David Martyn Ratzan

 

Department of Classics

1130 Amsterdam Avenue

601 Hamilton Hall

New York, NY 10027

 

Email: dmr2005@columbia.edu

Tel. (646) 352-1329

 

Linkedin Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dmratzan

Personal Website: www.davidmratzan.wordpress.com

 

 

Education

 

 

Ph.D. 2011                              Columbia University, Dept. of Classics, New York, NY (Classical Studies Program)

 

Dissertation: Contract Norms and Contract Enforcement in Graeco-Roman Egypt (supervised by Roger Bagnall)

 

 

M.Phil. 2006                           Columbia University, Dept. of Classics, New York, NY (Classical Studies Program)

                                                                                                                                     

                                                Thesis: In loco aegrotantium: Sin and Sickness in the Pachomian Koinonia

 

 

B.A. 1999                               Cambridge University, Clare College, Cambridge, UK

 

Mellon Fellow from Yale College (Classics, 2:1)

 

 

B.A. 1997                               Yale University, New Haven, CT

 

Greek Literature (magna cum laude with Distinction in the Major), Phi Beta Kappa

 

 

 

Research and teaching interests

 

 

Social, Intellectual, and Economic History of the Roman Empire

Graeco-Roman Egypt

Papyrology

Ancient Law

Ancient Literacy and Education

Literature of the Roman Empire

Early Christianity

Numismatics

 

 

Employment

 

 

Fall 2011 – present                  Lecturer in Classics and the Columbia College Core Curriculum

 

                                                Curator of Papyri, Columbia Rare Book and Manuscript Library

 

                                                Editor of Columbia’s papyrological APIS records

 

Fall 2010                                 Adjunct Lecturer in Classics and Comparative Literature at Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY

 

Spring 2010 – Spring 2011     Graduate Assistant to the Columbia University Chapter of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program

 

Fall 2009 – 2012                     Editorial Assistant to Prof. K. Volk for the Transactions of the American Philological Association

 

2007 – 2009                            Preceptor of Contemporary Civilization in the Columbia University Core Curriculum

 

2000-2001                               Vice President of Operations, Trenza Corp, Cambridge, MA

 

1999-2000                               Independent Analyst, The Boston Consulting Group, New York, NY.

 

 

Publications                            

 

2012

A Draft of a Rider to a Cession Contract,” in Ast, R. A., Cuvigny, H., Hickey, T. M., and Lougovaya, J. eds. Papyrological Texts in Honor or Roger S. Bagnall. American Studies in Papyrology 53: 267-76.

 

 

Review of Johnstone, S., A History of Trust in Ancient Greece (Chicago: 2011), BMCR.

2009

Growing up Fatherless in Antiquity, Sabine R. Hübner and D. M. Ratzan, eds. Cambridge University Press.

 

 

“Fatherless antiquity?  Perspectives on ‘fatherlessness’ in the ancient Mediterranean,” in Growing up Fatherless (Cambridge University Press), pp. 3-28 (with Sabine R. Hübner)

2008

“A teacher’s dipinto from Trimithis (Dakhleh Oasis),” Journal of Roman Archaeology 21: 170-91 (with R. Cribiore and P. Davoli)

Forthcoming Fall 2013

“Small Finds: Coins,” in Boozer, A. ed. Reports from the Excavations at Amheida, Egypt: A Roman Egyptian Domestic Context.  Oxford: Oxbow.

Forthcoming

“A Fragment from Book 24 of the Iliad,” in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri.

Under consideration,

Univ. of Michigan Press

 

Transaction Costs in the Ancient Economy, Yiftach, U., Kehoe, D., and Ratzan, D. eds.

 

“Transaction Costs and Contract in Roman Egypt: A case study in negotiating the right of repossession,” Ch.8: Yiftach, Kehoe, and Ratzan, Transaction Costs in the Ancient Economy.

In progress

“Freakonomika: Oracle as Economic Indicator in Roman Egypt,” in Luijendijk, A. and Klingshorn, W. eds. My Lots are in thy Hands. Brill. (Abstract)

In progress

“Small Finds: Coins,” in N. Aravecchia, ed. Reports from the Excavations at Ain el-Gedida, Egypt: The Fourth-Century Church Complex.  Oxford: Oxbow.

In progress

“Voodoo Economics: Law, Magic, and Economics in Roman Egypt and the Case of P. Mich. VI 423-424.”

In progress

Review of Riggs, C. ed., The Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt (Oxford: 2012), Near Eastern Archaeology.

In progress

Review of McGinn, Thomas A. J. (ed.). Obligations in Roman law: past, present, and future. Papers and monographs of the American Academy in Rome, 33. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012. BMCR.

In progress

Contract in Roman Egypt (monograph).  A social and economic study of contract in Roman Egypt from the perspective of enforcement, investigating how and to what extent contract was a viable economic institution in the Roman world, despite its vast disparities of status and wealth and comparatively weak government.

 

 

 

Talks and Presentations

 

 

November 2012                      “Occupy Latin! Sumus XCIX per centum! Latin letters from the people of the Roman Empire,” Workshop for the Latin students of the Montclair State University Dept. of Classics and General Humanities (Montclair, NJ).

 

November 2012                      “Legal Threats and the Enforcement of Contract in the Roman Empire” [abstract] for the panel “Or Else: Contract Enforcement in Roman and Medieval Law” organized by Adam Kosto and moderated by Emily Kadens at the 2012 Meeting of the American Society of Legal History (St. Louis, Mo.)

 

November 2011                      “Getting to Yes: the institutional context of economic divination in Roman Egypt,” [abstract] at Symposium on Sortilege in Late Antiquity, November 11-13, 2011 (Princeton University)

 

September 2011                      “Coins in Context: Numismatics and the Archaeology of the Egyptian Oases,” at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (New York)

 

January 2011                           “Voodoo Economics: Law, Magic, and Economics in Roman Egypt and the Case of P.Mich. VI 423-424,” [abstract] at the American Society of Papyrologists Panel, APA Annual Meeting (San Antonio, TX)

 

August 2009                           “Transaction Costs and Contract in Roman Egypt: A case study of the “ἀποσπάω-clause” at Legal Documents in Ancient Societies II: Transaction Costs in the Ancient World (Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, D.C.)

 

August 2007                           “A Teacher’s dipinto from the Great Oasis of Roman Egypt,” at the XXVth International Congress of Papyrology (University of Michigan)

 

May 2006                                “Poetry on the Walls: A preliminary report on a series of didactic epigrams discovered in a Late Antique house at Trimithis” (with Prof. R. Cribiore), Classics Graduate Colloquium (Columbia University)

 

March 2004                             “The Architecture of Greek Identity: Lucian on Greece’s Monumental Past,” Classics Graduate Colloquium, (Columbia University)

 

 

 

Courses Taught

 

See http://davidmratzan.wordpress.com/special-presentations-in-papyrology-2012/ for recent special educational presentations

 

 

Fall 2012                                 Independent Study: Editing Ancient Manuscripts of Homer.

 

Fall 2011 – present                  Contemporary Civilization, Columbia University Core Curriculum (2 sections)

 

Fall 2010                                 Introductory Latin I, Hofstra University

 

                                                Introduction to Latin Prose: Cicero, Hofstra University

 

                                                Advanced Tutorial in Latin, Hofstra University

 

Spring 2010                             Contemporary Civilization, Columbia University Core Curriculum

 

Fall 2009                                 Contemporary Civilization, Columbia University Core Curriculum

 

Spring 2009                             Elementary Latin, Columbia University

 

Fall 2007 – Fall 2008              Contemporary Civilization, Columbia University Core Curriculum

 

Summer 2007                          Intensive Elementary Latin, Columbia University

 

Spring 2006                             The Oases of Egypt (assisted Prof. Bagnall), NYU excavations in Egypt

 

Fall 2005                                 Intensive Elementary Latin, Columbia University

                                               

Spring 2005                             Elementary Greek, Columbia University

 

Fall 2004                                 Elementary Greek, Columbia University

                                               

Spring 2004                             Selections from Homer (assisted Prof. H. Foley), Columbia University

 

Fall 2003                                 Latin Lyric: Catullus and Horace (assisted Prof. A. Jervis), Columbia University

 

Spring 2002                             The Rome of Augustus (three discussion sections under Prof. R. Tarrant), Harvard University

 

 

 

Service and Administration

 

 

2012-present                           Editor of Columbia’s APIS records for papyri.info.

 

Spring 2012                             Organized the recataloging approx. 700 squeezes and editing of a new searchable, online catalog with up-to-date bibliographic references.  To be completed Dec. 2012.  The second phase, the integration of the epigraphy collection with the U.S. Epigraphy Project, will be started by a Butler Library digital humanities intern over the course of 2012-2013 academic year.  See http://davidmratzan.wordpress.com/special-projects/

 

Fall 2011 – present                  Active contributor to papyri.info

.

Spring 2009                             Co-organizer of Legal Documents in Ancient Societies II: Transaction Costs in the Ancient World (Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, D.C.) with Uri Yiftach-Firanko (Hebrew University)

 

                                                Member of Columbia University Committee to review curriculum of Contemporary Civilization

 

2005 – 2007                            Graduate Assistant to Prof. R. S. Bagnall for the Excavations at Amheida

 

                                                Volunteer for APIS (Advanced Papyrological Information System)

 

2006 – 2009                            Research Assistant (for Classical topics) to the John Jay Papers, Columbia University Libraries Digital Project (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/jay/)

 

Summer 2006                          Assistant to Prof. R. S. Bagnall for the American Society of Papyrologists Summer Seminar in Papyrology at Columbia

 

2005                                        Co-Organizer, Graduate Student Conference at the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean: People and the Environment in the Ancient Mediterranean

 

2003 – 2004                            Graduate Student Representative to the Faculty

                                               

Co-Organizer of the Classics Graduate Colloquium

 

 

 

Honors and Awards

 

 

2009                                        Core Curriculum Teaching Excellence Award, Contemporary Civilization, Columbia University

 

 

2006                                        Lewis Parks Graduate Fellowship, Columbia University

 

 

1997-1999                               Paul Mellon Fellow from Yale College to Clare College, Cambridge University

 

 

1997                                        Roosevelt L. Thompson Prize for Public Service, Yale College

 

 

1996                                        Phi Beta Kappa, Yale College

                                                Brinstead Prize Scholarship for Latin, Yale College

 

 

1995                                        Winthrop Prize Scholarship for Greek, Yale College

 

 

Languages

 

Latin

Ancient Greek

English (native)

Spanish (read, speak)

French (read)

German (read)

Italian (read)

Coptic (the latest phase of the Egyptian language; basic)