Research Interests

 

 

My reseach covers a number of areas of Greek history, including ethnicity, gender, and historiography. I am currently working a book that looks at cattle in the economy and mythology of the Greeks. My previous book dealt with ethnicity and the ancient ethnic group known as the Phokians, the people who inhabited the region around Mt Parnassos. The full title is:

• The Folds of Parnassos: Land and Ethnicity in Ancient Phokis Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999.

 

(click on book to buy)

 

Independent city-states (poleis) such as Athens have been viewed traditionally as the most advanced stage of state formation in ancient Greece. By contrast, this pioneering book argues that for some Greeks the ethnos, a regionally based ethnic group, and the koinon, or regional confederation, were equally valid units of social and political life and that these ethnic identities were astonishingly durable. Jeremy McInerney sets his study in Phokis, a region in central Greece dominated by Mount Parnassos that shared a border with the panhellenic sanctuary at Delphi. He explores how ecological conditions, land use, and external factors such as invasion contributed to the formation of a Phokian territory. Then, drawing on numerous interdisciplinary sources, he traces the history of the region from the Archaic age down to the Roman period. McInerney shows how shared myths, hero cults, and military alliances created an ethnic identity that held the region together over centuries, despite repeated invasions. He concludes that the Phokian koinon survived because it was founded ultimately on the tenacity of the smaller communities of Greece.

 

Articles

Here’s a list of my other publications. (Some of these articles have been scanned and can be accessed directly from here.) First, here’a list of forthcoming pieces:

• “Dexippos: text, translation and commentary,” Brill’s New Jacoby

• “Herakleides: text, translation and commentary,” in Brill’s New Jacoby

• “Arrian and the Greek Alexander Romance,” Classical World

• “Freedom and the Free Man,” in J. Ciprut (ed.) "FREEDOM": Reassessments and Rephrasings. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press

• “On the Border: Sacred land and the margins of the community,” in R. Rosen and I. Sluiter (eds) City, Countryside, and the Spatial Organization of Value in Classical Antiquity. Leiden: Brill, 2006. pp. 33-59

This last article is part of the Penn-Leiden colloquium series held every two years. I have participated three times and my earlier contributions are published as:

• “Nereids, Colonies and the Origins of Isegoria” in R. Rosen and I. Sluiter (eds), Freedom of Speech in Classical Antiquity Leiden: Brill, 2004. pp. 21-40.

• “Plutarch’s Manly Women” in R. Rosen and I. Sluiter (eds), Andreia. Studies in Manliness and Courage in Classical Antiquity Leiden, Brill, 2003. pp. 319-344.

This is not the only work of Plutarch that I’ve studied. His so-called Delphian logoi, the essays he composed while serving late in his lfe as a priest at Delphi, are full of fascinating information about Delphi and the monuments of the sanctuary. I published an essay on this:

• ““Do you see what I see?”: Plutarch and Pausanias at Delphi” in L. de Blois (ed.) The Statesman in Plutarch’s Works. Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of the International Plutarch Society, (Nijmegen/ Hernen, May 2002) vol. 1. Mnemosyne Supplement. Leiden: Brill, 2004. pp. 43-55.

Delphi has figured prominently in my studies of Greece, as you can see. If you are interested in topography and the land around Delphi, you might want to look at this essay:

• “Parnassus, Delphi, and the Thyiades”, GRBS 38 3 (1997) [1999] 263-283.

My interest in Delphi stems in part from my work on the ethnic identity of the Phokians, the people who were Delphi’s neighbours and who at various times controlled the sanctuary. You can find more on these topics in these articles:

• “Ethnic Identity and Altertumswissenschaft”, in D. Tandy (ed.), Prehistory and History: Ethnicity, Class and Political Economy Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2001. pp. 85-112.

• “Ethnos and Ethnicity in Early Greece”, in I. Malkin (ed.), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001. pp. 51-73.

A good deal of my interest in these topics grew out of time doing field work in Greece while a student at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. That period produced the follwing article:

• “The Phokikon and the Hero Archegetes”, Hesperia 66 2 (1997) 193-207.

Much of my work in the region of Phokis was done with close friends from the American School. We collaborated on the following two articles:

• “An Athenian Dedication to Herakles at Panopeus”, Hesperia 66 2 (1997) 261-269. (coauthor with J. McK. Camp III et al.)

• “A Trophy from the Battle of Chaeroneia of 86 BC.”, American Journal of Archaeology 96 (1992) 443-455. (coauthor with J. McK. Camp III et al.)

In addition, the following article grew out my interests in historiography:


• “Politicizing the Past: the Atthis of Kleidemos”, Classical Antiquity 13 1 (1994) 17-37.

Finally, I have some short encyclopedia entries that you might like to follow up:

• “Polis” and “Agora” in K. Christensen and D. Levinson (eds), Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the Virtual World. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003.

Reviews

J. Hart, Herodotus and Greek History in Ancient Society 15.1 1985

P. Arnaud and P. Counillon, eds., Geographica Historica. Ausonius Études 2. Bordeaux -- Nice: Ausonius, 1998 in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2000

Jack L. Davis (ed.), Sandy Pylos. An Archaeological History from Nestor to Navarino Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1998 in International Journal of the Classical Tradition 7 2000/2001

A. Bresson, La cité marchande Ausonius. Scripta Antiqua 2. Paris, De Boccard, 2000 in Classical Review 52.2 2002

Martin Bernal, Black Athena Writes Back. Martin Bernal responds to his critics ed. David Chioni Moore. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001 in History: Reviews of New Books 30.4 2002

Jonathan M. Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002 in International History Review 2003

Andrew Wolpert, Remembering Defeat: Civil War and Civic Memory in Ancient Athens Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2002 in American Historical Review 2003

Benjamin Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity Princeton¨ Princeton University Press, 2004 in Social History 2005.