Faculty

Allaire Stallsmith

Associate Professor of History

PhD University of Pennsylvania, 1976

Allaire Stallsmith began studying ancient Greek religion while still an undergraduate and earned her PhD in History at University of Pennsylvania in 1976. Her dissertation, The Attic Festivals of Demeter and Their Relation to the Agricultural Year, was later published by Arno Press in 1981. After she finished graduate school, her interest in ancient agriculture led her into ethnoarchaeology or landscape history and the history of agriculture, particularly in Crete. She organized the Alexander the Great Film Festival at Towson University in 2005. Her research focuses on ancient Greece, particularly Greek Religion, focusing on social, cultural, economic, and political history. She is currently researching Demeter, the ancient pan-Hellenic goddess of grain and agriculture.

Selected Publications

• “Interpreting the Athenian Thesmophoria”, Classical Bulletin 84 (2009): 28-45
• “The Name of Demeter Thesmophoros,” Greek,Roman and Byzantine Studies 48 (2008):115-131.
• “Η υπογραφή του Βιτσέντζου Κορνάρου στον Ἀγιο Αντώνιο, στη Μυρσίνη,” Amaltheia 38 (2007): 49-60.
• "One Colony, Two Mother Cities: Cretan Agriculture under Venetian and Ottoman Rule", Hesperia Supplements, Between Venice and Istanbul: Colonial Landscapes in Early Modern Greece 40 (2007): 151-171.

Recent Lectures and Presentations

• “Stelae from the Sanctuary of Demeter Malophoros in Selinus”, Archaeological Institute of America, Annual Meeting, Philadelphia PA, January 9th, 2009.
• ”The Cult of Demeter Malophoros at Selinus,” Association of Ancient Historians, Annual Meeting, April 11, 2008.
• “Women’s Mysteries and Thesmophoria,” American Philological Association, Annual Meeting, Chicago IL, January 4, 2008.