Historian Vanessa Gorman Wins Award for Book

Vanessa Gorman, associate professor of history and associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has won the Award for Outstanding Publication from the Classical Association of the Middle West and South for her book "Miletos, The Ornament of Ionia: A History of the City to 400 BCE."

The award every year recognizes a distinguished first book published by a member of the association during the past four years.

Gorman's book is the history of the ancient Greek city of Miletos, in what is now southwestern Turkey, in a region known by the archaic Greeks as Ionia. During the Archaic Period (roughly 750 to 490 BCE) Ionia was the chief area of cultural and economic development among the Greeks, and Miletos was the leading city. The city sent out between 45 and 80 colonies to the Sea of Marmara and Black Sea in an expansive archaic Greek colonization movement. As the home of Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, it was also the birthplace of Western philosophy.

Despite its importance, no narrative history of this city remains from antiquity, because its prime fell before the advent of history writing as a genre and because it was overshadowed by the fifth-century rise in significance of both Athens and Sparta. Gorman's book traces the history of the city in all its dimensions from the Stone Age to the end of the Peloponnesian War.

CONTACT: Vanessa Gorman, Assoc. Professor, History, (402) 472-2891 (vgorman1@unl.edu)