College of Arts and Sciences professor James Wiseman made his first trip to Greece in 1954. He will return this spring after a two-year absence, funded by a grant from the Onassis Foundation.
Wiseman, who teaches archaeology, art history and classics, is one of only 12 full university professors from around the world offered the grant, and the only one in the nation.
“It’s a nice honor,” Wiseman said. “I’m certainly very pleased to receive this award.”
The Alexander S. Onassis Foundation, created in honor of the son of Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, provides a number of grants each year to professors, scholars, artists and teachers, according to the foundation’s web site. The program’s intent, according to the website is the “dissemination of the Hellenic language, culture and history abroad.”
“I think this foundation has done a lot of good,” Wiseman said. “I’m very impressed with the diversity of the fields [of fellows selected] and the quality of the scholarship.”
He was nominated for the Onassis grant by a professor at the University of Athens, he said. Wiseman then filled out various forms and received notice he had won the grant.
While in Greece this spring, Wiseman said he plans to focus on the Nikopolis Project, an archaeological and geological study he directed through the 1990s.
“The idea was to study the changes in the relationship between the human population and the land,” Wiseman said. The scope of the project ranges from the first appearance of humans in the area to medieval times, he said.
The project utilized a number of archaeologists and geologists, both American and Greek, Wiseman said.
The first volume of the study is already at press, he said, and his time in Greece will allow him to work on the second.
“It’s hard to write when you teach full-time at a university and have other projects in the summer,” Wiseman said.
Wiseman’s interest in Greece and its history dates to his early childhood, he said.
“Mythical figures like Jason and Herakles were earlier heroes for me than Superman,” he said.
His first visit to Greece came when he was serving in the Navy during the Korean War in 1954. He returned as a student in 1959, and since then, visited almost annually.
“At one time I was able to say that I spent half my life in Greece,” Wiseman said. “This is not the case anymore.”
He said he is looking forward to returning to Greece after his two-year absence, which he said has been the longest he has been away from Greece since he was 19.
“It’s a very pleasant prospect to go back to the land I love and people I so much admire,” Wiseman said.
Wiseman is a past president of the Archaeological Institute of America and has won several awards and fellowships, including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a Dumbarton Oaks Fellowship, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has studied Greek archaeology for more than 40 years.
“I’ve been very fortunate,” Wiseman said. “I’ve worked for a number of decades in very pleasant settings, doing things I enjoy doing — that is, studying the ancient world, especially the Mediterranean world.”