Photo of Jonathan Hall
Jonathan M. Hall Office: Wieboldt Hall, room 403 Mailbox 60 Office hours: Autumn Quarter 2024 Tuesday and Thursday, 2:00-3:00pm Phone: (773) 834-8934 Email Interests:

Ancient Greek social, cultural, and political history; archaeology; historical methodology; modern Greek history
Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities; Professor of History, Classics, and the College

University of Cambridge, PhD '93

BIOGRAPHY

Jonathan Hall's earlier research was 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 first book, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge, 1997) received the 1999 Charles J. Goodwin Award for Merit from the American Philological Association, while Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago, 2002) was the recipient of the 2004 Gordon J. Laing Award from the University of Chicago Press. He has also tackled questions of historical method which are explored in History of the Archaic Greek World, ca. 1200–479 BCE 2nd edn. (Chichester, 2014), which has been translated into Polish and Greek, and in Artifact and Artifice: Classical Archaeology and the Ancient Historian (Chicago, 2014). His most recent book is Reclaiming the Past: Argos and its Archaeological Heritage in the Modern Era (Ithaca, 2021). He is currently working on a book about what it meant to be Greek in the Iron Age and on an archaeological history of Corfu from prehistory to the present day. He is also the author of a series of articles and chapters concerning the early polis, Greek colonization, and cultural identities. In 2009 he was awarded the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

Recent Research / Recent Publications

Books
Selected Essays and Articles

  • “Politics,” in A Companion to Greek Lyric, edited by L. Swift, 76–88. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2022.

  • "The archaeology of 'celebrities' in the Greek and Roman worlds," Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia 30 (2018): 310–27.

  • "Hellenic Homelands: The Greek Diaspora, Ancient and Modern." In An Age of Experiment: Classical Archaeology Transformed (1976–2014), edited by L. Nevett and J. Whitley, 235–46. Cambridge: MacDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2018.

  • "The Determinacy of Space and State formation in Archaic Greece." In Eurasia at the Dawn of History: Urbanization and Social Change, edited by M. Fernández-Götz and D. Krausse, 279–90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

  • "Quanto c’è di 'greco' nella 'colonizzazione greca'?" In Conceptualizing Early Colonization, edited by L. Donnellan, V. Nizzo, and G. J. Burgers, 51–59. Brussels: Belgisch Historisch Instituut te Rome, 2016.

  • "Ancient Greek Ethnicities: Towards a Reassessment," Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 58, no. 2 (2015): 15–29.

  • "Federalism and Ethnicity.” In Federalism in Greek Antiquity, edited by H. Beck and P. Funke, 30–48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

  • "The Rise of State Action in the Archaic Age." In A Companion to Ancient Greek Government, edited by H. Beck, 9–21. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.

  • "Early Greek Settlement in the West: The Limits of Colonialism." In Theatre Outside Athens: Drama in Greek Sicily and South Italy, edited by K. Bosher, 19–34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

  • "Imagining a Community beyond the Polis: The Emergence and Transformation of the Ethnos." In Forme sovrapoleiche e interpoleiche di organizzazione nel mondo greco antico, edited by M. Lombardo, 28–37. Galatina: Congedo, 2011.

  • "Autochthonous Autocrats: The Tyranny of the Athenian Democracy." In Private and Public Lies: The Discourse of Despotism and Deceit in the Ancient World, edited by K.O. Chong-Gossard, F. Vervaet, and A. Turner, 11–28. Leiden: Brill, 2010.

  • "Foundation Stories." In Greek Colonisation. An Account of Greek Colonies and Other Settlements Overseas in the Archaic Period, vol 2, edited by G. Tsetskhladze, 383–426. Leiden: Brill, 2008.

  • "Politics and Greek Myth." In The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology, edited by R. Woodard, 331–354. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

  • "International Relations." In The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare, vol 1: Greece, the Hellenistic World and the Rise of Rome, edited by P. Sabin, H. van Wees, and M. Whitby, 85–107. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

  • "Arcades His Oris: Greek Projections on the Italian Ethnoscape?" In Cultural Borrowings and Ethnic Appropriations in Antiquity, edited by E. Gruen. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2005.

  • "Culture, Cultures, and Acculturation." In Das Archaische Griechenland: Interne Entwicklungen, Externe Impulse, edited by R. Rollinger and C. Ulf. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004.

  • "The Dorianization of the Messenians." In Helots and their Masters in Laconia and Messniea: Histories, Ideologies, Structures, edited by N. Luraghi and S.E. Alcock. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2003.

  • "Contested Ethnicities: Perceptions of Macedonia within Evolving Definitions of Greek Identity." In Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity, edited by I. Malkin. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2001.

  • "Sparta, Lakedaimon and the Nature of Perioikic Dependency." In Further Studies in the Ancient Greek Polis, edited by P. Flensted-Jensen. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2000.

  • (With Catherine Morgan) "Achaian Poleis and Achaian Colonisation." In Introduction to an Inventory of Poleis. Acts of the Copenhagen Polis Centre 3, edited by M. H. Hansen. 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).

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