Karl Galinsky (University of Texas at Austin, Department of Classics) is the recipient of the 2009 Max Planck International Research Prize in the Humanities.
His project, with a projected duration from 2009-2013, has been made by possible by the Max Planck Society and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, with an award of €750,000.
It has three principal and interrelated goals:
- to study, on a more comprehensive and integrated basis than previously, the role of memory in various aspects of Roman culture: literature (including historiography), art, architecture, religion, and social and political history;
- to do so by employing and testing some perspectives, methods, and impulses from current work on Gedächtnisgeschichte, and by continuing to introduce this direction in historical scholarship, which has been centered largely in Germany and France, to scholars in other countries and, especially, more scholars of classical antiquity;
- to provide financial support–and that is where most of the funds will go–to Ph.D. students and others (on an international basis) to carry out work in this area and to highlight the role of Gedächtnisgeschichte by means of scholarly exchange, including conferences.
Given the interdisciplinary orientation of the project and the subject itself, the project will not be carried out in isolation but will interact with other projects on memory (history of religions, neuroscience) especially at the Ruhr-Universität in Bochum.
The project will begin its full development in the fall of 2009, when Professor Galinsky will be in residence in Germany.
Prof. Douglas Boin
