Julia Shear is a Senior Associate Member at the American School of Classical Studies working on a book about the Panathenaia and the construction of Athenian identities. She is the Onassis Visiting Instructor in the Department of History at Boğaziçi University and recieved her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Q: What is your particular field of interest?
A: I work on ancient Greek history and archaeology. I particularly focus on the society and culture of ancient Athens. I currently teach at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. The ancient Greek history is not very important in Turkey, it’s not something people focus on. So I come here to the school to use the libraries and sources.
Q: What are you working on currently?
A: What I’m trying to do right now is to come up with a polished final draft of my second book on the Panathenaia and the construction of Athenian identities. It develops out of my doctoral dissertation. I did a lot of my dissertation work at the ASCSA, not the same carrel I’m working at now but in many just like it. A lot of work on my first book was also done in this library.
Q: When did you first get involved with the ASCSA?
A: I was a Regular Member in 1992-1993 but I’ve actually been connected with the ASCSA on and off literally through my entire life. I was born in Athens and my father was then director of the Agora, and my mother did excavations there and at Mycene.
In fact my whole family was or are in the field: both of my grandfathers were in archaeology. My Mother’s father taught for many, many years at Washington University in St. Louis and excavated at various sites in Greece particularly the West Cemetery at Eleusis and was director at Mycene. So for instance one of my first memories is going to the National Archaeological Museum when I was very small and being lifted up in the Mycenaean gallery and being told “Papou found that, or your father found that.”
For me it was perfectly normal to go to the Agora as a child, and I enjoyed it very very much. When I was 4 or 5 years old I dug around in the flowerbeds as children do, but I “had an excavation” and made my mother “visit my excavation.” So I spent my whole life on and off in this school. As much as I have a home it’s here in Athens at the moment.
Q: So did your focus on Greek archaeology stem from this upbringing?
A: Well part of doing Greek archaeology is about it being part of my heritage-- my mother’s family is Greek from Smyrna. In my case, my whole family did Greek archaeology this was where our other home was. I’ve probably seen a much greater part of the country of Greece than the US. I did do some Roman Archaeology, I went to the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome to try to balance out all the Greek things.
When I was in graduate school lots of people were doing Roman things. But what I saw was an opportunity to take some interesting concepts from the Roman side and use them on the Greek side. For example I took the way people talked about the triumphal procession of Rome intersecting with the buildings and monuments and used it to think about it with the Panathenaic procession, to think about the intersection of festival and topography. So one thing and another has kept me coming back here.
Q: What is your experience now teaching in Turkey? Are you learning Turkish?
A: I’ve been in Turkey since September of 2013. It was very different when I first took up my job. I’m learning Turkish. I need to speak it better, but we teach in English. One of the problems I’ve found with multiple languages is the language you meet people in is the language you keep talking in, and English is so important in academia that people like to practice. So I have several Greek friends who I always speak to in English. And I knew 5 words of Turkish when I got to Turkey so my colleagues tend to speak to me in English.
Q: What is your favorite place in Athens?
A: I’m going to be a geek and say the Acropolis. When it’s clear the views are pretty spectacular and it’s right in the middle of the ancient city. I did lectures on it for the summer sessions so I know it pretty well.
Q: If you could choose to be a Greek god, what Greek god would you choose to be?
I think I chose not to be. I don’t think I’d like to be a Greek god. I think I’d prefer to be a hero but they have to die a violent death so that’s not very good either.
Q: Where else in the Mediterranean would you like to travel?
I would love to do more traveling in Turkey and I’d love to go more to the Greek islands.
Q: What do you get from your experience here at ASCSA?
I come here for the libraries at this point. I think in that sense I’m pretty typical of most Senior Associate Members who work here. There are a lot of places where the libraries aren’t very good and are more focused on what undergraduates need than people who need research. Here the libraries are excellent.
