John W. I. Lee is Associate Professor of History  at the University of California at Santa  Barbara. His research interests include Classical  Greece and Achaemenid Persia, ancient  warfare, the Greek author Xenophon, and  the history of classical studies in the United  States. He is the author of A Greek Army on the  March: Soldiers and Survival in Xenophon's Anabasis  (Cambridge 2007) and The Persian Empire, a  DVD lecture series for The Great Courses  (2012), and co-editor of a volume on comparative  ancient and modern borderlands (University  of Nebraska Press 2016).

John Wesley Gilbert (ca. 1863-1923)  was born in Hephzibah, Georgia. He studied  at Paine College in Augusta, then received  his B.A. from Brown University in 1888. As a  Brown M.A. student in 1890-1891, Gilbert  became the first African-American to attend t he American School of Classical Studies at  Athens. Drawing on Gilbert's own writings  along with newly discovered archival sources,  this talk examines the historical significance  of Gilbert's year in Greece, including his  participation in the American School's excavations  at the ancient city of Eretria on the  island of Euboea.