SASA Working Group on Community Building for “Non-Traditional” Scholar Professionals

The fields of Ancient Studies consist of a wonderful, tight-knit community of scholars. Though they are spread out across the world, scholars see each other regularly at conferences and symposia held by the various learned societies and departments. However, this ivory tower has strict boundaries, imposed by the limited number of academic positions available and by the attitude that to be a “scholar” one must be directly part of an academic institution. Though we work to expand Ancient Studies fields, this model for the self-definition of the “community of scholars” and the attendant attitude of exclusivity must change. Ancient Studies can only truly grow beyond its current bounds when there is a home within this community for scholars who earn their livings in other occupations. SASA envisions a New Ancient Studies in which all are not only welcome, but also actively incorporated into the study of the deep past of all places and cultures. Any scholar of the Ancient World should have a place in and be able to contribute to the Ancient Studies scholarly community. Together we aim to pool our efforts and make real change.

To follow up on the Roundtables held at the SASA/Digital Hammurabi Virtual Conference this past August, we are creating a series of Working Group meetings to tackle some of the issues that were raised during the Conference’s Roundtables. The first issue we will broach is how to work on building our Ancient Studies scholarly community to include “non-traditional” scholars, such as  independent researchers, contingent faculty, and academia-allied researchers. The goal is to create programs to support us, create a community for us, and work to ultimately integrate us into the “mainstream” scholarly community.

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