Introduction to the author

I am an associate professor in Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Focused Inquiry. I also act as Treasurer for the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus.

My research examines the strategies of legitimation used by the Armenian dynasts of the Hellenistic and Roman periods to create and perpetuate their authority in the context of the shifting sociopolitical relations within Armenia and with its neighbors. The research interrogates the processes of legitimation by investigating the rulers’ textual and material narratives on coins and inscriptions, and also their spatial practices and dialectical interaction with the landscape.

I teach research and critical thinking skills, using information and datasets from world history, classical archaeology, the history of the ancient Mediterranean, and also about issues of identity formation, as well as historical and archaeological methodologies.

I hold a joint Ph.D. from the University of Chicago’s History and Anthropology Departments. My B.A. came from St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I am a member of the Joint Armenian-American Project for the Archaeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies (Project ArAGATS), and a member of the board of the Aragats Foundation.

I can be reached at: egafagan [at] gmail [dot] com.

 

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