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The ancient world first enchanted me as a child, when my parents and I
moved from Indiana to join my extended family in
Egypt. It was a
privilege to live there during the leadership of President Gamal Abdel
Nasser, and a privilege to live where ancient history is part of the
everyday landscape. During the summers, we escaped the Cairo heat by
traveling to Greece, where the remains of that ancient past are also
ubiquitous. Since then, I
have maintained a passion for ancient world history and acquired another,
disability studies. I became interested in disability issues and
disability rights when I was doing my undergraduate work in history at the
University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
When it came time to choose a topic for my Ph.D.
dissertation--which I also completed at Minnesota--disability in the
ancient Greek world seemed a natural choice.
I continue to combine my interests by researching material on
disability and the ancient world; for example, my book,
The Staff of Oedipus:
Transforming Disability in Ancient Greece, was published in
2003 by the University of Michigan Press. I spent the 2003-4 academic year
in Germany as a Mary E. Switzer Distinguished Fellow,
investigating intellectual disability in ancient Greece, and traveling to
countries such as Jordan, where I fulfilled a lifelong dream of bathing in
the Dead Sea. I continue to travel to the Caribbean,
Egypt, Germany, Greece, Kuwait, Mexico, Tunisia, the UAE, and look
forward to my visits to England, Iran, and South Africa this coming
year.
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