KHK Visiting Research Fellow 2018
Professor of Eurasian and World History, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas

Stephen Rapp studied political science in a B.A. program and shifted his focus to history in his M.A and Ph.D. research. After gaining his Ph.D. in 1997, he joined Georgia State University as an assistant professor of Eurasian and World history in 1998, where he was promoted as an associate professor in 2004. From 2009 to 2012 he worked as adjunct assistant professor at the College of Liberal Studies and University Outreach, University of Oklahoma. Since 2012 he has been a member of the Sam Houston State University. There, he was appointed associate professor of Eurasian history in 2012 and professor with tenure in 2015. Additionally, he has been an associated researcher at Historisches Institut of the University of Berne, and an associate fellow at the Centre for the Exploration of Georgian Antiquities, Georgian University of St. Andrew, since 2009.

Stephen Rapp’s interdisciplinary research covers the entire Romano-Byzantine Mediterranean as well as Caucasia, Eastern Europe, Persia/Parthia/Iran, the Near East, and Central Eurasia from the Iron and Hellenistic Ages through the Mongol Empire and beyond. His thematic interests converge on cosmopolitan and cross-cultural phenomena, including the syncretic interface of Afro-Eurasia’s great religions; imperial “borderlands”; comparative kingship; and sea-based “worlds”, especially the nexus of the Mediterranean, Black, Caspian, and Red Seas. At the heart of his research is a cross-cultural interrogation of the Byzantine Commonwealth, the tri-continental abode of Eastern Christianity.

Education

• Ph.D., History, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1997
• M.A., History, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1992
• B.A., Political Science with Area Certificate from the Russian and Eastern European Institute (REEI), Indiana University, Bloomington, 1990

KHK Fellowship

Duration: April 2018 - July 2018
Project: Jews, Judaism, and their Imaginaries in Late Antique and Early Medieval Georgia