01.02.2024

First Book Award der CAMWS an Dr. Anna Sitz

für ihr Buch "Pagan Inscriptions, Christian Viewers: The Afterlives of Temples and Their Texts in the Late Antique Eastern Mediterranean"

Dr. Anna M. Sitz (Seminar für Alte Geschichte, Eberhard Karls Universität, Tübingen, Germany) has won the First Book Award from the Classical Association of the Middle West and South for her book Pagan Inscriptions, Christian Viewers: The Afterlives of Temples and Their Texts in the Late Antique Eastern Mediterranean (Oxford University Press, 2023).

The criteria for this award include excellent quality, wide significance within a scholarly domain, and demonstrated awareness of international trends. CAMWS is especially interested in books which shift the conversation substantially in the relevant field of research. Committee members concurred that this book significantly altered traditional views of religious identity in late antiquity, as well as “providing a manifesto for looking at epigraphy through an archaeological lens” by “considering the full lifespan of material in the archaeological record.”

 Committee members lauded Sitz’s “important and impressive study” as being “bold in its scope and approach.” The book’s argument is “nuanced, thought-provoking, and powerful/evocative, in part thanks to the frequent analogies drawn with modern phenomena.” Pagan Inscriptions, Christian Viewers “makes significant contributions to understanding the point of view of Christians toward ancient inscriptions and temples.” This “fascinating and original work” “should take epigraphy in new directions” and is “definitely the sort of book that will get cited again and again.”

(CAMWS First Book Award Committee)