Being an academic again

Today was my first meeting with my new supervisor and the unofficial start to my second year at Oxford. After a summer of some reading on Ephesus and lots of website work (which of course I thoroughly enjoyed), it was also nice to get back to feeling like a real academic again. My meeting went well, I got some necessary forms turned in, and I'm excited about the upcoming year, which is sure to be eventful!

My new supervisor, Jane Baun, is an American. I hadn't realized this, even after speaking with her on the phone and then for about 15 minutes in person! British accents have definitely started to sound normal to me now, and it's only when I hear a clear American accent that I really take notice. But Jane has been living in the UK for nine years with an English husband, and I believe she is originally from the east coast, so her accent is difficult to place anyway.

I also learned that Jane got her doctorate at Princeton, where her supervisor was Peter Brown. I said, "Ooooh, lucky you," as he is quite a famous scholar and author in Late Antiquity. He also introduced her to her husband and was a witness at her wedding! Peter Brown is her Irv! She was then a professor at NYU before coming to Oxford.

I think she's going to be a really good supervisor. Her academic background suits my topic well and she's excited about my research ideas. I also really appreciated that she is already thinking about my long-term success rather than just the dissertation - she was already talking about what to do this year in order to secure funding for my PhD phase. She's planning to get me connected with some "big names" at Oxford, whose recommendations would look especially impressive on an application.

She was also brainstorming about how we might get me an expenses-paid trip to Turkey for academic purposes - wahoo! I must admit that idea had crossed my mind. :) She has an American friend in Turkey that she'll contact about me, and she encouraged me to contact the Ephesus Museum, who she said would be thrilled to hear from me as they get so few visitors. She said that when I visit Ephesus, the museum curators would almost certainly show me artifacts in the back room and in drawers that are not on display. Oh boy, oh boy! Since everything found in Ephesus since 1906 must by law remain in Turkey, that would be a whole lot of stuff.

We spent most of the time discussing my proposed thesis title, which I turned in today. She was happy with it and signed it, and gave me lots of good suggestions of books to read - including one by her husband. For all of you waiting breathlessly, the official title of my MPhil dissertation is: "The Transition from Paganism to Christianity in Ephesus."

My basic plan is to try to trace how and when Christianity actually took hold in the pagan city (all scholars can say so far is "4th century") and especially look into the possible connection between the virgin goddess Artemis (pictured above right in the Ephesus Museum) and the Virgin Mary. There are obvious connections on the surface, but from what I've read so far and based on the latest excavations, there may not be as clear a connection as people tend to assume. This is actually quite exciting, as it gives me a chance to make an actual contribution to scholarly knowledge and disprove common assumptions. But it may also turn out to be just as people think and very boring! We shall see.

Finally, I got Jane's signature for a priority place in a German Reading class at the Oxford Language Centre, so I can actually read what the Austrians have dug up at Ephesus! The class will meet once a week on Tuesdays starting in October, and I have the textbooks already. I know it sounds a little daunting that so much of my research will be in German, but I really do want to learn German anyway and I mainly just need to learn the basics plus some technical terms ("inscription," "temple," "church," "east," "west," etc.). It's so much better than Greek!

So now I'm pretty much "back to school," which means I'll shift the majority of my time from website work to research on Ephesus, spend more time in libraries, and go to German class. I'll probably also attend a few lectures in Classics and such. Fun stuff!