Classics Faculty Classical Studies Home                       created:5/20/05 updated 1/20/06			Michael S. Williams Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics at Willamette 2005-2006 M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D., King's College, University of Cambridge During his one year here (Fall 2005-Spring 2006), Professor Williams breathed new life into Willamette's ancient history program. A historian of Roman Late Antiquity, his dissertation focused on the use of biblical imagery in the late-antique lives of the saints. While at Willamette, he reworked these ideas into a book entitled "Authorised Lives: Christian Biography between Eusebius and Augustine" (under contract with Cambridge University Press). At Willamette, Prof. Williams taught a very popular survey on Roman history, a similarly well-enrolled course on the governing of the Roman Empire (accompanied by an advanced Latin reading class on the letters of Pliny the Younger), a class on Christian hagiography (Lives of the Desert Saints), and beginning Latin languages classes. Before coming to Willamette, Professor Williams spent a year helping to develop teaching materials for the Cambridge Latin Course. In addition, he taught Roman history at the University of Cambridge, at Roehampton University, and at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He left Willamette to fill a two-year sabbatical replacement post at his alma mater, the University of Cambridge in the UK.   Courses Taught Fall 2005:    • LATIN 131 Elementary Latin I    • HIST 251 Rome: Republic, Empire, and Memory to A.D. 600    • IDS 123W World Views: War and its Alternatives Courses Taught Spring 2006:    • LATIN 132 Elementary Latin II    • LATIN 360 (4th Sem. Latin) Readings in Pliny's Letters (=CLAS 249 + 1 extra hour)    • CLAS/REL 226 (IT) Lives of the Desert Saints    • CLAS/HIST 249 (US) Ruling the Early Roman Empire