Mark Letteney (he/him)

Assistant Professor
Mark Letteney, portrait by Sze Tsung Nicolás Leong

Contact Information

SMI 116B
Office Hours
Wednesdays 1–2 and by appointment

Biography

Ph.D., Princeton University, 2020
M.A., Yale University, 2014
B.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2012

Mark Letteney is an ancient historian and archaeologist working in the history of incarceration, book history, and the archaeology of military occupation.

Mark serves as assistant director on the excavation of the Roman 6th Legion at Legio, Israel, where he directs excavations in the legionary amphitheater, and co-director of the Solomon's Pools Archaeological Project. His monograph, The Christianization of Knowledge in Late Antiquity: Intellectual and Material Transformations, explores how imperial Christianity changed the way that scholars across disciplines made arguments in the fourth and fifth centuries CE, and the reflection of new scholastic practices in manuscripts from the Theodosian Age. Cambridge University Press published the book Open Access in 2023, and it was awarded the 2024 Lautenschläger Award.

His second book, Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration (co-authored with Matthew David Larsen) brings together documentary, archaeological, literary, and visual evidence to present a synthetic account of the ideology and experience of incarceration in the ancient Mediterranean basin, from 300 BCE–600 CE. The book is under contract with University of California Press, which expects to publish the volume Open Access in spring of 2025.

Click here to view Professor Letteney’s current CV

Awards

Manfred Lautenschläger Award, The Christianization of Knowledge (2024)
Premi di merito alla ricerca, “Christianizing Knowledge” (Associazione Internazionale di Studi Tardoantichi, 2022)
Oscar Broneer Traveling Fellowship (American School of Classical Studies in Athens, 2020)
Paul Mellon/Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize (American Academy in Rome, 2018–9)
Peter R. Brown Prize, Committee for the Study of Late Antiquity (Princeton, 2016)
Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Studies Prize (Princeton, 2014–5)
Baden-Württemberg Stipendium (Universität Heidelberg, 2013–4)
Boyd Memorial Fellowship (UNC, 2012)

Research

Courses Taught

Affiliations

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