by Lara-Sophie Boleslawsky
UT Austin’s own Daniel Smith, now a visiting Assistant Professor of Religion and Classics at Whitman College, has written an article for the Ancient Jew Review that you can read in its entirety (see link below). Entitled “Accessing the Ancient Mediterranean Studies Classroom”, Smith combines an account of his own personal journey in navigating the study of material culture alongside a call to the significance of this field inclusion and integration with solely text-based methodologies. But, and perhaps most poignantly, Smith’s piece challenges its readers to (re)think about current strategies for pedagogical engagement with material culture and in doing so to consider how to render these ancient sites more accessible both inside and outside the modern-day academic institution. Smith’s recounting of the methods he and Professors Geoffrey Smith and Steven Friesen used in order to create a tactile and diversely embodied experience of ancient papyri and the site plans of ancient cities gesture to the possibilities awaiting the incorporation of multivalent experience in the study of material culture. This current author looks forward to engaging in the kinds of discussions opened up by Smith’s piece, both in her own graduate coursework and research, as well as in the undergraduate classroom, and encourages others to consider Smith’s own words, to which this flitting little summary makes no compare.
Read Daniel Smith’s piece at: https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2022/10/24/accessing-the-ancient-mediterranean-studies-classroom
