Kathryn Slanski

Kathryn Slanski is a Senior Lecturer in Assyriology and Humanities. She studies ancient Mesopotamia at the intersections of sources and approaches. Her work on a corpus of inscribed and sculpted monuments (The Babylonian Entitlement narûs (kudurrus): A Study in Form and Function, ASOR Books, 2003) led to further research on the relationships between text and image, as well as questions about monumentality, sacred and secular authority, and the ancient transmission and reception of literary, historical, religious and visual traditions. She is also interested in cultural connections between civilizations of the ancient Near East and the ancient Mediterranean. She teaches Mesopotamian and ancient Near Eastern literature, history, religion, law and justice, visual arts, and ancient languages. Recent course offerings include “The Hero in the Ancient Near East,” an interdisciplinary investigation of the Hero through written, archaeological, and art historical evidence, and joint NELC/Humanities seminars, “Discovery and Reception of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia,” (led together with Prof. John Darnell), “Re-imagining the Ancient Near East” on the reception and re-workings of ancient Near Eastern literature, and “Translating the Hero” (together with Prof. Corinne Pache of Classics), plus an advanced Babylonian language courses on archival and judicial inscriptions from the second millennium BCE.