David Stone Potter

Last updated
David S. Potter
Born
David Stone Potter

1957 (age 66–67)
Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Alma mater Harvard University
Oxford University
SpouseEllen Ann Bauerle
Awards The Cory Prize (1979)
The Conington Prize (1988)
John H. D'Arms Award (2005)
Academic career
Institutions Bryn Mawr College
University of Michigan
UCLA

David Stone Potter (born 1957) is the Francis W. Kelsey Collegiate Professor of Greek and Roman History and the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Professor of Greek and Latin in Ancient History at The University of Michigan. Potter is a graduate of Harvard (A.B. 1979) and Oxford (D.Phil 1984) universities and specializes in Greek and Roman Asia Minor, Greek, and Latin historiography and epigraphy, Roman public entertainment, and the study of ancient warfare. [1]

Contents

Life and education

Potter is the son of H. David Potter and Elizabeth S. Potter. His mother Elizabeth was a science teacher and his father David spent most of his career at the Newmont Mining Corporation the law firm Tofel, Berelson, and Saxl. For high school, David Potter attended Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. Potter then attended Harvard University where he was voted into Phi Beta Kappa. He received his DPhil in ancient history from Oxford University.

Career

Potter began his professorial career as Salvesen Junior Research Fellow at New College, Oxford, before joining the Department of Latin at Bryn Mawr College as a visiting assistant professor between 1984-1986. In 1986 he began working for the University of Michigan's Classics Department as an assistant professor. He was awarded an Arthur F. Thurnau professorship in 1996, which "are awarded annually to tenured faculty who have made outstanding contributions to undergraduate education at the University of Michigan and who have had a demonstrable impact on the intellectual development and lives of their students." [2] [3] In 2018 Potter spent a year as the UCLA Ronald J. Mellor Professor of Roman History. [4]

Scholarship

He has written and edited several books and articles about empire, politics, sports and entertainment in the ancient world. He has also written many opinion columns and letters to the editor about ancient Rome to a range of outlets including CNN, Financial Times and Huffington Post. [5] [6] In some of these letters, Potter connects his expertise on ancient Rome to contemporary politics and crises. [7] He has also reached the public with his historical knowledge through appearances on various media platforms including NBC's The Today Show, CNN, The History Channel and a range of local radio stations. [8] In an interview about why Potter works to reach the public with historical information, he said that "it's sort of an extension of teaching. You're reaching out to a different audience and I think it's important to reach as many people as you can." [9] Using media appearances to make ancient history applicable to the present moment for the public is one of his goals with his publicly available contributions. [10]

In one of his first published books, Prophets and Emperors: Human and Divine Authority from Augustus to Theodosius, Potter explored "how prophecy worked, how it could empower, and how the diverse inhabitants of the Roman Empire used it to make sense of their world." [11] Potter's book, The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180-395, is the seventh book in publisher Routledge's eight-part series on the history of the Ancient World. Routledge writes that this volume "is the only one-volume history of the critical years 180-395 AD, which saw the transformation of the Roman Empire from a unitary state centered on Rome, into a new polity with two capitals and a new religion—Christianity." [12]

Reception

David Potter's work has been reviewed and commented upon by other historians in numerous academic journals.

The second edition of his book, The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180-395, has been reviewed by many. Historian David Neal Greenwood describes Potter's method of historical analysis as choosing "select key individuals that dominated an era, including emperors, intellectuals, and religious leaders, and use them as a lens through which to examine the period at hand." [13] Greenwood also notes that the range of time of which Potter is writing history is useful because it "straddles and engages periods of great transformation, rather than allowing the work to be demarcated by it, thereby treating the Roman Empire as a continuous and evolving organization." [14]

One of the reviews of his book, The Victor's Crown: A History of Ancient Sport from Homer to Byzantium, recognizes the broad scope with which he does historical analysis. [15] This enables Potter to write about sports and spectatorship in the ancient world over a great variation of time and space. The reviewer, historian James Lunt, points out that "the discussion of athletics within the vast extent of Bronze Age, Greek, and Roman history makes for occasionally clumsy generalizations and distracting diversions." [16] The scope of this book is also commented on by another reviewer, historian Donald G. Kyle, who wrote that "few scholars would attempt a work of such chronological and geographical scope, from Homeric funeral games to the “classical” athletic contests of Greece, and from Roman spectacles to Byzantine chariot races." [17]

Bibliography

Selected books

Selected articles

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References

  1. ↑ David Potter Archived 2014-05-18 at the Wayback Machine Department of Classical Studies, University of Michigan, 2014. Retrieved 17 May 2014. Archived here.
  2. ↑ "Arthur F. Thurnau Professors/ Engaging Students in the Classroom and Beyond | CRLT". crlt.umich.edu. Retrieved 2020-11-24.
  3. ↑ "U-M Office of the Provost | Programs | Thurnau Professorships". www.provost.umich.edu. Retrieved 2020-11-24.
  4. ↑ Potter, David. "David Potter Curriculum Vitae". Archived from the original on 2017-05-12.
  5. ↑ Potter, David; Greek, ContributorProfessor of; History, Roman; Michigan, University of (2012-05-10). "The Money Games". HuffPost. Retrieved 2020-11-22.{{cite web}}: |first2= has generic name (help)
  6. ↑ David Potter, Special to (2012-07-29). "Cheating is as old as the Olympics". CNN Digital. Retrieved 2020-11-22.
  7. ↑ David, Potter (30 March 2020). "Letter: Caesar directed relief at the most vulnerable". Financial Times. Archived from the original on 2020-04-02. Retrieved 2020-11-22.
  8. ↑ "David Potter | University of Michigan - Academia.edu". umich.academia.edu. Archived from the original on 2019-06-12. Retrieved 2020-11-22.
  9. ↑ intern, Zachary BucholtzUniversity Record. "Professor's path runs from Harvard to the History Channel | The University Record Online". ur.umich.edu. Retrieved 2020-11-24.
  10. ↑ intern, Zachary BucholtzUniversity Record. "Professor's path runs from Harvard to the History Channel | The University Record Online". ur.umich.edu. Retrieved 2020-11-24.
  11. ↑ "Prophets and Emperors — David Potter | Harvard University Press". www.hup.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2020-12-05.
  12. ↑ "The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180-395". Routledge & CRC Press. Retrieved 2020-12-05.
  13. ↑ "The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180-395. Second edition (first published 2004). Routledge history of the ancient world – Bryn Mawr Classical Review". Bryn Mawr Classical Review. Retrieved 2020-12-05.
  14. ↑ "The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180-395. Second edition (first published 2004). Routledge history of the ancient world – Bryn Mawr Classical Review". Bryn Mawr Classical Review. Retrieved 2020-12-05.
  15. ↑ Lunt, David J. (2013-11-13). "The Victor's Crown: A History of Ancient Sport from Homer to Byzantium by David Potter (review)". Journal of Sport History. 40 (2): 361–362. doi:10.5406/jsporthistory.40.2.361. ISSN   2155-8450. S2CID   160739457.
  16. ↑ Lunt, David J. (2013-11-13). "The Victor's Crown: A History of Ancient Sport from Homer to Byzantium by David Potter (review)". Journal of Sport History. 40 (2): 361–362. doi:10.5406/jsporthistory.40.2.361. ISSN   2155-8450. S2CID   160739457.
  17. ↑ Kyle, Donald G. (2012). "The Victor's Crown: A History of Ancient Sport from Homer to Byzantium by David Potter (review)". Journal of Sport History. 39 (3): 559–563. doi:10.5406/jsporthistory.39.3.559. ISSN   2155-8450. S2CID   162759002.
  18. ↑ Potter, David S. (1990-12-13). Prophecy and History in the Crisis of the Roman Empire: A Historical Commentary on the Thirteenth Sibylline Oracle. Oxford Classical Monographs. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-814483-0.
  19. ↑ "Prophets and Emperors — David Potter | Harvard University Press". www.hup.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
  20. ↑ Mellor, Ronald (2001). "Review of Literary Texts and the Roman Historian by David S. Potter". Phoenix (3/4, autumn/winter): 440–442. doi:10.2307/1089140. JSTOR   1089140.
  21. ↑ Skinner, Alexander (2016). "Review of The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180–395, 2nd edition, by David S. Potter" (PDF). AHB Online Reviews. 6: 114–116.
  22. ↑ "Rome in the Ancient World". thamesandhudson.com. Retrieved 2020-11-22.
  23. ↑ The Victor's Crown: A History of Ancient Sport from Homer to Byzantium. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. 2011-11-07. ISBN   978-0-19-984275-9.
  24. ↑ Constantine the Emperor. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. 2012-12-11. ISBN   978-0-19-975586-8.
  25. ↑ Theodora: Actress, Empress, Saint. Women in Antiquity. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. 2015-11-04. ISBN   978-0-19-974076-5.
  26. ↑ "The Origin of Empire — David Potter". www.hup.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
  27. ↑ Disruption: Why Things Change. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. 2024-07-30. ISBN   978-0-19-774471-0.
  28. ↑ Potter, David (1979). "The Mysterious Arbaces". The American Journal of Philology. 100 (4): 541–542. doi:10.2307/294070. ISSN   0002-9475. JSTOR   294070.
  29. ↑ Potter, David (1987). "Telesphoros, Cousin of Demetrius: A Note on the Trial of Menander". Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte. 36 (4): 491–495. ISSN   0018-2311. JSTOR   4436030.
  30. ↑ Potter, David (1988). "Where did Aristonicus' Revolt Begin?". Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik. 74: 293–295. ISSN   0084-5388. JSTOR   20186933.
  31. ↑ Potter, David (1992). "Empty Areas and Roman Frontier Policy". The American Journal of Philology. 113 (2): 269–274. doi:10.2307/295560. ISSN   0002-9475. JSTOR   295560.
  32. ↑ Potter, David (2011). "Holding Court in Republican Rome (105-44)". The American Journal of Philology. 132 (1): 59–80. ISSN   0002-9475. JSTOR   41237381.

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