the state of the field of Roman art history. In March she attended a conference at Columbia University called "The Art of Rome: Shifting Boundaries: Evolving Interpretations." She continues, as head of the Trustees' Publications Committee for the American Academy in Rome, to work on developing the Academy's publications series.
Curator of Dynastic Egypt Janet Richards delivered one public lecture at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. Another for the U-M Institute for the Humanities "Philology!" series was entitled "Deciphering the Dead: Individual, Text and Context in Ancient Egypt." She will give the inaugural lecture for the newly formed Western Michigan Chapter of the Archaeological Institute of America in May. Also in May she will lead a tour of the Kelsey and make a presentation entitled "Exhibiting the Ancients" for the Humanities Institute's Spring Seminar (The Ancients: Familiar Strangers). Otherwise she is deeply involved in planning and research for her exhibition "Individual and Society in Ancient Egypt," which opens in winter 2003, and with analyzing data from her Abydos Middle Cemetery project.
With Mark B. Garrison (IPCAA Ph.D. 1988), Curator of Greece and the Near East Margaret Cool Root recently published Seals on the Persepolis Fortification Tablets. Volume I: Images of Heroic Encounter (Oriental Institute Publications 117, 2001). This work reflects a long-term sponsored research project on the seals ratifying thousands of dated administrative documents of the Achaemenid Persian empire. The project has been supported by the Kelsey Museum as well as by the John Simon Guggenhiem Memorial Foundation, the Kress Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rackham Graduate School and Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Michigan, and the Iran Heritage Foundation.
Curator of Academic Outreach Lauren Talalay cocurated (with Adjunct Associate Professor of Modern Greek Studies Artemis Leontis) the exhibition "Cavafy's World" and, along with Artemis Leontis and Keith Taylor, edited the accompanying book, " . . . what these Ithakas mean": Readings in Cavafy (Athens, Hellenic Literary and Historical Archive). She also delivered two papers at international conferences: "Commodifying the Past: Archaeological Images in Modern Advertising" at the European Association of Archaeologists annual meeting in Germany and "Prehistory and the Southern Euboea Archaeological Project" (coauthored with Donald Keller, Tracey Cullen, and Evangelia Karimali) at the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Celebration of the Canadian Archaeological Institute at Athens in Greece.
Curator of Postclassical Collections Thelma Thomas curated the exhibition of the Kelsey's collection of Karanis textiles in the fall. The show's catalogue has been well received, and a published version of a paper on the textiles, given in October at the Abbegg-Stiftung in Riggisberg, Switzerland, will appear in the next issue of the Riggisberger Berichte. Melanie Grunow (recent IPCAA Ph.D.) is constructing a web page recording the exhibition, which should be on line in early summer. Thelma continues a project dedicated to recataloguing the Karanis textiles and getting that information into the Kelsey's on-line database.
Curator of Graeco-Roman Egypt Terry Wilfong's publication of mummy labels in the Kelsey Museum collection has appeared in a volume of essays in honor of papyrologist David Thomas. He has also published an article, "Friendship and Physical Desire: The Discourse of Female Homoeroticism in Fifth-Century CE Egypt," in Among Women, edited by Nancy Rabinowitz and published by University of Texas Press. He is working on various Kelsey contributions (brochure and computer kiosk presentation) for the theme semester "Gender, Representation and Power" and has been involved in ongoing work on a collaborative project to prepare on-line teaching materials for ancient Egyptian funded by the Mellon Foundation. He has just finished his book, Women of Jeme, which will be published by University of Michigan Press in the fall.
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