May 12, 2016 - Catch up on the latest news from CAARI!


Look at CAARI's fresh new face!  Here's an overview of the new façade that leads to the underground library extension and gives special needs access to the building.  Soon palm and jacaranda trees, jasmine and oleander, will spread refreshing shade over the garden. 

There are also new faces at CAARI.  We welcome with pride recipients of our 2016 fellowships: 


Their faces are here - read on for their biographies and projects.


Our New Spaces Are Almost Ready for the Inauguration on June 10, 2016!

Last spring, many friends helped with the garden, and you can see in this cool corner some of the furnishing and plants they made possible:


HELP US GET READY THIS SPRING FOR THE OPENING OF OUR NEW LIBRARY!

The library extension will be officially opened on June 10 2016.  Our supporters are helping us in all kinds of creative ways:

$50.00 buys a bookshelf -  or you can get together and dedicate a whole bookcase in honor of a friend;

$100.00 gets a new publication -  contribute towards a book in your favorite field or in honor of your favorite scholar;

$500.00 will provide a lock-box for rare books  - essential for protecting CAARI's precious rare books and manuscripts; 

$1000.00 a year  will keep our periodicals up-to-date - periodical subscriptions are CAARI's heaviest library expenses.
 
Make your contribution for one of these or let us choose for you! Send a "happy inauguration" gift to:
Too Young or Broke to Give to CAARI? No Way!
Using the New Garden
An annual contribution of $35.00 from each of the graduate students and from each of the young professionals who have benefitted from CAARI's collegiality, its library, its mentorship or its washing machine, would really help immensely in meeting our ever rising costs, and would charge up our fund-raising applications to government and private sources.  
To make your contribution:    www.caari.org/support
 

Congratulations and Welcome the Recipients of CAARI's 2016 Fellowships

Graduate students and young professional scholars are among the most critical of CAARI's constituencies.  Facilitating their successful research is at the core of our mission. Their future is also CAARI's.  It is with pride that we announce here the names and projects of this year's fellowship recipients.

CAARI/CAORC Postdoctoral Fellowships

Zuzana Chovanec
Tulsa Community College, Liberal Arts, Adjunct Instructor; University at Albany, Anthropology, Research Associate

My project will systematically examine how the changing characteristics of the natural world were incorporated into ancient Cypriot art during the Bronze and Iron Ages. At the crossroads of the Mediterranean geographically, ecologically, and culturally, Cyprus offers an excellent case for investigating the intersecting relationship between humanity, nature and art. The human-nature-art symbiosis will further be examined as it relates to shifting impacts on local environments, changing socioeconomic and politico-religious dynamics in the Near East, and the diverse ways in which these relationships are perceived, represented materially, and incorporated into cultural practice.

Charles A. Stewart
University of St. Thomas, Fine Arts and Drama Department

I will use the CAARI-CAORC fellowship to complete a book called Visual Culture in Late Antique Cyprus. My research focuses on the fourth-century rebuilding of Cyprus by Emperor Constantius II in 337 CE through to the "reconquest" by the Byzantine Empire in 965 CE.  I am analyzing how artworks and monuments correspond to urbanism and the geological topography. In Late Antiquity, both emulation and competition amongst ecclesiastical authorities contributed to the content and style of Cypriot art and architecture; this "visual culture" reflected wider regional trends, while also manifesting the local innovations and traditions.



CAARI Graduate Student Fellowships 
  
Helena Wylde Swiny Fellowship
Lisa Anderson
Yale University, Religious Studies

During my time in Cyprus, I will be working on an English translation of a treatise on monastic life written in Syriac by the 7th century writer Gregory of Cyprus.  Gregory was a member of the Church of the East, or the Nestorian Church, but his work is also known in the Syrian Orthodox tradition.  Most of this work has never been translated, although there is a Latin translation of the last part.  In addition to drawing more attention to a writer who has received very little previous study, I hope that this project will help to increase scholarly awareness of the rich diversity of Christian traditions in early medieval Cyprus.
 
Anita Cecil O'Donovan Fellowship
Caterina Scirè Calabrisotto
Ca'Foscari University of Venice, Humanities Department

My project aims to reconstruct the palaeodiet of the prehistoric communities that inhabited the island of Cyprus during the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. Stable isotope analyses of skeletal material collected from archaeological sites pertaining to the investigated period will be conducted in order to: 1) investigate the subsistence strategies and the dietary habits of the selected prehistoric communities, both in a diachronic and regional perspective; 2) clarify whether the pre and proto-historic inhabitants of Cyprus also relied on marine or fresh water resources and in what percentage; 3) identify individual patterns of consumption.

Danielle Parks Memorial Fellowship
Roxanne Radpour
UCLA, Materials Science and Engineering Department

My project comprises a comprehensive analytical survey of Hellenistic and Roman rock-cut tomb wall paintings in the eastern and western necropoleis of Nea Paphos. Discovered through salvage excavations in the late 1980s, the tombs are in poor condition today owing to environmental and anthropogenic effects. Using a variety of non-invasive, non-destructive port-able technologies ranging from forensic photo-graphy to analytical spectroscopy, I will acquire a wide range of chemical data and spectral images of the paintings.  These will provide new information and extensive documentation that will contribute to the development of 3D visualizations for humanities research.

   
 
CAARI is proud as it moves ahead to the festivities of June 10: the successful expansion of its library 25 years after moving to 11 Andreas Dimitriou Street shows its dynamism. CAARI is proud of the caliber of the research that is being done in its library, a pride only heightened by the Fellows who are introduced above.

All of this is possible because of CAARI's wonderful and generous friends. We thank you so sincerely, for gifts in the past, and for continued support of CAARI's ongoing work. 
 
Annemarie Weyl Carr
Vice President, CAARI Board
www.caari.org