Glen Bowersock, D.Phil., an internationally respected historian on Greek, Roman and Near Eastern history and culture, will give the Biggs Lecture in the Classics for the Assembly Series. The talk, “Globalization in Late Antiquity,” is scheduled for 4 p.m. April 10 in Steinberg Hall Auditorium.
Bowersock is professor emeritus of ancient history at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) in Princeton, N.J. He served as professor of ancient history at IAS from 1980-2006. He came to IAS after a distinguished career at Harvard University (1962-1980), where he served as chairman of the classics department and associate dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences.
His research interests include the Greek East in the Roman Empire and Late Antiquity, as well as pre-Islamic Arabia.
He earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University in 1957. After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Oxford University, he earned a doctorate from Oxford in 1962 as a Rhodes Scholar.
He has written or edited more than a dozen books and published nearly 300 articles. His books include “Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire” (1969), “Julian the Apostate” (1978), “Roman Arabia” (1983), “Fiction as History” (1994) and “Martyrdom and Rome” (2002). He co-edited “Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World,” published in 1999 to wide critical acclaim.
He has received numerous awards recognizing his scholarship. In 2004, he was named a Chevalier, or Knight, of the Legion d’Honneur (Legion of Honor), France’s highest civilian honor. In 1992, he received the James H. Breasted Prize from the American Historical Association for his book “Hellenism in Late Antiquity” (1990).
He is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institut de France and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
As the Biggs Resident in the Classics, he will spend a week interacting with students and faculty. The Biggs Residency is the gift of John and Penelope Biggs, alumni of Washington University.
The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call 935-4620 or visit assemblyseries.wustl.edu.