Biographical Info of Mary T. Boatwright

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Biographical Info of Mary T. Boatwright

      Mary T. Boatwright, Professor of Ancient History in the Department of Classical Studies at Duke, and the 2008 recipient of the Dean’s Distinguished Service Award,   earned her Master’s and Doctorate Degrees in Classical Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Professor Boatwright has spent most of her academic career at Duke, where she works on Imperial Rome investigating the topography of Rome’s building and public works, as well as of its government institutions and social history.

     Her studies of Roman cities and rulers have extended to the farthest provincial reaches of the Empire, as embodied in her books and scholarly articles on the life and accomplishments of the Emperor Hadrian (A.D. 117 – 138). These include Hadrian and the City of Rome, and Hadrian and the Cities of the Roman Empire (both published by Princeton UP: 1987, 2000). Among other publications, she co-authored (with Daniel Gargola and Richard J. A. Talbert), The Romans: From Village to Empire. A History of Ancient Rome from Earliest Times to Constantine (2004) and A Brief History of the Romans (2005). New projects include a book on the peoples of Rome and an investigation of the Empire’s northern frontiers.

     Professor Boatwright has also explored the roles and images of elite Roman women, particularly the empresses. Her 1991 article, “The Imperial Women of the Early Second Century AC,” was awarded the Gildersleeve Prize for the best article published that year in the American Journal of Philology. She also studies the work of the Latin historians, including Tacitus, the second-century historian whose interest in the exercise of power has complemented Professor Boatwright’s own fascination with the aspirations of ancient societies and the challenges facing them.

      Professor Boatwright has also had a long association with the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome, where she served as the Professor in Charge (1992-93). In fact, it was as an undergraduate student there herself that she first became fascinated by Imperial Rome, and she joined the Duke faculty directly from two years of research in the city.

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