Curator of Prehistory and Publications John Cherry lectured on the inception and development of IPCAA at a Mellon-sponsored Symposium on Groups and Centers in the Humanities held last September at Bryn Mawr College (see article). In February, he delivered the annual Trustees’ Lecture at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. Shortly after his return, he was a coorganizer and presenter (jointly with Lauren Talalay) at the international workshop “Prehistorians around the Pond,” held in the Kelsey. Editorial work has recently been completed for a book, coedited with Sue Alcock, Side-by-Side Survey: Comparative Regional Studies in the Mediterranean World (Oxbow Books, fall 2003). He is entering his ninth year as director of IPCAA and his thirteenth as coeditor of the Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology.
Curator of Hellenistic and Roman Collections Elaine Gazda has been to Italy twice during this sabbatical year for further research on the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii. Her edited volume The Ancient Art of Emulation was published in October, and during that month she also gave papers at the University of Pennsylvania, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the American Academy in Rome. Most recently, she has been working on a collaboration involving the Toledo Museum, the Kelsey, and Italian archaeologists that will result in a major exhibition of Italian antiquities.
Curator of Slides and Photographs Robin Meador-Woodruff continues her term as treasurer of the Registrars Committee, a standing professional committee of the American Association of Museums (AAM), and will attend the AAM national meeting in Portland this May.
Curator of Dynastic Egypt Janet Richards curated “Individual and Society in Ancient Egypt,” which opened March 7, and organized its associated lecture series. Her article “Time and Memory in Ancient Egyptian Cemeteries” came out in the December issue of Expedition magazine. She also spent a short season of magnetic survey at Abydos as well as attending the centennial conference of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, as an invited guest and delivering a paper at the American Research Center in Egypt annual meeting.
Curator of Academic Outreach Lauren Talalay’s coedited book (with Artemis Leontis and Keith Taylor), ”what these Ithakas mean”: Readings in Cavafy, was selected by the Times Literary Supplement as one of the best books of 2002. She gave a talk at the annual meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists in Salonika, Greece, and coauthored one delivered at the “Settlers and Settlements in Greece, 9000-1000 BC” conference in Rhodes, Greece. She also published a coauthored essay in Engendering Aphrodite: Women and Society in Ancient Cyprus (ed. D. Bolger and N. Serwint) and has just completed another essay to appear in Mediterranean Prehistory: Blackwell Studies in Global Archaeology (ed. E. Blake and A. B. Knapp).
Curator of Postclassical Collections Thelma Thomas continues work on Roman and late antique textiles. Last summer, with the assistance of visiting scholar Jane Batcheller, the Kelsey’s textile database was reconfigured to incorporate digital images and to include information in line with current knowledge of archaeological textiles. In September Assistant Registrar Kate Carras embarked upon what will be a two-year project to recatalogue the textiles from Karanis for inclusion in the Kelsey’s online catalogue—a project funded by the Kelsey Museum and the Rackham School of Graduate Studies. The book Thelma coedited with Elizabeth Sears, Reading Medieval Images: The Art Historian and the Object, containing essays in honor of Professor Emerita of History of Art Ilene H. Forsyth, was published by the University of Michigan Press in fall 2002. After concluding her term as associate dean at the Graduate School this summer, she will embark on a much anticipated sabbatical: a J. Clawson Mills Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art will provide support for her research projects on late antique textiles.
Curator of Graeco-Roman Egypt Terry Wilfong’s book Women of Jeme: Lives in a Coptic Town in Late Antique Egypt was published in December by University of Michigan Press. He participated in the International Workshop on Papyrology and Social History at Columbia University in March and will spend the summer working on his upcoming exhibition: “Archaeologies of Childhood: The First Years of Life in Roman Egypt,” which opens November 21 at the Kelsey Museum.
