Hellenic Studies at CHS: Reflections from Özge Acar, Early Career Fellow in Hellenic Studies 2025–2026

I am an Early Career Fellow in Hellenic Studies 2025–2026, at Harvard CHS Greece. Having trained in Turkey, I work on the language, history, and culture of the ancient Greek and Roman world, drawing on a wide range of material—literary texts, archaeological materials, architecture, and especially inscriptions, which have always fascinated me the most. Over the course of this fellowship, I explored how Greek cities under Roman rule responded to major political and cultural transformations, and how they preserved, negotiated, and redefined their local identities in this new world. A central focus of my research has been the ancient region of Caria in western and southwestern Anatolia—an area that I have experienced both in daily life and through many years of excavation and epigraphic research.

A key question guiding my research was how cities positioned themselves within the new political and cultural landscape under Roman rule, and through which means they made their pasts, traditions, and local character visible. I came to this question through reflections on wider questions of cultural identity at the intersection of local traditions and global frameworks, themes that continue to feel highly relevant today. While it is important to avoid anachronism, I have come to realize that the experiences of communities that became part of a vast imperial system during the Roman period, and the cultural strategies they developed, are not entirely distant from some of the ways we navigate identity and belonging today.

Building on this, my initial focus on the intellectuals of Caria seems to point in a similar direction. Poets, writers, and rhetoricians in antiquity were not only producers of literary texts but also important figures in shaping and carrying the cultural memory of their communities. They often worked with local cultural elements in creative ways, and in their interactions with other cities or with Roman authorities, local traditions and histories could become a means of communication and representation. In this way, local identity was continually reshaped and kept alive. (I had the opportunity to share the initial results of this research with the CHS community during the annual workshop held in Nafplio in September.)

Another aspect of my research concerns how local identity is expressed through written material, and more specifically through inscriptions. This perspective is based on the idea that inscriptions are not only texts that transmit information, but also meaningful forms of representation. With this in mind, I explored the inscriptions from Carian cities through language, rhetoric, and style. It seems that these choices indeed relate to questions of identity and self-representation, and that epigraphic habits can, in many cases, be linked to the ways communities chose to highlight certain aspects of their local character. This line of inquiry also formed the basis of a presentation I gave to the CHS community during our visit to Washington, DC. There, I spoke about Halikarnassos and its ways of honoring intellectual figures. The extraordinary honors granted to educated individuals (pepaideumenoi) can perhaps be seen not only as expressions of admiration but also as part of a broader civic language through which the city articulates something about its own identity.

One of the most valuable aspects of the fellowship for me has been the intellectual exchange with researchers working across very different fields. The fellowship community was very diverse, bringing together scholars working on different periods, regions, and methodologies. Yet, there was a strong sense of dialogue throughout all our discussions. What struck me most was how questions and comments from outside my own field could open up new ways of thinking and looking at my research. My visit to Washington, DC, was also inspiring on a personal level. Listening to the work of other fellows, exchanging ideas, and building connections that may develop into future collaborations were all very meaningful experiences. Additionally, some of the most unexpected inspiration came from museum visits, shared walks, and the conversations that unfolded along the way. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Center for Hellenic Studies for providing such an intellectually stimulating community, a supportive environment, and an inspiring fellowship experience.