Aldrete, Gregory S. 1966-

PERSONAL:

Born 1966. Education: Princeton University, B.A. (cum laude), 1988; University of Michigan, M.A., Ph.D., 1995.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Humanistic Studies, University of Wisconsin, 2420 Nicolet Dr., Theatre Hall 331, Green Bay, WI 54311; fax: 920-465-2890. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Educator. University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, assistant professor, 1995-99, associate professor with tenure, 2000-04, professor of humanistic studies and history, 2005—.

MEMBER:

American Historical Association, Archaeological Institute of America, American Philological Association, Association of Ancient Historians, Phaeton Group.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Committee on Institutional Cooperation, Minority Fellowship in the Social Sciences, 1988-90; Institute for the Humanities Summer Program Fellowship, 1990; Michigan Minority Merit Fellowship, 1990-91; Hewlett International Dissertation Grant for research trip to Rome, 1994; Rackham Merit Fellowship, 1993-95; Wisconsin Teaching fellow, 1997-98; Teaching at Its Best Award, 1999; National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminar for College Teachers, fellow, 1996 and 2000; Founders Association Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2003; NEH Humanities fellowship, 2004-05; NEH Summer Institute for College Teachers held at University of California, Los Angeles, fellow, 2006; Founders Association Award for Excellence in Scholarship, 2006.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1999.

Daily Life in the Roman City: Rome, Pompeii, and Ostia, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 2004.

(Editor, with Joyce E. Salisbury) The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Daily Life, Volume 1: The Ancient World, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 2004.

Floods of the Tiber in Ancient Rome, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 2007.

Contributor to academic books and journals.

SIDELIGHTS:

Gregory S. Aldrete is a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, where he has been teaching history and humanistic studies since 1995. He joined the University of Wisconsin after earning his Ph.D. in ancient history from the University of Michigan. Aldrete's primary areas of expertise include the social and economic history of the Roman Empire, rhetoric and oratory, and urban problems in the ancient world. Aldrete has received numerous fellowships, grants, and awards over the years for his academic work, and he is the most highly awarded scholar in the Phaeton Group, a science and media organization that brings together experts across disciplines relating to natural science, history, and exploration. In addition to writing three books based on his original research of ancient Rome, Aldrete has written entries for college textbooks, scholarly encyclopedias, and academic books and journals.

Aldrete's first book, Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome, published in 1999, was developed from the work he did for his dissertation. "In his well-organized presentation, Aldrete analyzes nonverbal and verbal forms of communication and their political use within Roman society from both the speakers' and audiences' perspectives. The primary literary sources are made very accessible through Aldrete's extensive use of text notes," commended Randolph H. Lytton in his review of the book for History: Review of New Books. The first chapter of the book, "Eloquence without Words: Uses of Gesture in Roman Oratory," looks at gesture in Roman rhetorical treatises, and is based primarily on the rhetorical handbooks of Quintilian and Cicero. The second chapter, "Gesture in Roman Society," argues that gestures kept their meanings across different contexts in Roman society. In the third chapter, "Oratory and the Roman Emperors," the author "emphasizes the two-way relationship between urban populace and ruler, a theme that dominates the rest of the book," wrote Historian critic Amy Richlin in her review of Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome. Over the next two chapters, "Uses of Acclamations by the Urban Plebs" and "Characteristics of the Use of Acclamations," Aldrete examines how Roman audiences interacted with the emperor. In this book, Aldrete "stays out of the argument, contenting himself with amassing a useful collection of evidence, with a good bibliography," observed Richlin.

His next scholarly book, 2004's Daily Life in the Roman City: Rome, Pompeii, and Ostia, explores ancient daily city life in the Roman Empire throughout various Roman cities. The author focuses primarily on Rome, which he sees as the city that the rest of the Roman Empire emulated. Historian reviewer Dorian Borbonus felt that in Daily Life in the Roman City Aldrete "makes ample use of primary sources, such as archaeological excavations, ancient literary texts, and inscriptions." He later added that the book would make for "a useful textbook for a Roman civilization course," but that "the uniform use of primary sources and exclusive focus on a rather atypical city may be misleading for first-time students of ancient history."

In his 2007 book, Floods of the Tiber in Ancient Rome, Aldrete looks into the effects of floods on Rome during the classical period. In ancient Rome, floods were a part of life as proximity to the Tiber left a good portion of the city vulnerable to the river's violent eruptions. Floods of the Tiber in Ancient Rome is the product of a six-year research project involving several trips to Rome and support from two NEH fellowships. Aldrete also took a sabbatical from teaching at the University of Wisconsin to complete the book. Most of the information presented in this book has not appeared in a previously published work in English.

In an excerpt about the author on the Phaeton Group Science & Media Web site, Aldrete disclosed his philosophy for examining ancient Rome: "I firmly believe in an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the ancient world, an approach which combines history, philology, archaeology, and art history and uses both textual and physical evidence."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Greece & Rome, October, 2000, P. Walcot, review of Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome, p. 264.

Historian, summer, 2003, Amy Richlin, review of Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome, p. 1026; fall, 2006, Dorian Borbonus, review of Daily Life in the Roman City: Rome, Pompeii, and Ostia, p. 618.

History: Review of New Books, winter, 2000, Randolph H. Lytton, review of Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome, p. 86.

Reference & Research Book News, February, 2000, review of Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome, p. 149; May, 2005, review of Daily Life in the Roman City, p. 44; May, 2007, review of Floods of the Tiber in Ancient Rome.

ONLINE

Bryn Mawr Classical Review,http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/ (March 8, 2000), Anthony Corbeill, review of Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome.

Phaeton Group Science & Media Web site,http://www.phaetongroup.com/ (January 8, 2008).

University of Wisconsin Green Bay Web site,http://www.uwgb.edu/ (January 8, 2008).