Mehran A. Nickbakht

Education

M.A., Ancient History & Latin Philology,
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (Germany)

Ph.D., Ancient History,
Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf (Germany)

Research and Teaching

Professor Nickbakht is an ancient historian with strong training in classical philology. He is especially interested in Roman history, Latin epigraphy, and Latin literature, in particular historiography, Augustan poetry, and epistolography.

He studied at the universities of Cologne and Göttingen in Germany, but spent also one year at the Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven (Belgium) and three years at the University of California, Berkeley.

While working at the University of Bern in Switzerland, Mehran Nickbakht received his Ph.D. from Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf (Germany) with a study entitled Tacitus and the SC de Cn. Pisone patre: Tacitus’ Working Methods in the Annals (in German). He has published several scholarly articles, e.g., on Vergil's Aeneid, Tacitus' Annals, Ovid's Ars Amatoria, and Augustus' adoption of Tiberius. Currently, he is working on Pliny's Epistles.

Mehran Nickbakht previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and at the University of Bern (Switzerland). He comes to us directly from Italy where he spent the last year doing research at the Swiss Institute in Rome.

Courses offered Spring 2008:

LATIN 132-01, Elementary Latin II
LATIN 232, Latin Poetry: Vergil's Aeneid
HIST 231, Athens in the Classical Age
CLAS 496, Senior Seminar

Recent Courses Taught at WU:

   • LATIN 131-01 Elementary Latin I
   • LATIN 231 Latin Prose: Pliny's Epistles
   • HIST 251 Rome: From Republic to Empire

Publications

Fighting for Liberty, Embracing Slavery: Tacitus, Annals 1.7.1, Museum Helveticum 63 (2006) 39-43 (pdf download).
Closure and Continuation: The Poetics of Aeneid 6.900-1, Philologus 150 (2006) 95-101 (pdf download).
Further Evidence of the Original Outline of Ovid's Ars Amatoria (1.771-2), Mnemosyne 58 (2005) 284-286 (pdf download).
Zur ovatio des jüngeren Drusus in den Fasti Ostienses und Fasti Amiternini, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 153 (2005) 264-266 (pdf download).
Tiberius' Adoption durch Augustus: rei publicae causa? (Vell. Pat. 2.104.1), Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft 1 (1998) 112-116 (pdf download).