Amanda Podany
Professor of History
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Pomona, CA 91768
office: (909) 869-3875
Welcome to my webpage.
Here at Cal Poly Pomona I regularly teach courses in the Ancient Near East and Egypt (310, 311, 312), History and Historians (390), History Methods (300), Senior Thesis (461-462), and Ancient World history (101). I also teach the graduate seminar on Readings in Ancient World History (540) and will be teaching the graduate methods course (501) in future. I also on occasion teach a course in Akkadian for interested students as History 499.
My fields of expertise lie in ancient Near Eastern history. My research has centered on the study of the Old Babylonian and Middle Babylonian periods in Mesopotamia and Syria. I have also worked extensively with teachers in a number of professional development programs in California.
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Degrees
Ph.D. in History (Ancient Near East) 1988
University of California, Los Angeles
Dissertation topic: The Chronology and History of the Hana Period
M.A. in History (Ancient Near East) 1984
University of California, Los Angeles
M.A. in Archaeology (Ancient Western Asia) 1982
University of London, Institute of Archaeology
B.A. in Anthropology 1980
University of California, Los Angeles
Academic Position
California State Polytechnic University Pomona
Professor 2001-present
Associate Professor 1996-2000
Assistant Professor 1990-1996
(on leave from 1993-1997 to direct the California History-Social Science Project)
History of Ancient Mesopotamia
History of Ancient Egypt
History of Ancient Israel and the Near Eastern Empires
History of World Civilization: The Ancient Period
History of World Civilization: The Middle Period
Western Civilization: the Ancient Period
History Methods
History and Historians
Senior Thesis
Introduction to Akkadian
Readings in Ancient World History (graduate seminar)
“Reading the Past” professional development program for teachers 1998-present
Co-director and Principal Investigator
California History-Social Science Project
Executive Director 1994-1997
Interim Executive Director 1993-1994
Cal Poly Pomona History-Social Science Project
Co-director 1992-1993
California Postsecondary Education Commission, 1998-2002
Eisenhower Professional Development Program
$545,000 grant for the “Reading the Past” Program, a four-year professional
development program for history-social science teachers, for Cal Poly Pomona
History Department. Written with Paivi Hoikkala: received
National Endowment for the Humanities 2000
Proposed to create a National History Project, to offer professional development for
K-12 teachers across the country; a collaboration of Cal Poly Pomona, the University of
Wisconsin, the Five College/Public School Partnership in Massachusetts, the University
Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Carnegie Mellon University. Written with
Loretta Lobes, National History Education Network: not received.
United States Department of Education 1999
Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education
Proposed a three-year program entitled “The Past in the Present” Investigating the
Modern World” to provide professional development for secondary school
teachers: grant competition canceled
United States Department of Education 1995-1998
$1.2 million for a three-year grant for “University-School Collaboratives for
New Teachers of History-Social Science” (Eisenhower Professional Development),
for CH-SSP: received
United States Department of Education 1994-1997
$480,603 three-year grant for “History-Social Science Professional Development
Schools in Los Angeles and Oakland” (Fund for Innovation in Education),
for CH-SSP: received
Scholarly Publications and Papers
On topics in Ancient Near Eastern History:
The Land of Hana: Kings, Chronology, and Scribal Tradition. Bethesda, Maryland: CDL Press (in press, forthcoming March 2002).
“Laws, Courts, and Contracts in Hammurabi’s Empire” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, San Francisco, January 5, 2002.
“The Changing Use of the Personal Name Determinative During the Second Millennium.” Paper presented at the American Oriental Society annual meeting, Portland, Oregon, March 13, 2000.
“The Role of Royalty in Legal Contracts from Late Bronze Age Syria” Paper presented at the ‘Middle East: Ancient to Modern’ conference, UC Santa Barbara, March 27, 1999.
“Some Shared Traditions between Hana and the Kassites” in Crossing Boundaries and Linking Horizons: Studies in Honor of Michael C. Astour on His 80th Birthday. Gordon D. Young, Mark W. Chavalas and Richard E. Averbeck, eds. Bethesda, Maryland: CDL Press (1997), 417-432.
“The Provenance of Tablets from Terqa in European Museums.” Paper presented at the American Oriental Society meeting, Philadelphia, March 1996.
“Defining the Rise and Fall of Syro-Mesopotamian Kingdoms: Limits and Possibilities Resulting from the Nature of the Evidence.” Paper presented at the American Historical Association annual meeting, January 6, 1995.
"An Adoption and Inheritance Contract from the Reign of Iggid‑Lim of Hana." With Gary M. Beckman and Gudrun Colbow, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 43-45 (1991-93) 39-51
"A Middle Babylonian Date for the Hana Kingdom." Journal of Cuneiform Studies 43-45 (1991-93) 53-62.
"A Reconsideration of the Dates of Late Hana Kings." Paper presented at the 202nd meeting of the American Oriental Society, Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 29, 1992.
"Descriptions of Land in Old Babylonian Legal Documents: Some Regional and Chronological Variations in Scribal Tradition." Paper presented at the 200th meeting of the American Oriental Society, Atlanta, March 1990.
"New Dissertations: ‘The Chronology and History of the Hana Period.'" Mar Sipri, November 1988.
"Kastiliasu and Isar‑Lim of Hana: Who were they?" Paper presented at the 198th meeting of the American Oriental Society, Chicago, 20 March 1988.
Terqa Data Base 1: OB Texts through the Fourth Season (Cybernetica Mesopotamica/Electronic Files). With G. Buccellati and O. Rouault. Undena Publications, Malibu (1987).
"The Social Background to the Witnessing of Legal Contracts in the Kingdom of Hana." Paper presented at the 197th meeting of the American Oriental Society, Los Angeles, 22 March 1987.
"The Khabur Basin Survey: The History and Epigraphy." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Anaheim, California, 25 November 1985.
On teaching history:
“Learning to Love History in Elementary School,” Social Studies Review 41/1 (Fall/Winter 2001) 8-10. Online at http://www.cobblestonepub.com/pages/eduideas.html.
“Primary Source Discussions in History Survey Courses.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association Pacific Coast Branch, Vancouver, British Columbia, August 2001.
“Principles of Effective History-Social Science Teaching and Professional Development” Chapter One in The Handbook for History-Social Science Professional Development, edited by Bill Hanna. Los Angeles: California History-Social Science Project (2000) 1-21.
“Using Primary Sources in the Study of History” in History-Social Science Framework for California Public Schools (1997), 147-150.
“Teachers’ Knowledge, Historians’ Knowledge, and Terminology” Paper presented at the 1997 meeting of the American Historical Association, New York, January 4, 1997.
“Teaching About Ancient Mesopotamia” Paper presented at the 25th annual meeting of the World History Association, Pomona, June 21, 1996.
“The Collaboration of Historians and Teachers: How Both Benefit.” Paper presented at the American Historical Association Pacific Coast Branch, August 1994.
"Preparing Teachers to Teach the California History and Geography Curriculum." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, April 2, 1994.
“Learning History Through Investigation” in Social Studies and the Young Learner, Vol. 7 No. 2 (1994), 30-32.