Performing Greek Comedies and Satyr Plays by Restoring, Reconstructing, and Reseeding Their Fragments

Performing Greek Comedies and Satyr Plays by Restoring, Reconstructing, and Reseeding Their Fragments

Streeter, Joshua

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Theatre

This dissertation examines growing trends in the practice and theory of performing fragments from Greek Comedies and Satyr Plays for contemporary audiences. The surviving fragments are adapted according to their size after “careful research and artistic mastery” (Timothy Wutrich, 1995). Fragmentary plays with 75% of their text intact, such as Menander's New Comedy 'Samia,' are restored by filling up the play's lacunae. Fragmentary plays with 50% of their text intact, such as Sophocles' Satyr Play 'The Trackers,' are restored by using metatheatrical techniques. Fragmentary plays with less than 25% of their text intact, like Nikokhares' Old Comedy 'Herakles the Producer,' are reseeded and made into new creative works. This dissertation outlines different methodologies for effectively reviving fragmentary comedies and satyr plays.

Committee: Stratos Constantinidis (Advisor); Benjamin Acosta-Hughes (Committee Member); Thomas Dugdale (Committee Member) 

 

 

Biological variation, population aggregation, and social differentiation: an examination of dental markers of developmental stress at Neolithic Catalhoyuk

Biological variation, population aggregation, and social differentiation: an examination of dental markers of developmental stress at Neolithic Catalhoyuk

Betz, Barbara

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Anthropology

Across three articles, this dissertation analyzes patterns of dental defect formation and childhood physiological stress within the population of Neolithic Catalhoyuk (ca. 7100-5950 BCE), in order to contribute to a better understanding of biological, temporal, and social variation within this important early “megasite” community. Article one addresses biological questions with important methodological implications regarding the impact of linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) defects on inter- and intra-population variability in relationships between incremental enamel microstructures. Relationships between perikymata (PK) periodicity and distribution were tested from high-definition epoxy replicas and histological thin-sections of unworn mandibular canines (n = 15) with high LEH prevalence from Catalhoyuk. Findings re-affirm the existence of significant inter-population variability and suggest that high LEH prevalence likely increases PK distribution variability and weakens relationships with periodicity. PK distribution-based methods may nevertheless help narrow likely periodicity ranges and improve microstructure-based chronological age estimation accuracy even in highly LEH-impacted samples. To better understand relationships between population aggregation and physiological stress in early human settlements, Article two tests whether LEH prevalence or timing change significantly over time alongside population levels at Neolithic Catalhoyuk. LEH defect frequency scores (n = 109), defect-per-individual (DPI, n = 44), and defect initiation age (DIA, n = 44) were collected from epoxy canine replicas. LEH measures did not differ significantly by sex or age-at-death, nor did they significantly change over time in parallel with population size. Developmental stress episodes were very common (DPI: all defects M = 11, pronounced defects M = 6; DIA: all defect M = 3.9 years, pronounced defects M = 4.0 years), with 100% of observable individuals experiencing at least one de (open full item for complete abstract)

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Committee: Clark Spencer Larsen (Advisor); Debbie Guatelli-Steinberg (Advisor); Mark Hubbe (Committee Member) 

 

 

The Virgin Mary in Ritual in Late Antique Egypt: Origins, Practice, and Legacy

The Virgin Mary in Ritual in Late Antique Egypt: Origins, Practice, and Legacy

Beshay, Michael

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, History

“The Virgin Mary in Ritual in Late Antique Egypt: Origins, Practice, and Legacy” examines the significance of the Virgin Mary for the ritual activities of Christians in Egypt, from the early conceptual roots of Marian veneration in the second century, to its diffusion among the monks of Egypt ca. 500 CE. In addition to patristics and the New Testament, this project emphasizes esoteric treatises, apocryphal stories, and ritual devices, and considers writings predominantly in Coptic, Greek, Syriac, and Latin. The dissertation challenges longstanding views that make the cult of Mary either a reflex of pagan goddess worship or a response to Christological controversy—above all, the “heresy” of docetism (i.e., the belief that Jesus' humanity and/or suffering were merely apparent). In contrast, the dissertations argues that the earliest association of Mary with divine powers was inspired by mythologies related to “heterodox” Christians—such as Valentinians, Gnostics, and Manichaeans—who variously linked Mary to spiritual powers like the primordial church, the Holy Spirit, the Virgin of Light, and the Mother of Life. These developments in doctrine and praxis reflect distinct forms of social and ritual authority among the Christians of late antiquity, who expressed competing notions of ecclesiastical and anthropological harmony, and visionary experiences. The history of Mary's ritual authority, and Christianity more generally, must always account for the contributions of so-called “heterodox” Christians even in the most unlikely ways, not within some fleeting period of early diversity, but as part of a continuous process well into the Middle Ages.

Committee: David Brakke (Advisor); Kristina Sessa (Committee Member); J. Albert Harrill (Committee Member) Subjects: Ancient History; Religion

The Chronicle of John of Nikiu: Historical Writing in Post-Roman Egypt

The Chronicle of John of Nikiu: Historical Writing in Post-Roman Egypt

Yirga, Felege-Selam

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, History

While there has been a great deal of work on the late seventh-century Chronicle of John, the anti-Chalcedonian Bishop of Nikiu, since its 1883 publication and French translation by Hermann Zotenberg, there have been few modern studies devoted exclusively to the author and his work. What is more, these modern studies primarily engage with the text as a source of data for the reign of Emperor Herakleios, and the Arab conquest of Egypt, meaning that modern historians often read past the author to a layer of sources beneath them. This positivist utilitarian view of the Chornicle often involves reducing John's worldview to that of a monophysite historian and a Coptic proto-nationalist, and as such interprets the relevant data through this framework. Modern scholarship has further transposed this world view onto the author's world, creating the impression that the Chronicle presents a narrative which reflects the development of a Coptic identity characterized primarily by hostility towards the Chalcedonian church, and the Roman state which had previously supported it. Anything in the text which challenges this view is dismissed as the product of John of Nikiu's method of compiling sources and inverting pro-Chalcedonian and pro-Roman sentiments where they appear. This dissertation moves beyond the heretofore utilitarian-positivist approaches. It instead argues that the entire Chronicle must be viewed as a complete work which, while compiled from a variety of identifiable and unidentifiable sources, still reveals a coherent and distinct historical narrative and theory of history, and one that does not neatly align with the theological and historical positions of the Egyptian Severan Church. This dissertation examines John of Nikiu's theory of history and prescriptive guidelines through a series of challenges to established scholarly views of the Chronicle. The first chapter challenges the notion that the Chronicle reflects a parochial view of world history centered pr (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: David Bernhard Brakke (Advisor); Anthony Kaldellis (Committee Member); Kristina Marie Sessa (Committee Member) 

 

 

Imprinting Antiquity: Reinventing the Past through Sixteenth-Century Prints

Imprinting Antiquity: Reinventing the Past through Sixteenth-Century Prints

Fisher, Kylie

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2020, Art History

Early modern prints were pivotal in the construction and dissemination of information and ideas throughout society, thereby functioning as agents in the cultivation of cultural belief and memory. This dissertation considers the understudied role of engravings of ancient architectural monuments, classical figural statues, and pseudo-antique objects in shaping a shared conception of ancient Rome in historically-removed viewers during the early sixteenth century. Although it is well-established that Renaissance humanists and art connoisseurs were obsessed with all things antique, the socio-cultural function of engravings of antiquities from that period, until now, has not been analyzed in detail. This study examines the ways in which prints of antiquities reinvented the urban topography and artistic culture of ancient Rome and what effect such images had on how the amorphous phenomenon of antiquity was understood during the early modern era. In so doing, it argues that engravings of classical remains served as lenses through which to imagine, and more significantly, as visual stimuli for remembering antiquity in ways that engendered ideological meaning about the ancient pagan city in relationship to its early modern Christian counterpart. Chapter ones provides an overview of the dominant intellectual pursuits of Renaissance Rome and explores how the printmaking enterprise intersected in profound ways with local humanist and antiquarian activities. The second and third chapters focus on engravings of extant classical ruins and statues. By analyzing how these images manipulated the appearances of the remains they depict, these chapters investigate how such “printed proxies” offered original viewers presumed insights into the historical, material, and cultural character of the ancient city, thereby establishing an implicit paragone between old and new Rome. Chapter four examines another type of all'antica portrayal, images of fictive objects that purport to depict rea (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Erin Benay (Committee Chair); Catherine Scallen (Committee Member); Emily Peters (Committee Member); Peter Knox (Committee Member) 

 

 

Civilizational Memory: The Transformation of Palmyra as a Cultural Patrimony of The West

Civilizational Memory: The Transformation of Palmyra as a Cultural Patrimony of The West

Abdul Samad, Bincy

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2020, American Culture Studies

A UNESCO-listed world heritage site located in the Syrian desert, Palmyra has been an ancient global crossroads of trade and culture. It has drawn tourists and scholars from all over the world and represented a palimpsest of eastern and western histories and cultures. In August 2015, the advance of ISIS into Palmyra and its calculated destruction of ancient monuments in Palmyra shocked the global community and led to an outpouring of grief. This dissertation examines the ways in which institutions and scholars in Europe and the United States responded to this sense of intense loss and argues that the international effort to rescue and preserve Palmyra has made Palmyra a cultural patrimony of the West. Focusing on digital and physical recuperations of Palmyrene monuments by various Western-based digital initiatives, I argue that Palmyra has been appropriated into an archive of Western civilizational memory. Edward Said's scholarship on the east/west binary and colonial discourse provides a framework for my analysis of the West's appropriation of Palmyra as its cultural heritage and the visual colonialism that is exemplified in the recreations of Palmyrene artifacts and monuments. I engage the scholarship of Maurice Halbwachs and Astrid Erll, among others, to explore the role of memory in transforming the significance of Palmyra and the perceived threat to Western civilizational memory. Virtual collaborative projects on Palmyra such as the #New Palmyra project, The Palmyra Portrait Project, “The Legacy of Ancient Palmyra,” and the Institute for Digital Archaeology serve as key sources in this dissertation. These efforts to reclaim Palmyra by the West as a patrimony of the West must be juxtaposed against the reality that Palmyra's antiquities have always remained present in the lives of Syrians and people living in the region. Therefore, the real Palmyra that once stood majestically in the Syrian desert is lost in translation and transference.

Committee: Sridevi Menon (Advisor); Kenneth W. Borland (Other); Andrew Schocket (Committee Member); Sara Khorshidifard (Committee Member) 

 

Ovid's Tristia as Testimony to Trauma

Ovid's Tristia as Testimony to Trauma

Neely, Elizabeth

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Greek and Latin

This project takes advantage of modern trauma theory to develop a new reading and understanding of Ovid's first book of exile poetry, the Tristia. Using trauma theory, clinical research data, and traditional philology, this paper demonstrates that the language that Ovid uses to describe his experience of banishment and life in exile reveals that this period of his life included several potentially traumatic events. Shoshanna Felman's and Dori Laub's concepts of testimony and witnessing, strongly influenced the reading of the text as a reflection of the poet's personal experiences instead of either literal facts or empty artifice as scholars have previously done. This approach opens up new ways of understanding Ovid's experiences from the time that his banishment was announced through the third year of his exile. Through the lens of trauma theory, this project discovers how Ovid understood and expressed his separation from Rome, sense of self, relationship to poetry and language, and methods of coping with the pain.

Committee: William Batstone (Advisor); Zoe Plakias (Other); Julia Nelson-Hawkins (Committee Member); Dana Munteanu (Committee Member)