Association of Ancient Historians Meeting 2026: Iowa City

Supported by the Department of History, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Perry A. and Helen J. Bond Fund for Interdisciplinary Interaction at the University of Iowa

Register for the Conference ($95): Please register at the registration form provided here and then pay for the registration fee here. 

Hotel: The Graduate, Iowa City Group Code: 90Q Direct Booking Link

Ancient Exchanges in a Global Antiquity

The 2026 AAH Annual Meeting will take place in person at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA from April 16-18, 2026. All University of Iowa faculty, staff, and students are welcome to attend for free. 

Keynote Speakers: Michael Kulikowski (History and Classics, Penn State University), Carolina López-Ruiz (Divinity School and Classics, University of Chicago) 

April 16-18, 2026: Association of Ancient Historians Meeting 

Thursday, April 16

Location: Iowa Memorial Union, Big Ten Theater (348) 

Presidential Panel:  Ancient Geography and the Barrington Atlas

Chair: Georgia Tsouvala (ISU, President of the AAH) and Tom Elliott (ISAW-NYU, Pleiades)

4:30: Welcome from AAH President and Iowa Chairs

4:45: Tom Elliott: Pleiades Project and the State of HGIS 

5:15: Lindsay Holman (Jacksonville State), “Mapping Roman Enslaved Agency” 

5:45: Response

6:00: Opening Reception

Friday, April 17: Location: Becker Communications Studies Bldg BCSB-101 

8:30 – 9:00 am: Continental breakfast/Registration Continues BCSB-101 

9:00 am: Welcome from Rosemary Moore, Sarah Bond, and Shane Bobrycki 

Panel 1: Erasure and Inclusion I

Chair: Sarah E. Bond (Iowa) (3 papers, 15 minutes each)

9:15: Paper #1: Chris Saladin (Rowan University), “Hill of Dido: Constructing Memory on Roman Carthage’s Byrsa Hill” 

9:45: Paper #2: Anise K. Strong (Western Michigan), "Remember the Ladies: Social Networks, Simulations, and Suffragettes in Rome, 42 BCE."

10:15: Paper #3: Casey M. Stark (Bowling Green State University), “Curated Narratives, Lost Meanings: Reassessing Pontifical Titles in Fourth Century Rome” 

10:45 – 11:00 am BREAK

Panel #2: Erasure and Inclusion II

Chair: Anise K. Strong (Western Michigan) (2 papers, 15 minutes each)

11:00: Paper #4: Anna Accettola (Hamilton College), “Shaped by the Audience: “Nabataeans” in Greco-Roman Spaces

11:20: Paper #5: Greta Hawes (MacQuarie University): “Epistemicide in the Arcadian Hinterland” 

11:45 – 1:30 Lunch Break 

Optional Tour: Special Collections Tour of Eurasian Manuscripts at the Main Library

Panel #3: Alexander the Great, Hellenistic History, and Ancient Exchanges

Chair: Rosemary Moore (3 papers, 15 minutes each)

1:30: Paper #6: Louis Mainwaring Foster (Bryn Mawr), “Greek Presence in Bactria and Influence on Gandhara”

1:50: Paper #7: Ben Abbott (Skidmore College), “Colonizing the Periphery: The Early Seleucid Empire in Central Asia”

2:20: Paper #8: Deirdre Klokow (UT-Austin), “Going With the Flow: Waterways, Trade, and Connectivity from Alexander to the Seleucids” 

2:45-3:00 pm BREAK

Panel #4: Medical and Environmental history

Chair: Shane Bobrycki (2 papers, 15 minutes each)

3:00:  Paper #9: Mark Gradoni (UC-Irvine), “Reconfiguring Empire and Environment in the Late Antique Iranian world” 

3:20:  Paper #10: James Flynn (Stanford), “The Extreme Climate in South Asia After the Eruption of of 43 BCE” 

3:45–4:00: Break

Paper #5: Connecting a Global Antiquity Through Translation 

Chair: Adrienne Ho Rose (2 papers, 20 minutes each)

4:00: Paper #11: Lingyun Zhao, “From παῖς to Shaonian: Translational Drift and the Aesthetic Afterlives of Greek Love in East Asia” 

4:20: Paper #12: Paul Dilley, “Early Manichaean Texts as World Literature” 

5:00-6:15: KEYNOTE LECTURE: Carolina López-Ruiz (Divinity School and Department of Classics, University of Chicago), "The Other World of Odysseus: Cultural Exchange in the Iron Age Mediterranean": 

In the Iron Age, Phoenician and Greek sailors and merchants interacted with groups from the Black Sea to the Atlantic coasts of Africa and Europe. Can we imagine their experiences of those encounters, the world-views they may have exchanged, or their  perceptions and assimilation of the new worlds they met? Focusing on a range of artifacts and sites, drawing on archaeology and literary sources, and with a special focus on religious sites and tropes, this talk explores the different modes of cultural interaction that helped formed an interconnected Mediterranean in the Iron Age, and the peculiarities of the multi-cultural experiences in different areas, such as Iberia, Sardinia, Sicily, Cyprus, and the Aegean.

Saturday April 18: Location: Memorial Union Big Ten Theater (348 IMU) 

8:00 – 8:30 am: Continental Breakfast at the IMU

Panel #6: Slavery and Unfreedom 

Chair: John W.I. Lee (UCSB) (3 papers, 15 minutes each)

8:30: Paper #13: Christian Borgen (University of Chicago), “Harvest contracts from the Old Babylonian, Middle Assyrian, and Neo-Assyrian periods” 

8:50: Paper #14: Sarah Brucia Breitenfeld (Pitt), “Archives of Prostitution in Classical Athens and Colonial Bridgetown”

9:10: Paper #15: Marios Anastasiadis (NYU), "Diagnosing Value: Medicine and the Greek Slave Market" 

9:30 – 9:45 am BREAK

Panel #7: Exchanges and Movement on Ancient and Early Medieval Frontiers 

Chair: Greg Valdespino (3 papers, 15 minutes each)

9:45: Paper #16: Alejandro Quintana (Yale University), “Mobility Makes States: Ideology and Legibility in Roman Egypt” 

10:05: Paper #17: Kaine Byrne (UCSB), “Please Leave Your Gender at the Border: The Mutual (Non-) Permeability of Greek, Han, and Nomadic Masculinities” 

10:25:  Paper #18: Jeremy Simmons (U. Chicago), "The Hellenistic Far East and Global Antiquity"

BREAK: 11:00 – 11:30am 

11:30 – 1:00 pm: Lunch reception at the IMU 

Panel #8: The Bible and Ancient History

Chair: Paul Dilley (3 papers, 15 minutes each) 

1:00: Paper #19: Stanley Burstein (CSU-LA), “Greek Historiography and the Book of Judith” 

1:20: Paper #20: William M. Owens (Ohio University), “The Apocryphal Acts, the Greek Novels, and the Representation of Slavery” 

1:40: Paper #21: Ashlyn Patterson (ASU), “Early Christian Food Culture: Impacts of Judaism and Food as a Tool of Social Separation”.

2:00-2:30 pm BREAK

Panel #9: Ancient Exchanges and Migration

Chair: Michael Kulikowski (2 papers, 15 minutes each)

2:30: Paper #22: Steven Tuck (Miami University of Ohio), “Movement and Cultural Differences Among Survivors of Vesuvius in Their New Communities”

2:50: Paper #23: Naomi T. Campa (UT-Austin), “Formally Comparing Migrants as Method” 

3:15-3:30: Break 

3:30 – 4:15 pm: AAH Business Meeting 

4:30 - 5:30 pm: Drinks reception in the same building: IMU Richey Ballroom (376)  

5:30- 6:30 pm: Keynote #2: Michael Kulikowski (Late Antique Migration Topic)

6:30 pm Banquet –IMU Richey Ballroom (376)