Benjamin Sullivan

Sullivan is a Assistant Teaching Professor in ancient history within SHPRS. He grew up in rural Washington State, and he subsequently traveled extensively to complete his education, which included a B.A. from St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD. St. John’s Great Books curriculum and the school’s unconventional instruction methods influenced him deeply. While earning his M.A. in Classical Studies at Vanderbilt, the first ten minutes of his first class with the ancient historian Robert Drews convinced Sullivan that he would make ancient history his life’s work. His education culminated with a Ph.D. in Classics from UC Irvine, and with graduate work in archaeology and ancient history at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, where he spent two fellowship years, the first (2009–2010) as the Thomas Day Seymour Fellow. Sullivan’s research and teaching interests are broad. Rather than confining himself within the ancient historian’s usual ambit, Greece and Rome, he also studies the histories of the ancient Near East and Egypt. Thematically his research and teaching interests include (but aren’t limited to): warfare, religion, law, politics, ethnicity, imperialism, and state formation. He also takes a chronologically wide view of the ancient world, and when course limits allow it, he begins teaching with Early Dynastic Sumer (ca. 2900 BCE) and ends with the death of Muhammad in 632 CE. He is now finishing a book entitled Against Outlander Men: Near Eastern and Egyptian Influences on Early Greek Warfare, which is under contract with Brill. His next book project, tentatively entitled Eastern Achaeans: Early Greek Settlers in the Near East will address a fascinating new dossier of evidence, which suggests that Greek-speakers settled in North Syria as early as Iron Age I (ca. 1125–ca. 900 BCE).