Ideas

Reflecting on preliminary results obtained from a seven-year HistoGenes project, Patrick J. Geary, Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies, describes how advances in the field of paleogenom­ics are not only revolutionizing the study of paleolithic hominids but are also allowing scholars to answer questions about much more recent history, previously inaccessible using traditional historical and archae­ological sources.

Few people are familiar with the small Austrian town of Braunau near Salzburg. It is here, at Salzburger Vorstadt 15, that Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889; in that home, he spent the first two months of his life.

The diplomat and historian George F. Kennan, Faculty (1956–74) in the School of Historical Studies, is the subject of a "clear-eyed, and compelling" biography written by Member (2009–10) and Director's Visitor (2011) Frank Costigliola.

For il manifesto, Valentina Porcheddu interviews Angelos Chaniotis, Professor in the School of Historical Studies, about the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Athens. 

Yve-Alain Bois, Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies, has published An Oblique Autobiography, a collection of essays and reminiscences, with no place press.

The role of reproductions in facilitating the study of the ancient Mediterranean has long been recognized at IAS. Upon his appointment as the Institute’s first professor of Greek epigraphy in 1935, Benjamin D. Meritt petitioned then-Director Abraham...

Verena Krebs is an award-winning medieval historian working on Christian Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. She draws on archaeology, art, and written sources for her scholarship. At IAS, Krebs will work on her second monograph, “Africa Collecting Europe: Patronage and Power in Christian Ethiopia, 1468–1530", which will tease out an untold story about the assertion of power in a pre-colonial African kingdom.

Animating the Antique: Sculptural Encounter in the Age of Aesthetic Theory, a pioneering work of eighteenth and nineteenth century art history, has been published by Penn State University Press. Sarah Betzer, a Member and former Visitor (2014–15, 2016) in the School of Historical Studies, wrote the book during her time at the Institute, culminating in the groundbreaking and widely-acclaimed text that spans a century-and-a-half and offers new account of the distinctively modern allure of the antique.

Pinakia, here shown as casts made of Plaster of Paris, were small bronze plates used in ancient Athens for the process of democratically selecting a group of citizens to serve on a jury. Athenian citizens would nominate themselves for jury duty, volunteering their bronze plates to be inserted into a kleroterion (a machine with rows of slots and a built-in lottery system).

Past Visitor (2015–21) Karina Urbach’s book Alice’s Book: How the Nazis Stole My Grandmother’s Cookbook, originally published in German to wide acclaim,has been published in English, with a translation by Jamie Bulloch.