Michael Shanks will be coming to speak at the Seminar in Cultural History Wednesday, February 23, 2011, on “Archaeology and Design History.”

Michael Shanks is the Omar and Althea Dwyer Hoskins Professor of Classical Archaeology in the Department of Classics at Stanford University, where he has taught since 2000. He is also Visiting Professor of Archaeology at Durham University in the United Kingdom and Visiting Professor of Humanities at the Humanities Institute of Ireland, University College Dublin, and has also taught at the University of Wales Lampeter in Ceredigion, United Kingdom. Professor Shanks received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. He has been the recipient of a number of fellowships, including a fellowship from the Centre d’Archéologie Classique, Paris-1 (Sorbonne), Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (1991-92), a teaching fellowship at University of Wales (Lampeter) (1992-93), and the Violet Andrews Whittier Faculty Fellowship at the Stanford Humanities Center.

Dr. Shanks has been Co-Director of the Stanford Humanities Lab since 2004 and was founder of the Stanford Strategy Studio. His lab at the Stanford Archaeology Center, called Metamedia, is pioneering the use of Web 2.0 technologies to facilitate collaborative multidisciplinary research networks in design history, media materialities, and long-term historical trends. Professor Shanks has worked on the archaeology of early farmers in northern Europe, Greek cities in the Mediterranean, has researched the design of beer cans, and the future of mobile media for Daimler Chrysler. Currently, he is exploring the English borders with Scotland in the excavations of the Roman town of Binchester, and investigating the Anglo-American antiquarian tradition as a key to a fresh view of the early history of science. His publications include ReConstructing Archaeology (1987), Social Theory and Archaeology (1987), Experiencing the Past (1992), Art and the Early Greek State (1999) and Theatre/Archaeology (2001).

Please RSVP and join us in the Lecture Hall at 38 West 86th Street, between Columbus Ave and Central Park West, at 5:45pm for a reception before the talk.