J. Clayton Fant

Professor

Ph.D., University of Michigan; B.A., Williams College

I came to Akron in 1984 from Italy where I had been living and teaching off and on since 1979. Before that I held the junior faculty folding chair at Wellesley College. I am a renegade philologist who still loves teaching language and literature, but my publications are in Roman archaeology and epigraphy. My interest in the Roman marble trade began at St. Stephens's School in Rome with a 9th grade class in the topography of the ancient city. I have done research and field work in Turkey, Greece, Tunisia and Egypt and am currently involved in projects in Pompeii . Distractions from finishing a book called Marble and the Caesars are gardening, establishing a vineyard, and our thriving children, Beckett, who joined us on August 23, 1999,  Emerson, born May 5, 2001, and Connor, July 8, 2002.

My current project at Pompeii is an ongoing sampling campaign in collaboration with Donato Attanasio (Istituto di Struttura della Materia of the National Research Center). We just (Feb '05) received a permit to sample the House of Loreius Tiburtinus biclinium and several other houses' marble furniture. In June of 2004 I and two UA undergrads spent three weeks at Pompeii studying street-side bars in a project called "Sleazy Bars with Fancy Countertops." A previous round of the sampling research, "Taste and ostentation in White Marble at Roman Pompeii," was funded by an American Philosophical Society research grant (read the illustrated grant proposal) and a University of Akron Summer Faculty Fellowship for 1999.

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