Featuring Susan Mattern

Franklin College of Arts and Sciences history professor Susan Mattern is featured on the UGA homepage this week. Highlighting her background, research interests and teaching beliefs, the Q&A sheds light on yet another talented Franklin faculty member and is worth a read.  Mattern's research interests vary, but her most recent book "Prince of Medicine: Galen in the Roman Empire" is a never before told narrative of medicine in Roman Society. The book description reads as follows:

The Prince of Medicine gives us Galen as he lived his life, in the city of Rome at its apex of power and decadence, among his friends, his rivals, and his patients. It offers a deeply human and long-overdue portrait of one of ancient history's most significant and engaging figures.

Mattern has been at UGA since 1998 and has found her niche here on campus teaching graduate and undergraduate students, doing research, writing books, serving on committees, giving talks and the like. Her interests in both detailed, obscure topics in history and seeing larger patterns over time spills over into her teaching.

What are your favorite courses and why?

I like to teach world history because to do that, I have to be learning constantly. I spent much of my early career doing very detailed research on sometimes obscure subjects, and it is fun to focus on big ideas and patterns across cultures. It is very easy to be wrong however, and I try to mix it up with projects that require more depth and keep my language skills engaged. 

What interests you about your field?

I find history since the industrial revolution pretty boring—states, societies, languages, cultures, economies all becoming more and more alike. Societies before the modern period were much more different from one another. At the same time, the changes that industrialization has brought about are so profound that it is critical to try to understand what they are and what life used to be like. As an analogy, I often have the thought that I am the last generation that will remember life before computers and before the Internet. Future generations will need to study the 20th century in order to know what the influence of the information revolution has been. It is the same with industrialization, only more so.

 

There's no shortage of professors to highlight with unique research interests and a love of teaching from the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. Contributions from professors like Matterns help make this campus what it is today. What a delight to see yet another Franklin faculty member featured on the UGA homepage.