Robert Sobak

Assistant Professor of Classics

Phone (207) 725-3664
Title Assistant Professor
Department Classics
Work Location 206 Riley House
E-Mail rsobak@bowdoin.edu
Robert B. Sobak: Bowdoin College: Classics


On leave of absence for the 2011-12 academic year.




Rob Sobak received his undergraduate degree from Franklin and Marshall College, where he majored in Classics. After running a second-hand bookshop for four years, he returned to school to pursue graduate work in Classics. He spent one year at the University of Pennsylvania’s Post-Bac program in Classics, and then went on to the University of Georgia, where he earned an M.A. in Greek and Latin. He earned a second M.A. in Classics and a Ph.D. in Classics and Ancient History  at Princeton University.

He specializes in Greek Social History and Literature, with particular interests in ancient technology, travel, geography, and early conceptions of labor and education. He is currently working on three different research projects: a book that explores the role that artisans and manual laborers played in the development of Athenian democracy, an article on the interplay of language and landscape in Pindar, and an article on the rhetorical uses of geography in Tacitus’ Agricola and Germania. He has traveled extensively throughout Greece and parts of Turkey. As a sophomore in college he was awarded a grant which allowed him to tour the Peloponnese by mountain-bike for three months - an experience which he is glad to have had once, but will never attempt to replicate.

Education

Ph.D. Princeton University, Classics (expected Fall 2007)
M.A. Princeton University, Classics
M.A. University of Georgia, Greek and Latin
University of Pennsylvania Post-Baccalaureate
A.B. Franklin and Marshall College, Classics

Teaching and Research Interests

Greek social history, Greek literature, Greek & Roman historiography

Selected Papers Presented

“Political Shoemakers and the Making of the Athenian Democracy”
University of Michigan, February 2007

“Shoes, Shoemakers, and the Networks of Craft Production in Classical Athens”
University of Southern California, February 2006

“Knowledge and its Discontents in the Democratic City”
Princeton University, October 2005

“Craft, Complexity, and Social Interactions in the Classical Athenian Polis”
Princeton University, March 2004

“Time, Space, and Narrative Disjuncture in Pindar”
Princeton University, February 2003

“The Imperial Cosmologist: Rhetorical Geographies in Tacitus”
University of Michigan, March 2002

“Last Man Standing: Strabo and the End of Greek History”
Princeton University, December 2001.

“Britannia Perdomita: The Heroic Landscape of Tacitus’ Agricola”
University of Pennsylvania, September 2000