CURRICULUM VITAE

MARGARET MALAMUD                                                            History Department, MSC 3H

440 Mountain Avenue                                                                    New Mexico State University

Las Cruces, NM  88005                                                                Las Cruces, NM 88003

Tel. 505 524 1549                                                                         505 646 4310; mmalamud@nmsu.edu

EDUCATION

·        Ph.D., History, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 1990

·        M.A., Near Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 1983

·        B.A., Classics and Islamic Studies, Boston University, Boston, MA, 1980

ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT

·        1998-present, Associate Professor of Ancient History and Islamic Studies, New Mexico State University

·        1992-1998, Assistant Professor of Ancient History and Islamic Studies, New Mexico State University

·        1990-92, Post-Doctoral Fellow and Lecturer in History, Stanford University

PUBLICATIONS AND RESEARCH PROJECTS

• The Ancient World in Popular Culture, in progress, co-authored with Maria Wyke, under contract with Blackwell Press. This book will provide an overview of some of the most significant ways that western popular culture post-1945 has appropriated and recycled the most esteemed ancient world cultures – classical Greece, Rome, and Egypt – and the new meanings that have been bestowed on them in the process. Traditional desires for authority and legitimation of the present through the cultures of the past have remained constant over the last fifty years or so. Such appeals to traditional sources of cultural authority have led to the production of elaborate counter-histories of the distant past, such as those created by Afrocentrists.  The ancient world in post-1945 popular culture is dynamic, political and contested.  
• Ancient Rome and Modern America, in press, Blackwell Press.  In this book I analyze how the legacy of Rome has been utilized throughout American history from republican independence to the present day dominance of capitalism.  I explore charged moments in United States history when ancient Rome has been appropriated by disparate groups in order to debate the state of the nation and address internal tensions and anxieties. I show how portrayals of Rome have been used by various classes and interest groups both to articulate and to contest political and cultural identities.  What emerges powerfully is the malleability of tradition and the remarkable continuity of Rome in the American imagination.  Roman antiquity is arguably the most abiding cultural companion of the United States. 
• “Swords-and-Scandals: Hollywood’s Rome during the Great Depression,” in Celluloid Classics: New Perspectives on Classical Antiquity in Modern Cinema ed. Kirsten Day, special issue of Arethusa 41.1 (2008), 159-185.
• “Building Islamic Studies into the Curriculum,” Association for General and Liberal Studies News 24.1 (2007), 5.
• “Cold War Romans,” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 14.3 (2007), 121-153.
• “Manifest Destiny and the Eclipse of Julius Caesar,” in Julius Caesar in Western Culture ed. Maria Wyke, Blackwell Press, 2006, 148-169.
• “An American Immigrant in Imperial Caesar’s Court: Romans in 1930s Film,” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 12.2 (2004), 127-159.
• “Patriarchy and Pietas in the Star Wars Trilogy,” Amphora: A Publication of the American Philological Association 3.1 (2004).
• "Khirqah," Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World, Macmillan, USA, 2002.
• "The Greatest Show on Earth," Journal of Popular Culture 35.3 (2002), 43-58.
• "Las Vegas's Roman Empires," Omnibus 43 (2002), 15-18.
• “Roman Entertainments for the Masses in Turn-of-the-Century New York," Classical World 95.1 (2001), 49-57.
• “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way from Brooklyn: Roman Comedy on Broadway and in Film,” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 8.3 (2001), 33-51.
• “Roman Entertainments in New York Circuses,” Omnibus 41, (2001), 1-4.

·        Imperial Projections: Ancient Rome in Modern Popular Culture eds. Margaret Malamud, Sandra R. Joshel and Donald McGuire, Jr., Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001; paperback, 2005

Reviews of Imperial Projections:

Classical Review 54.1 (2004), 234-237.

International History Review XXV.2 (2003), 380-83.    

Times Literary Supplement, September 13, 2002.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review, July 29, 2002.

·        “Brooklyn-on-the-Tiber,” in Imperial Projections, 191-208.

·        “Living Like Romans in Las Vegas: The Roman World at Caesars Palace, 1966” (co-written with Donald McGuire) in Imperial Projections, 249-69.

·        “The Imperial Metropolis: Ancient Rome in Turn-of-the-Century New York City,” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 7.3 (2000), 64-108.

·        “Pyramids in Las Vegas and in Outer Space: Ancient Egypt in 1990s American Film and Architecture,” Journal of Popular Culture 34.1 (2000), 31-48.

·        “As the Romans Did?  Theming Ancient Rome in Contemporary Las Vegas,” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 6.2 (1998), 11-39.

·        “Gender and Spiritual Self-Fashioning: The Master-Disciple Relationship in Medieval Islam,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion LXIV/1 (1996), 89-117; rpt in Sufism: Critical  Concepts in Islamic Studies, ed. Lloyd Ridgeon, Routledge, 2007.

·        “Sufi Organizations and Structures of Authority in Medieval Nishapur,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 26 (1994), 427-442; rpt in Sufism: Critical Concepts in Islamic  Studies, ed. Lloyd Ridgeon, Routledge, 2007.

·        “The Politics of Heresy in Medieval Iran,” Journal of Iranian Studies 27 (1994), 37-51.

·        “The Sufi Practices of Abu Najib al-Suhrawardi,” Bulletin of Islamic Studies 13 (1994), 6-18.

HONORS, FELLOWSHIPS, AND AWARDS

·        2008 Fellow, Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK

·        2006 Outstanding Faculty Achievement Award, New Mexico State University

·        2005-2006 Bye Fellow, Newnham College, University of Cambridge, UK

·        2005-2006 National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Research Award ($40,000). Project Title: Roman Antiquity and American Identities

·        2004-2005 Globalization Award, New Mexico State University, for contributions to the internationalization of New Mexico State University

·        2004-2005 Understanding Contemporary Islam: A Program to Promote Mutual Understanding between East and West sponsored by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES) and the American University of Beirut. Grant brought a Fulbright Visiting Specialist from the Muslim world to NMSU in 2006

·        2004 Library Go-Bond Proposal: Building Islamic Studies into the Curriculum. Awarded $30,000 from the state of New Mexico to bolster Islamic Studies at NMSU          

·        2004 Interviewed for National Public Radio Weekend Edition special feature “Sword-and-Sandal Movies Remain Popular.” Aired on Saturday, May 8, 2004

·        2003 National Endowment for the Humanities Focus Grant.  Project Title: Understanding Islam: Building Islamic Studies into the Curriculum (http://www.nmsu.edu/~histdept/). The grant provided support for eight faculty development workshops at NMSU during the spring and fall semesters of 2003.  The workshops have enabled a group of ten faculty from the College of Arts and Sciences to increase their understanding and knowledge of Islam and the Muslim world through intensive study. Faculty have integrated knowledge gained from the workshops into their undergraduate courses and collectively the group has designed and now co-teach a new course entitled “Islam and the West: Cultural Contacts, Conflicts, and Exchanges.”

·        1999 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for College Teachers ($30,000). Project Title: Imperial Projections: Ancient Rome and Modern Popular Culture

·        1998 American Philosophical Association Research Grant

·        1990-1992 Post-Doctoral Fellow, History Department, Stanford University

·        1990 Humanities Research Grant, University of California, Berkeley

·        1989-90 Mabelle McLeod Lewis Dissertation Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley

·        1988-89 Regent's Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley

·        1987, Honors, Ph.D Examinations, History Department, University of California, Berkeley

·        1983, Honors, M.A. Examinations, Near Eastern Studies Department, University of California, Berkeley

·        1980, Katz Award for Interdisciplinary Studies (Classics and Islamic Studies), Boston University

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

Offices in Professional Organizations

·        Grant Evaluator for the National Endowment for the Humanities, 2006-present

·        Chair, Committee for the Classical Tradition, 2001-2002, American Philological Association

·        Elected member, Committee for the Classical Tradition, 1998-2000, American Philological Association

·        Member, steering committee for Classics and Cinema, an APA-affiliated group

Papers and Commentaries at Professional Meetings

·         “Manifest Virtue: Lew-Wallace’s Ben-Hur,” Classics Association of the Mid-West and South annual meeting, Cincinnati, Ohio, April 10-12, 2007

·        “Building Islamic Studies into the Undergraduate Curriculum,” presentation at the Asheville Institute on Liberal Learning 2005: Teaching Islam in the Undergraduate Curriculum, University of North Carolina, Asheville, NC, June 2-4, 2005

·        “Consummate Empires: Ancient Rome and Imperial America,” American Philological Association annual meeting, Boston, MA,  January 6-9, 2005

·        Chair, Current Research Panel, Southwest Regional Conference on Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, August 9-10, 2002

·        Panel organizer and co-chair, “2001: Classics and Science Fiction,” American Philological   Association annual meeting, San Diego, CA, January 3-6, 2001

·        “Rome and Imperial America,” featured speaker, California Classical Association, Northern Section, May 16, 1998

·        “The Uses of Antiquity in Depression Culture Film,” American Philological Association annual meeting, Chicago, IL, December 27-30, 1997

·        “Images of Egypt in American Architecture and Film,” Middle East Studies Association annual meeting, San Francisco, CA, November 22-24, 1997

·        “As the Romans Did?  Rome in American Popular Culture," Popular Culture Association annual meeting, San Antonio, TX, March 27-30, 1997

·        Panel Chair/Comment, "Ethnography and Islam," Middle East Studies Association annual meeting, Brown University, Providence, RI, November 21-24, 1996

·        "Problems and Approaches to Doing Women's History in the Pre-modern Middle East," Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Chapel Hill, NC, June 7-9, 1996

·        "Las Vegas's Rome," Far West Popular Culture Association annual meeting, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, February 2-4, 1996

·        Panel organizer and co-chair, "The Empire Strikes Back: Images of Rome in American Popular Culture," American Philological Association annual meeting, San Diego, CA, December 27-30, 1995

·        "The Roman Empire as Spectacle," American Philological Association annual meeting San Diego, CA, December 27-30, 1995

·        Panel Chair/Comment, "Medieval Thought," Middle East Studies Association annual meeting, Phoenix, AZ, November 20, 1994

·        Panel Chair, "Gender and Conquest," New Mexico Women's Studies Conference  New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, March, 1994

·        "Tourism in Egypt in the Later Roman Empire," American Philological Association  annual meeting, Washington, D.C., December 27-30, 1993

·        “Gender Imagery in Medieval Arabic Sufi Texts," American Academy of Religion annual meeting, Washington, D.C., November 20-23, 1993

·        "Gender and Spiritual Power," New Mexico Women’s Studies Conference, University of  New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, March 11-13, 1993 

·        "Gender and Spiritual Self-Fashioning: The Master-Disciple Relationship in Sufism," Middle East Studies Association annual meeting, Portland, OR, October 29-31, 1992 

·        "Sufism in Twelfth-Century Baghdad: The Adab al-Muridin of Abu Najib as-Suhrawardi,"  Middle East Studies Association annual meeting, Washington, D.C., November 24, 1991

·        "Sufi Masters and Disciples in Eleventh-Century Khurasan," Middle East Studies Association annual meeting, San Antonio, TX, November 12, 1990

Presentations and Papers at International Meetings

·        “Greek and Roman Antiquity and the Politics of Slavery in the United States,” Imagining Slavery: Celebrating Abolition Conference, Royal Holloway College, University of London and the British Library, December 17-18, 2007

·    “Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii in the Early American Republic, Pompeii: Ruins and Reconstructions, Clifford House, University of Bristol, July 17, 2007.

·    Chair, Religion and Wealth, The Ottomans and Wealth: A Comparative Perspective, The Skillter Centre for Ottoman Studies, Newnham College, Cambridge, July 4, 2007.

·    Chair, Cultural Wealth: The Book, The Ottomans and Wealth: A Comparative Perspective, The Skillter Centre for Ottoman Studies, Newnham College, Cambridge, July 7, 2007.

·    Invited interlocutor, Ottoman and Atlantic Empires in the Early Modern World, sponsored by The Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, the Huntington Library, the United States Consulate in Istanbul, and Bogaziçi University, Istanbul, October 19-21, 2005

·     Presenter at an interdisciplinary international conference: “Crossing Borders: Histories, Theories and Identities.” Hosted by The Centre for Border Studies, University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd, Wales, UK and The Center for Comparative European History, Free University of Berlin and Humboldt University of Berlin, December 2-4, 2004 at University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd, Wales, UK.  Ken Hammond, Chair, History, NMSU; Marsha Weisiger, History, NMSU and I presented a panel entitled: “Teaching Borders, Boundaries & Frontiers along the U.S. Mexican Border” describing our redesigned graduate program at NMSU

·        “Travel and Tourism in Egypt in Late Antiquity” annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Travel in the Near East, Worcester College, Oxford University, UK, July 11-14, 2003

·        “New Romes for a New World: The Roman Empire in American World’s Fairs and Expositions, 1893-1915,” Pacific Rim Roman Literature Seminar: Center and Periphery,   State University of New York at Buffalo, June 27-30, 2001

·        “Plautus on Broadway and in Film,” Pacific Rim Roman Literature Seminar: Roma Theatrum Mundi, Villa Caproni, Rome, Italy, June 29-3 July, 1999

·        “Roman Orientalism,” International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, May 4-7, 1995

·        "Rome in American Consumer Culture," International Society for the Classical Tradition, Boston University, Boston, MA, March 8-12, 1995

Invited Lectures and Special Colloquia and Symposia

·        Invited participant at “The Last Days of Pompeii: Modern Views of an Ancient Catastrophe” exhibition planning workshop, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, December 3-4, 2007.

·        “Rome and Imperial America ca 1900,” Department of Classics, University of Texas at Austin, November 16, 2006

·        “The Ben-Hur Phenomenon,” Department of Classics, University of Texas at Austin, November, 16, 2006

·        Moderator and respondent at the Buffalo Humanities Institute Conference: How We Became Human: Genealogies of the Humanities, October 27-28, 2006

·        Antiquity and Popular Culture workshop given with Maria Wyke and Lloyd Lewellyn-Jones, Institute for the Classical Tradition, University College, London, November 18, 2005

·        “Building Islamic Studies into the Curriculum at a State University.” Invited presentation to Deans and Department Heads of the College of Arts and Sciences at the State University of  New York at Buffalo, May 5, 2003

·        “Living Like Romans in Las Vegas,” Sponsored by the Medieval/Renaissance Program and the Classics and History Departments, University of Nebraska, Lincoln,  September 20, 1999

·        “Ancient Rome and Imperial New York: Architecture and Spectacle in Turn-of-the-Century New York,” Department of Art Baldwin Lecture, Oberlin College, April 2, 1999

·        “Plautus Meets the Borscht Belt: A Roman Comedy on Broadway,” for Roman Holiday: Classical Comedy/Contemporary Commentary, a conference at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, October 19-24, 1998

·        “Egyptomania: Ancient Egypt in Recent American Popular Culture,” Classics Department, University of California at Davis, May 14, 1998

·        "Images of Egypt in the1990's: Las Vegas' Luxor Casino and Hollywood's Stargate," Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, April 7, 1998

·        “Gladiators and Gunfighters: Violence in the Roman Arena and in the American Frontier,” Cinema and the Classics Conference, University of Maryland, College Park, April 4, 1998

·        “Ancient Egypt in Recent American Popular Culture,” Center for Middle East Studies, University of Arizona, Tucson, March 5, 1998

·        “Roman Antiquity and the American Built Environment,” School of Architecture, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, October 14, 1997

·        "Images of Rome in American Popular Culture," Classics Department, University of  California at Los Angeles, May 30, 1996

·        "Theming History in Las Vegas Casinos," University of Nevada School of Architecture Symposium: Virtual Unreality: The Theming of Our Cities From Las Vegas to Disneyland and Beyond, Las Vegas, NV, October 20-22, 1996

·        "The Roman Empire as Spectacle: Caesars Palace, Las Vegas,” Faculty Colloquium, New Mexico State University, March, 1996

·        "The Politics of Submission in the Islamic Social Order," Colloquium sponsored by the Departments of History, Modern Languages, and Philosophy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, December 4, 1992

TEACHING FIELDS

Classical Tradition

Islamic Studies  

Roman History