Jonathan M. Hall
Phyllis Fay Horton Professor in the Humanities, Professor and Chair of Classics, Professor of History and in the College.
Ph.D. University of Cambridge. 1993
Department of History
1126 East 59th Street, Mailbox 60
Chicago, IL 60637
Office: (773) 834-8934
Fax: (773) 702-7550
Email: jhall@uchicago.edu
FIELD SPECIALTIES
Greek Social and Cultural History, especially Ancient Greek Ethnicities; History and Material Culture.
BIOGRAPHY
Jonathan Hall's research and teaching are focused on the cultural and social history of ancient Greece, with a particular emphasis on the construction, meaning and functions of ethnic identity among Greek communities. His book Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity was the first to tackle the question of Greek ethnicity from an explicitly interdisciplinary point of view and received the 1999 Charles J. Goodwin Award for Merit from the American Philological Association. A second book, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture, explores the emergence and transformation of Greek self-consciousness in antiquity, and was the recipient of the 2004 Gordon J. Laing Award from the University of Chicago Press. He has just completed A History of the Archaic Greek World for Blackwell and is currently working on a monograph that explores the relationship between literary texts and material culture. His interests also include the history of early Greece, especially the rise of the polis (he has been an active member of the Copenhagen Polis Centre), the role of religion in the early polis, and - more recently - the political and social uses of colonial foundation accounts.
PUBLICATIONS
A History of the Archaic Greek World ca. 1200-479 BCE. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.
"Arcades his oris: Greek Projections on the Italian Ethnoscape?," in E. Gruen (ed.), Cultural Borrowings and Ethnic Appropriations in Antiquity. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2005.
"Culture, Cultures and Acculturation," in R. Rollinger and C. Ulf (eds.), Das Archaische Griechenland: Interne Entwicklungen, Externe Impulse. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004.
"The Dorianization of the Messenians," in N. Luraghi and S.E. Alcock (eds.), Helots and their Masters in Laconia and Messniea: Histories, Ideologies, Structures. Washington DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2003.
"How 'Greek' were the Early Western Greeks?," in K. Lomas (ed.), Greek Identity in the Western Mediterranean. Leiden: Brill, 2003.
"Culture or Cultures? Hellenism in the Late Sixth Century," in C. Dougherty and L. Kurke (eds.), The Cultures Within Ancient Greek Culture: Contact, Conflict, Collaboration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
"Contested Ethnicities: Perceptions of Macedonia Within Evolving Definitions of Greek Identity," in I. Malkin (ed.), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity. Washington DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2001.
"Sparta, Lakedaimon and the Nature of Perioikic Dependency," in P. Flensted-Jensen, ed., Further Studies in the Ancient Greek Polis. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2000.
"Beyond the Polis? The Multilocality of Heroes," in R. Hagg (ed.), Ancient Greek Hero Cult. Stockholm: Astrom, 1999.
Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
(With Catherine Morgan) 'Achaian Poleis and Achaian Colonisation', in M.H. Hansen (ed.), Introduction to an Inventory of Poleis. Acts of the Copenhagen Polis Centre 3. Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 1996.
"The Role of Language in Greek Ethnicities," Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 41 (1995).
"How Argive was the "Argive" Heraion? The Political and Cultic Geography of the Argive Plain, 900-400 BC," American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995).
"Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Iron Age of Greece," in N. Spencer (ed.), Time, Tradition and Society in Greek Archaeology: Bridging the "Great Divide". London: Routledge, 1995.
"Black Athena: A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing?," Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 3 (1990).