Biography
BA, University of Texas at Austin
MA and PhD, Princeton University
Research
Elizabeth Key Fowden’s work examines religious encounter as expressed, above all, in architectural and artistic transformations.
Sparked by an early interest in classical and Christian imagery in renaissance Italy, Fowden studied Classics at the University of Texas at Austin and Princeton University, specialising in late antique history and material culture in the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia.
Her PhD thesis, supervised by Peter Brown at Princeton University and later published as The Barbarian Plain: Saint Sergius between Rome and Iran (Berkeley 1999), examines religious, political, and architectural crosspollination in late antique and early Islamic Syria and Mesopotamia.
In her current book project, The Parthenon Mosque, Fowden applies her interest in Islamic reformulation of the classical and Christian inheritance to the early modern conjunction of Greek, European and Ottoman views of Athens’ most celebrated building.
Elizabeth Fowden is Senior Researcher in the European Research Council funded project (2016-2021), Impact of the Ancient City, led by Principal Investigator Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill. The project re-examines the impact of the ancient, Greco-Roman city on subsequent urban history in Europe and the Islamic world, investigating both the urban fabric and urban ideals.
Fowden has also lectured and supervised on late antique and early Islamic history at Cambridge (Middle Eastern Studies and Divinity) and the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London.
Publications
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‘Shrines and Banners: Paleo-Muslims and their material inheritance’, in L. Korn and Ç. İvren (edd.), Encompassing the Sacred in Islamic Art and Architecture (Beiträge zur Islamischen Kunst und Archäologie 6) (Wiesbaden, forthcoming 2020) 5-23.
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Fowden, E.K. (2019) ‘Jerusalem and the work of discontinuity', in M. Abdallah (ed.), Uninterrupted Fugue: Art by Kamal Boullata (Hirmer: Munich, Chicago & London)
- Fowden, E.K. (2019) 'The Parthenon Mosque, King Solomon and the Greek Sages'. In: Ottoman Athens: Archeology, topography, history. Athens. [Lecture, The Parthenon Mosque, King Solomon and the Philosophers, Gennadius Library, Athens, 23 April 2015]
- Fowden, E.K. (2018) 'The Parthenon, Pericles and King Solomon: a case study of Ottoman archaeological imagination in Greece', Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 42, pp. 261-274
- Fowden, E.K. (2016) 'Schreine und Banner: Paläomuslime und ihr materielles Erbe', in A. Neuwirth, N. Schmidt and N. K. Schmid, Denkraum Spätantike. Szenarien der Reflexion von Antike im Umfeld des Koran, Wiesbaden, pp 405-430.
- Fowden, E.K. (2015) 'Rural converters among the Arabs', in A. Papaconstantinou, N. McLynn and D. Schwartz, Conversion in late antiquity: Christianity, Islam and beyond, Farnham, pp 175-196.
- Fowden, E.K. (2013) 'Des églises pour les Arabes, pour les nomades?' in F. Briquel Chatonnet, Les églises en monde syriaque, Paris, pp 391-420.
- Fowden, E.K. (2007) 'The lamp and the wine flask: Early Muslim interest in Christian monasticism', in A. Akasoy, J.E. Montgomery and P. Pormann, Islamic crosspollinations: Interactions in the medieval Middle East, Cambridge, pp 1-28.
- Fowden, E.K. (2005) 'Saint Serge chez les Arabes', Dossiers d’Archéologie 309, pp 54-59.
- Fowden, E.K. (2005) 'Constantine and the peoples of the eastern frontier', in N. Lenski, The Cambridge companion to the age of Constantine, Cambridge, pp 377-398.
- Fowden, E.K. (2004) Studies on Hellenism, Christianity and the Umayyads (with Garth Fowden), Athens.
- Fowden, E.K. (2002) 'Sharing holy places', Common Knowledge 8, pp 124-46.
- Fowden, E.K. (2000) 'An Arab building at Rusafa-Sergiopolis', Damaszener Mitteilungen 12, pp 303-324.
- Fowden, E.K. (1999) The Barbarian Plain: Saint Sergius between Rome and Iran, Berkeley.
Select Translations from Modern Greek
C. Bouras, Byzantine Athens, 10th-12th centuries (Routledge 2017)
P. Kalligas, The Enneads of Plotinus, A Commentary. Volume 1 (translated with Nicolas Pilachai) (Princeton, Princeton University Press 2014)
M. Politi, ed., The Gennadius Manuscripts: a journey through the manuscripts of the Gennadius Library (translated with John Davis) (Princeton, American School of Classical Studies, 2011)
E. Brouskari, ed., Ottoman architecture in Greece (Athens, Hellenic Ministry of Culture, 2008)
‘The gleaner’, ‘A pilgrimage to the Kastro’ in Alexandros Papadiamandis, The Boundless garden: Selected Short Stories, Vol. 1 (Denise Harvey (Publisher) Limni, Evia, 2007); ‘The gleaner’ was read by Mark Williams on BBC Radio 4, 15 June 2011
