Elizabeth Ann Pollard
Elizabeth
Ann Pollard (University of Pennsylvania, 2001)
is a historian of the ancient world, in particular of Roman
and Greek civilizations.
Her research interests cross the disciplinary and methodological
boundaries between history, religious studies, classics,
and women's studies. This boundary crossing corresponds with
her interests in women, religion, and the provinces, all
topics that reside on peripheries. She has research experience
in papyrology and epigraphy as well as archaeology and worked
as a trench supervisor and pottery registrar for the Roman
Aila Project in Aqaba, Jordan. She is currently revising
her dissertation, Magic Accusations Against Women in the
Greco-Roman World from the First to the Fifth Centuries CE,
which explores the relationship between the representations
and accusations of women's activity as magic and the actual
rituals that women conducted. She has presented papers on
women's religious activity in the Apocryphal Acts, the epigraphic
habit of women in the Greek novel, and women's bodies in
the Greek Magical Papyri. With grants from SDSU, she has
pursued research in summer 2003 at the Bibliotheque Nationale
in Paris, where she studied a fourth century CE magical handbook
in order to aid in the preparation of the dissertation for
publication. In summer 2004, she studied inscriptions at
archaeological sites in Greece and Turkey, in preparation
for several articles on women's civic euergetism and women's
epigraphic activity. Her pedagogical interests include the
effectiveness of web-based technology in teaching, learning,
and writing about ancient history.