I am currently a lecturer in Classics and Contemporary Civilization for the Columbia College Core Curriculum (2011-2013), and I served as the Curator of Papyri in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library in Butler Library until February 2013, where I organized research, teaching, outreach, and digital projects related to the papyrus and epigraphy collections. I am now working on a book, provisionally titled Contract in Roman Egypt, which is a study of contract in Roman Egypt from the perspective of enforcement, investigating how and to what extent contract was a viable economic institution in the Roman world. Although my recent focus has been on law and economics and law and society in the ancient world, I have wide-ranging interests in many other areas of social, intellectual, and economic history, such as education, numismatics, magic, religion, and the literature of the Roman Empire. My other current projects include: editing a volume with Uri Yiftach-Firanko (Hebrew University) and Dennis Kehoe (Tulane) on transaction costs in the ancient economy, to which I am contributing a chapter on the law and economics of contract in Roman Egypt; editions of several papyri; two catalogs of Roman coins from the Dakhleh Oasis; three related articles on law, magic, and economics in the Roman world; and my M.Phil. thesis “In loco aegrotantium: Sin and Sickness in the Pachomian Koinonia.”
My C.V.
Please send all inquires and comments to dmratzan@gmail.com.
