RENNER HOME PAGE
[updated 28 May 2006]

Timothy Renner, Professor of Classics and General Humanities  
      and Director, Institute for the Humanities, Montclair State University

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

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 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

 

FALL SEMESTER 2006 COURSES:

GNHU 384-01  Introduction to Roman Law
     TuTh 10:00-11:15 A.M.
 
This course examines, first, the origin and growth of the Roman legal system and Roman legal thought during the Republic and the Empire, with special emphasis on the “Classical” period of the law from the age of Cicero to the third century, together with how selected components of Classical Roman law form important bases of one of the major world legal traditions today. We will then consider, using primary texts in translation and a case-study approach, how Classical Roman law handles several topics which are extremely important for every legal system in a complex society—especially family law (“the law of persons”) and torts (“delicts”).

LATN 121-01 Intermediate Latin I
    TuTh 1:00-2:15 P.M.

This course reviews and completes the study of basic grammar and moves the student toward the reading of more complex texts, including passages of classical Roman literature which provide preparation for more advanced level Latin study.

 

UPCOMING COURSES, SPRING 2007:

GNHU 282-01/HIST 282-01 Roman Civilization
      TuTh 8:30-9:45 A.M.

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 121-01 Intermediate Latin I
    TuTh 10:00-11:15 A.M.

This course reviews and completes the study of basic grammar and moves the student toward the reading of more complex texts, including passages of classical Roman literature which provide preparation for more advanced level Latin study.
 

RECENTLY TAUGHT COURSES - SPRING SEMESTER 2006:

GNHU 181 Introduction to Classical Archaeology
LATN 121 Intermediate Latin I
LATN 202 Latin Literature of the Silver Age

RECENTLY TAUGHT COURSES - FALL SEMESTER 2005:

GNHU/HIST 332 Selected Topics in Ancient History: The Roman Republic
GNHU/HIST 282 Roman Civilization