Glen Bowersock

Glen Warren Bowersock (born January 12, 1936 in Providence, Rhode Island) is a contemporary American scholar of the ancient world and the history of ancient Greece, Rome and the Near East.

Biography

Bowersock was born in Providence, Rhode Island and attended The Rivers School in Weston, Massachusetts. He earned his A.B. summa cum laude from Harvard University (1957), another B.A. with First Class Honors in Literae humaniores from Oxford University (1959); and his M.A., D.Phil. (1962) also at Oxford. Since that time Bowersock has received numerous honorary degrees, including: University of Strasbourg (Sciences Humaines), Docteur honoris causa (1990), Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris), Docteur honoris causa (1999), University of Athens, Doctor honoris causa (2005). He is also an Honorary Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford (2004) at which he was once a Rhodes Scholar. He has served as Lecturer in Ancient History, Balliol, Magdalen, and New College, Oxford (1960–62), Professor of Classics and History, Harvard University (1962–80) (full Professor from 1969).

Glen Bowersock was Professor of Ancient History at the Institute for Advanced Study from 1980 until his retirement in 2006. He is the author of over a dozen books and has published over 300 articles on Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern history and culture as well as the classical tradition.

Bowersock formerly served as Professor of Classics and History at Harvard University. During his career at Harvard (1962 to 1980), he served as Professor of Classics and History; Chairman of the Classics Department; and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In 1989, Bowersock was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States, dating to 1743.^[1]

Bowersock was awarded the James Henry Breasted Prize of the American Historical Association for his book Hellenism in Late Antiquity. A symposium in his honor was held at Princeton University on April 7, 2006, under the title East and West: A Conference in Honor of Glen W. Bowersock, the proceedings of which were published by the Harvard University Press in 2008.

Selected works

• Xenophon, translated with E. C. Marchant, Harvard University Press, 19??
• Augustus and the Greek World (Oxford, 1965)
• Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1969)
• Julian the Apostate, Harvard University Press, 1978
• Gibbon's Historical Imagination (Stanford, 1988).
• Hellenism in Late Antiquity [Jerome Lectures] (Michigan and Cambridge U.P., 1990)
• Fiction as History, from Nero to Julian [Sather Classical Lectures] (University of California Press, 1994). Available online from eScholarship editions at the University of California.
• Martyrdom and Rome [Wiles Lectures] (Cambridge University Press, 1995)
• Roman Arabia, Harvard University Press, 1983, 1994 (first paperback ed.)
• Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World edited with Peter Brown and Oleg Grabar, Harvard University Press, 1999
• Interpreting Late Antiquity, Harvard University Press, 2001
• Mosaics as History: The Near East from Late Antiquity to Islam, Harvard University Press, 2006
• On the Donation of Constantine, translation, Harvard University Press, 2007
• From Gibbon to Auden: Essays on the Classical Tradition, Oxford University Press, 2009

References

General

• IAS homepage
• Bowersock's bibliography 1961–present

Specific

External links

• Bowersock author page and archive from The New York Review of Books