RENNER HOME PAGE

Timothy Renner, Professor of Classics and General Humanities; 
      Co-director, Institute for the Humanities;

     Acting Director, Center for Heritage and Archaeological Studies, Montclair State University

Professional organizations
Go to the Dept. of Classics & General Humanities Home Page

Ancient Cultures Interacting (ACI) Pilot

Addresses:
    Department. of Classics and General Humanities
    Montclair State University
    Upper Montclair, N.J.  07043
    U.S.A.
    Telephone 973-655-7420
    Internet:  rennert@mail.montclair.edu 

Education: B.A. Yale University; M.A., Ph.D. The University of Michigan

Research interests:
Social history in the Roman world.  Literary and  documentary papyrology.  Mediterranean archaeological studies.
Most of my published research concerns the Greek texts, the literary and subliterary culture, and the society of Greco-Roman Egypt.  My greatest depth of experience is in editing papyri for publication and in criticizing existing editions.   My more thematically-based research in the study of Greco-Roman Egypt currently focuses on texts on grammar and rhetoric in circulation and on the reuse of documentary rolls for literary or technical texts.  I serve as one of the three editors of the Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists, a peer-reviewed journal with an international advisory board the scope of which we as editors have recently sought to broaden beyond traditional text-based papyrology to include studies in Coptic and Demotic texts as well as those concerning the documents, the religions, and the cultures of Egypt and surrounding regions from the age of Alexander through the early Arab period.  Within the compass of the wider Roman world, I am preparing a study of Roman imperial slaves and their vicarii with special reference to Egypt and Italy.

Teaching, outreach, and curriculum development interests:
For some years I have been involved with interdisciplinary humanities teaching and curriculum development, where I have a special interest in the cultural importance of traditions and in the evolution and function of representations of the past.  I periodically teach a course--developed originally with my colleagues David Kelly and Victoria Tietze Larson--on eighteenth-, ninteenth-, and twentieth-century American culture's uses of the Greco-Roman past as model and antimodel, and I am currently helping to design an M.A. program in General Humanities.  I am the director of Montclair State's Institute for the Humanities, which sponsors extensive outreach programs to high school students and teachers as part of its efforts to promote interdisciplinary humanities studies. I have a particular interest, as well, in the history of archaeology as a discipline, in the interrelations and oppositions of anthropologically based archaeology and the text-driven archaeology typically associated with classical studies, and in the ways that developments in archaeological theory are related to theoretical developments in the humanities and social sciences more generally. However, with some frequency I  teach Latin at all levels, where I am especially interested in historical prose.  

Positions in Professional Organizations:

Editor (with Peter Van Minnen, University of Cincinnati, Editor-in-Chief, and John Whitehorne, University of Queensland), Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists
  To go to the American Society of Papyrologists homepage, click here
  To go to the homepage of the Association Internationale de Papyrologues, click here

New Jersey Colleges Representative, Executive Board of the New Jersey Classical Association

Chair, Subcommittee on Diversity, National Committee for Latin and Greek (NCOLG), The American Classical League

Past President of The American Society of Papyrologists and of The Classical Association of the Atlantic States

UPCOMING COURSES, SPRING 2009:

GNHU 282-01/HIST 282-01 Roman Civilization
      MonWed 11:30-12:45

An introduction to the political, social, economic, and cultural history of the Roman world from the Regal period of Roman tradition (eighth century B.C.E.) to the age of Justinian (6th century C.E.), this Roman history survey seeks to examine both to the more traditionally studied aspects of Roman history, such as political or military personalities and events seen through the eyes of elite culture, and to types of evidence, such as archaeological material, which shed light on long-term cultural developments and on a wider spectrum of society than do traditionally utilized sources of evidence such as literary writers or public art and architecture.

LATN 112-01 Beginning Latin II
    MonThurs 10:00-11:15  

This course reviews and continues the  the study of basic grammar and moves the student toward the reading of more complex texts.
 

RECENTLY TAUGHT COURSES - FALL SEMESTER 2008:

GNHU/HIST 332 Selected Topics in Ancient History: The Roman Republic
LATN 201 Latin Literature of the Republic

RECENTLY TAUGHT COURSES - SPRING SEMESTER 2008:

GNHU/HIST 282 Roman Civilization
LATN 419 Methods of Teaching Latin