Matt Canepa likes a challenge. How else to explain this art history professor's ambition to write a book on ancient Iranian kingship, when his primary sources include ancient coins, texts in dead languages and ruins and rock carvings scattered across the Middle East. How else to explain him tackling an age most easily characterized by what preceded it (Alexander the Great's conquest of the Persian Empire) and what followed it (the advent of Islam), but not what occurred during it.
"This is a time period most people have ignored," says Canepa.
Not for long. Canepa has begun a research blitz on the various cultures that dominated greater Iran prior to the coming of Islam, with extended trips planned for Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and the University of Oxford in England. With the help of an $80,000 fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, he'll publish his research in his second book, Iran Between Alexander and Islam.
To write the book, Canepa analyzes texts, architecture and images to discern what constituted kingship in Iran. Oftentimes, he studies how surviving frescoes, sculpture, stucco carvings and metalwork express power. The fragmentary nature of Middle Iranian history, with many cultures vying for power over a vast region for hundreds of years, makes his project a challenging research endeavor, and one not many other scholars have attempted. Studying Middle Iran from Charleston, far from the desert sites so critical to his research, may seem like a hardship at first glance, but Canepa says the College's support of his preliminary research into Iran has been "absolutely crucial."
"They allow you to start a project and get it to a point where you can get a national grant," he says.
Lately, Canepa has been on a roll. Beyond being awarded the prestigious fellowship, Canepa was inducted into the Society of Antiquaries of London in March. This fall, his first book, The Two Eyes of the Earth: The Art and Ritual of Kingship Between Rome and Sasanian Iran will be published by the University of California Press at Berkeley. Canepa, who has been at the College since 2005, says the idea and title for his second book came from a class he taught by the same name. He credits his colleagues in the art history and Classics departments for contributing to a stimulating academic environment and encouraging him to perform his fascinating research.
"It's good," he says, "to be in an environment where you have people thinking of these different cultures from different points of view." 