William V. Harris

William Vernon Harris (born 13 September 1938) is William R. Shepherd Professor of History, Columbia University. He is the author of numerous groundbreaking monographs on the Greco-Roman world, he is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and he was awarded the Distinguished Achievement Award by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2008.

Life and career

William V. Harris was born on 13 September 1938 in Nottingham, England. He attended Bristol Grammar School (1949–1956) and then was an Open Scholar in Classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He earned first class in Classical Moderations in 1959, then first class in Literae Humaniores in 1961. From 1961 he pursued graduate studies as a State Student at Oxford, spending the year 1961-1962 in Rome (where he worked with J.B. Ward-Perkins), and was then the T.W. Greene Scholar in Classical Art and Archaeology. His dissertation supervisor was M. W. Frederiksen, and he received his D. Phil. in 1968.

From 1964 to 1965 Harris served as Lecturer in Ancient History at Queen's University, Belfast. In 1965, he joined the faculty of the Columbia University History Department, which he chaired from 1988 to 1994. In 1995 he was awarded the William R. Shepherd Professorship in History at Columbia. Since 2000, he has been director of Columbia's Center for the Ancient Mediterranean, which he co-founded. Since 2002 he has been Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and in 2008 he was awarded the Distinguished Achievement Award by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In 2011 he was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. i.

Publications

Monographs

1971: Rome in Etruria and Umbria (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. x + 370

1979: War and Imperialism in Republican Rome, 327 70 B.C. (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. xii + 293 (corrected reprint, 1985; Spanish translation: Guerra e imperialismo en la Roma republicana, 327-70 a.C. Madrid: Siglo XXI)

1989: Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U.P.), pp. xvi + 383 (1991: Italian translation: Lettura e istruzione nel mondo antico, Rome and Bari: Laterza)

2002: Restraining Rage: the Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U.P.), awarded the 2002 James Henry Breasted Prize of the American Historical Association

2009: Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity (Harvard University Press)[1]

2011: Rome's Imperial Economy: Twelve Essays (Oxford University Press)

Edited volumes

1984: The Imperialism of Mid Republican Rome (Papers and Monographs of the American Academy in Rome, vol. xxix, Rome)

1986: (with Roger S. Bagnall) Studies in Roman Law in Memory of A. Arthur Schiller (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition, vol. 13, Leiden)

1993: The Inscribed Economy: Production and Distribution in the Roman Empire in the light of instrumentum domesticum (Supplementary vol.6 of the Journal of Roman Archaeology, Ann Arbor)

1999: The Transformations of Urbs Roma in Late Antiquity (Supplementary vol. 33 of the Journal of Roman Archaeology)

2004: (with Giovanni Ruffini) Ancient Alexandria between Egypt and Greece (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition, vol. 26, Leiden: E.J. Brill)

2005: Rethinking the Mediterranean (Oxford: Clarendon Press)

2005: (with Elio Lo Cascio) Noctes Campanae: studi di storia ed archeologia dell’Italia preromana e romana in memoria di Martin Frederiksen (Naples: Luciano)

2005: The Spread of Christianity in the First Four Centuries: Essays in Explanation (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition, vol. 27, Leiden: E. J. Brill)

2008: Monetary Systems of the Greeks and Romans (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

2008: (with Brooke Holmes) Aelius Aristides between Greece, Rome and the Gods

2011: (with Kristine Iara) Maritime Technology in the Ancient Economy (Portsmouth, RI)

2013: Mental Disorders in the Classical World (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition, vol. 38, Leiden: E. J. Brill)

2013: The Ancient Mediterranean Environment between Science and History (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition, vol.39, Leiden: E. J. Brill)

2013: Moses Finley and Politics (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition, vol. 40, Leiden: E. J. Brill)

External links

• Columbia University, Department of History webpage [2]
• Center for the Ancient Mediterranean [3]
• Mellon Distinguished Award citation [4]
• Columbia News [5]