Curriculum Vitae

Garth Fowden, Research Director

Address
National Hellenic Research Foundation (N.H.R.F.)
Institute for Greek and Roman Antiquity (K.E.R.A.)
48 Vassileos Constantinou Ave., Athens 11635, Greece
Tel.+ 30 210-7273697
Fax + 30 210-7234145
email: gfowden

Garth Fowden was born in Norwich, England, in 1953. He read Modern History at Merton College, Oxford, and there also wrote his doctoral thesis, under the supervision of Henry Chadwick, on Pagan philosophers in late antique society, with special reference to Iamblichus and his followers (1979). From 1978 to 1983 he held research fellowships at Peterhouse and at Darwin College, Cambridge. From 1983 to 1985 he taught Byzantine and Modern Greek History at Groningen University in the Netherlands. Since 1985 he has been a researcher at the K.E.R.A., and has held visiting appointments at Princeton University; the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; the Institute for the Humanities, University of Michigan; and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris.

Research interests

Late Antiquity and the early Islamic world.

Major ongoing projects

• The emergence of Islam in relation to the late Greek world and Sasanian Iran, with particular reference to 1) material culture and 2) the transmission of philosophical ideas.
• Problems of periodization: Late Antiquity/First Millennium.

Publications
Books

• The Egyptian Hermes: A historical approach to the late pagan mind (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1986; reprinted in paperback, with a new Preface, Princeton 1993). French translation, Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 2000. Greek translation, Enalios, Athens, 2002.
• Empire to commonwealth: Consequences of monotheism in late antiquity (Princeton University Press, Princeton 1993). Italian translation, Jouvence, Rome, 1997. Arabic translation in preparation.
• Qusayr 'Amra: Art and the Umayyad elite in late antique Syria (The transformation of the classical heritage 36, University of California Press, Berkeley 2004).

Selected recent articles

• 'Late antique art in Syria and its Umayyad evolutions', Journal of Roman archaeology 17 (2004) 282-304.
• 'Late polytheism', in A.K. Bowman, P. Garnsey and Av. Cameron (eds), The Cambridge ancient history 12: The crisis of empire, A.D. 193-337 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2005, second edition) 519-72.
• 'Sages, cities and temples: Aspects of late antique Pythagorism', in A. Smith (ed.), The philosopher and society in late antiquity: Essays in honour of Peter Brown (Classical Press of Wales, Swansea 2005) 145-70.
• Review article on E.W. Bodnar with C. Foss, Cyriac of Ancona: Later travels (Cambridge, MA 2003): 'Kyriacus palaeophilos Anconitanus (and the Cha Gorge, Crete)', Journal of Roman archaeology 18 (2005) 775-80
• 'Greek myth and Arabic poetry at Qusayr 'Amra', in A. Akasoy, J.E. Montgomery and P.E. Pormann (eds), Islamic crosspollinations: Interactions in the medieval Middle East (Gibb Memorial Trust, Cambridge 2007) 29-45.
• 'Pseudo-Aristotelian politics and theology in universal Islam', in S.M.R. Darbandi and A. Zournatzi (eds), Ancient Greece and ancient Iran: Cross-cultural encounters. 1st International Conference, Athens, 11-13 November 2006 (National Hellenic Research Foundation, Hellenic National Commission for UNESCO, Cultural Center of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Athens 2008) 65-81.
• Review article on A. Kaldellis, The Christian Parthenon: Classicism and pilgrimage in Byzantine Athens (Cambridge 2009): 'The Parthenon between antiquity, barbarism and Europe', Journal of Roman archaeology 23 (2010) 802-10
• 'Contextualizing Late Antiquity: The First Millennium', in J.P. Arnason and K.A. Raaflaub (eds), The Roman Empire in context: Historical and comparative perspectives (Chichester 2011) 148-76