Carol Thomas

Greek history has been the center of my career since I began the study of ancient Greek and Latin in high school, then continued with Classics as a major in college, and added archaeology and art history in graduate study.  The 1970s were exciting for new evidence to understand the Greek “Age of Heroes” long thought to be a mythical creation of later Greece.  Tablets baked in the fires that destroyed the palaces of that “Age of Heroes” were being deciphered and, after completing my PhD,  I had the honor of working with one of the decipherers, Dr. John Chadwick.  That decipherment extended the history of Greece by several millennia, making it a contender for the world’s most durable culture.  Consequently, to explore that durability,  my recent interests have stretched to the study, teaching and research of Greece from 7000 BCE to the present.

Sharing my engagement with Greece through teaching, study, research, and publication is a joy.  Courses include a survey of the long history of Greece; upper division courses on Pre-classical, Classical, and Hellenistic Greece; undergraduate seminars on subjects such as “How to Become the Father of History,” “Finding Odysseus, and “Socrates: the Individual and the State; graduate seminars; and the occasion offering of the pre-classical form of written Greek – Linear B.  Having more than 58 graduate students work with me has been a challenging reward.  It is exciting to be asked to give guest presentations including The Fordyce W. Mitchel Memorial Lecture Series at the University of Missouri (which produced my book Finding People in Early Greece);  The Burnett Lecture at San Diego State University; and regularly the seminar on “The Classical Prototype:  The Peloponnesian War” for  the Naval War College.

Happily my research means frequent international travel and participation in regular conferences.  Published books number eleven and edited books, seven; and I have contributed eleven articles to books and encyclopedias.  Currently I am on the advisory committee of The Journal of the Historical Society, Historically Speaking, The Ancient History Bulletin, The Warring States Project (Comparative Ancient China/Greece.)  A message from an editor at Wiley/Blackwell in late October brought the welcome news that they wish to publish my book of the long history of Greece.