He holds a PhD in both American Studies (2013) and in Ancient History (2018). He has extensively worked on the reception of the ancient world in colonial and postcolonial contexts, on Greek religion, as well as on the environmental history of premodernity.
His current research has mainly been concerned with establishing a dialogue between classical studies and the new interdisciplinary paradigm of the Environmental Humanities.
Abstract: Pausanias as ‘Nature Writer‘: Religion, ‘Ecology‘, and the Storied Landscapes of Ancient Greece
In my presentation I will revisit one of the central texts to have survived from the late 2nd century CE. In his Hellados Periegesis the travel writer Pausanias offered a vivid portrayal of the Greek mainland of his own day. The text has often been used as a kind of quarry, mined for topographical information and archaeological identification. More than a mere travel account, his text can, however, be understood as an exploration of the deep time of Greek myth and ritual customs. As such, it offers a unique chance of analyzing the interconnection between landscape, nonhuman nature, and (urban) culture. My presentation aims to illustrate the various scales (chronological, normative, geographical) included in the Periegesis, using the term ‘nature writer‘ in a metaphorical sense to shift attention to those facets of the text we can now refer to as ‘ecological‘.