Episode 130 - Carolina López-Ruiz: "Expand your worldview and knowledge in university."

Professor Carolina López-Ruiz from the Divinity School and the Department of Classics shares how her passion for the ancient world started from a young age, and her determination to have a career related to this sector led her to appreciate various languages and the cultural understanding it opens up for her. Tune in to hear her talk about her career from the very beginning to her latest book on the history and cultural impact that the Phenicians had on the ancient Mediterranean.

Transcript

Stephen 00:00
Hello, and welcome to The Course. I'm your host, Stephen, and today I'm speaking with Professor Carolina López-Ruiz of the Divinity School and the Department of Classics. Professor López-Ruiz holds a PhD from the University of Chicago Committee on the Ancient Mediterranean World, and is the author and editor of multiple books, the most recent of which is Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean, which won the 2023 American Schools of Overseas Research Frank Moore Cross Book Award, as well as that year's Mediterranean Seminar Book Prize.

She's here today to talk to us about how studying the Phoenicians sheds new light on the ancient world, what it actually takes to study their culture, and how she became a University of Chicago professor. 

Professor López-Ruiz, welcome to The Course. It's lovely to have you. How are you this morning, 

Carolina López-Ruiz 00:42
Thank you very much, Stephen. I'm very happy to be here. I am in Greece, looking at the Mediterranean Sea in a very hot day. I'm very happy to be talking to you. 

Stephen 00:52
Sorry to tear you away from that view but thank you so much for making the time. Could you please tell us just quickly and, you know, of course, in layman's terms, what your position is at UChicago and what that really means.

Carolina López-Ruiz 01:03
Right. So I am a professor. I think my official title is of Ancient Mediterranean Religions and Mythologies in the Divinity School and the Department of Classics. I am basically between the two units, Divinity School and Classics, 

Stephen 01:21
Tell me about your early interests and what you thought you wanted to do with your life when you were a kid. 

Carolina López-Ruiz 01:28
Right? A small question, 

Stephen 01:30
Yeah. 

Carolina López-Ruiz 01:31
But I guess that's what The Course is about. So let's say I am one of those, I was one of those kids who kind of knew or thought they knew what they wanted to do when they were little and I actually did it. So I know it doesn't have to be that way at all. And it often doesn't happen that way.

But I don't know, since I can remember and I was reading, you know, even comic books about that involved ancient world or mythology or romance or asterisks, you know, all these sorts of things. I just loved, I just got very immersed in the ancient world and loved history even in those kinds of quirky ways. And I love going to archaeological sites and museums, all of that. 

So anyway, I had an idea when I was a teenager, let's say when you really start thinking a little bit more about it. I, my idea was to be an archaeologist. I didn't have a very good idea what that would entail really, but, you know, Indiana Jones and all that, a very fantastic way, but just exploring the world and, you know, and I loved antiquities and, but, as I went into high school and so when I realized I really love ancient languages, so I was doing Latin in high school, and then a little bit of Greek, ancient Greek as well, and I really liked it, I, you know, I was good at it. 

And so my dilemma going into college was whether to do the languages, like to go into philology, let's say classics, more strictly speaking, or doing history, like ancient history slash, or archaeology, right? There were, because there are different ways. 

I grew up in Spain, the system is very different than in the US, right? You basically in high school, you have to choose, it's a sort of humanities track or a science track, in a much more strict way than in the U.S. You have some electives or some, you know, advanced courses or whatever. 

No, you really have to choose and that determines what kinds of degrees you can get into in university. And then once you go into the university, it's like going into graduate school almost in terms that it is, you know, you go directly into law or into medicine or into archaeology or philology or whatever, right?

So it's different. I think in a lot of Europe it is that way. So that explains why I went from high school to classical philology. That's how the degree was called. So it was five years then of Greek and Latin linguistics and all of that. So I decided on the languages, after, you know, discussing with my teachers and my parents, especially my father, my parents, which way to go.

And people seem to think, I think correctly, that the languages require more kind of more systematic instruction, or you might benefit more of that kind of by levels than, say, history, where I mean, I guess you can always, year towards history later or read on your own or whatever.

So anyway, so I went into the languages mainly, and I was in Madrid, in the Autonomous University of Madrid. And then I, my obvious, choice was to keep going, keep studying, go to graduate school, whatever I could do. And I spent one year in Israel, at the Hebrew university doing whatever I wanted. It was one of these exchange years for, with a fellowship and I could choose what I do.

So there I took some archaeology courses. I took some Hebrew, some Arabic and explored at the same time I had already started studying, uh, modern Hebrew in, uh, during college and just because I really, I, you know, I really, I wasn't satisfied with Greek and Latin. I wanted to learn, ideally, all the languages of the Mediterranean, if I could.

Stephen 05:18
It sounds like you're getting close, yeah. 

Carolina López-Ruiz 05:22
And I, of course, you cannot do it in a lot of depth, for all of them, and the Arabic, unfortunately, got a little bit hanging behind. But I wasn't sure what to do with all of that. What I knew was that this will, this will be relevant for my, when I talk about my research later. What I knew is that I was intrigued by the Mediterranean as a place of cultural encounters.

I'm not sure I have the vocabulary to even say that back then. It was just, I, you know, I just thought of how I was fascinated by the idea that the Greeks would have encountered people who were speaking Hebrew or Aramaic or Akkadian or whatever. And, and not, you know, not the idea of the classical Greek world as kind of bound, you know, in itself.

So, I wasn't sure what to do with that. I just wanted to learn more languages. And then I participated in excavations in Israel for two summers that kind of put me in a better position to apply for graduate school in the United States. So I got a scholarship that allowed me to go to, you know, any program I wanted.

And that's where I found, among other options, but the best one I found the program in Chicago, actually the University of Chicago, this graduate program called, it was called the Committee on the Ancient Mediterranean World. And it was kind of based on classics, the classics program. but for people who wanted to do classics and something else.

So classics and the Near East was the most typical thing, people doing Greek culture and Egyptian culture and the interactions among them, or Greek and Mesopotamian, or in my case, what I was going for was Greek and Semitic cultures, especially what we call Northwest Semitic, that is Hebrew, Canaanite, Aramaic, Phoenicians, you know, kind of the Levant.

So I did this program at the University of Chicago and it was perfect. It was exactly what I wanted, and there is where I, you know, I found the ways to, channel these various interests into a course of study that was precisely about this, like, about how the ancient Greek world was shaped by its connections and exchange with the Near Eastern world, right? 

Stephen 07:48
Sounds like you were really trying to learn every language that you possibly could. Where do you think that impulse comes from or that interest?

Carolina López-Ruiz 07:58
It’s hard to say, you know, when you start doing something, there are people who start doing physics and mathematics and they love it and they, and I, you know, it's beyond my comprehension. Every of these, every one of these systems, right, are the same with mathematics, are their own universe, their own language, right, in a way.

So when you, for me, ancient languages, for that matter, modern languages, are really the gateway into the culture, right? Like, there is nothing like that. learning even a little bit of a language to start getting a sense, a glimpse of that culture. So for the ancient languages, it's the same besides I have fun reading and translating.

I love translating. I love analyzing, looking at linguistic problems and all that. But especially it was this sense that I don't know that if you're going to work on trying to understand a culture in antiquity or several cultures and how they interact and how they borrow from each other and whatnot. You need to engage directly with the text that that you have. and for that, you really need the training, right? To be able to read those texts. And so it's, you know, it's you know, it's basically that and then as you do it, also, you're engaging with the whole tradition of philology, right?

For, say, for Greek and Latin, there is so much also for Hebrew and for other languages that, you know, Another aspect I like is that sense of kind of continuing in a line of studying and keeping knowledge alive of these centuries long traditions, right?

And that we are kind of part of a kind of a chain of not losing it and studying them as so many people have done before us. And there is something kind of interesting about that for me or rewarding about that. 

Stephen 09:56
I'm curious if you have any advice or, or words of wisdom you might pass to someone who, who has that type of interest, but is a little bit intimidated about taking that many language classes. ‘Cause I mean, you know, in my experience, learning a language in a university can be like pretty intense.

It's a lot of work goes into any language learning, right? So like, what would you say to people who are maybe hesitant? 

Carolina López-Ruiz 10:28
Yeah. Well, I would say if you really like it, do it. I mean, if you have the opportunity and you really enjoy it and it comes relatively easy. I mean, it's never easy. So when easy, I mean that you're not struggling, like it's something that is like horribly difficult for you, but something that you can see that it pays off, right?

Therefore, you put in, pays off and you enjoy it, then do it as much as you can. It doesn't need to be that you become a classicist or a Latinist, but if you have the chance to learn, you know, it's something that will, that you have for life. You know, you can read your texts if you want, or you can just learn other languages later.

So I don't know, I am of the opinion that university is to expand your worldview and your knowledge in as many ways as you, as you want to, and as you can, then we are all forced to choose, you know, make choices of what are you going to do now so that you can get a job in that.

But there is a lot of flexibility built into the American system, again, in contrast to the European system. They each have their advantages. in a sense, you know, you can get more specialized quicker in, in Europe, but on the other hand, I love that flexibility of the American college where you can explore.

We didn't have that. And, you know, I wouldn't have minded being able to do a bit more than classical philology. So I think take advantage of that. If you can do a major in nuclear engineering and do a minor in classics, right. Or in Near Eastern languages or in Hebrew Bible or in Arabic.

It's very doable. A lot of people do that and that's satisfying enough. It's not a lot of coursework to do a minor. A lot of people do double majors too, just for the sake of it. Even if they're going to be, you know, whatever lawyers. Then you may actually end up going into graduate school and doing what, you know, the humanities thing.

There's no harm in adding bad knowledge. Yeah, go for it. 

Stephen 12:39
Well, and I was also curious about your decision to go to grad school in the US. I mean, was there a particular reason you felt that you should, you know, should be pursuing this on a different continent or like, what was the thought process there? 

Carolina López-Ruiz 12:54
Right. That's a good question. I could have done something like maybe there perhaps in Europe, but maybe not because. Again, because of the different system, because you're specialized in Europe, you're specialized in the first degree, right? In the BA, let's say, then the PhD, if anybody's familiar with the British system, for instance, they go straight into dissertation.

Like they basically, they go from a BA to a PhD and in two years, they're done. They do the right thesis and that's it. I didn't want that. I wanted to keep studying, spare what I was saying before of adding language training and all that. I wanted a program that where I could learn more of these languages.

So I studied Hebrew Bible and I studied Ugaritic and Phoenician. Anyway, these other Semitic languages that are related. I couldn't have done that as easily somewhere else. So I was, you know, I knew that the American system and American higher education is really, I mean, it's really probably, you know, the best in the world and that it offered this, again, this flexibility and I wanted to keep, I wanted to keep going deeper in this direction. 

And biographically, there is a little autobiographical note there because my parents studied in the US. I mean, they're Spanish and Colombian, but my father did a PhD in North Carolina, and I was actually born there.

So I am an American citizen by birth, but then they moved back to Spain, where he was a professor. But you know, I had, I have to admit that I had this, you know, this family history of studying in the U.S., you know, in for graduate school. So it wasn't destiny. It wasn't something I had to do, but I think I wanted to follow also in those footsteps. 

Stephen 14:50
Who are a few people who were crucial to your academic journey? Be they professors you had or, or just people around you? 

Carolina López-Ruiz 15:00
Yeah, well as becoming a recording thing, but my father, I would say was very crucial in, you know, promoting or fostering these interests that I have of in history and the ancient world, like he would take me on field trips and you know, he took me to Rome when I was 11, he took me Jerusalem when I was 15, and you know, so we would travel some and buy me books and all that. 

So i mean he saw what I liked and instead of like, encouraging me, which many parents may do like, oh, that's why you're going to do with that, you know, you need to study sciences or whatever.

He encouraged it and gave me confidence that this was something I could do. I never saw an impediment. And so he was tremendously inspiring. And he still reads the things I write and publish, and we talk about everything. So he's really been a companion in this journey. And then of course, different professors, even from my high school Latin teacher, who was a wonderful woman, very serious, very serious and stern as a, you know, typical Latin, a stereotypical Latin.

Stephen 16:12
Yes. The classic. Yeah. 

Carolina López-Ruiz 16:14
She was like, no, she was not kidding, but really fair and a very good person and, yeah, anyway, and a good example. And yeah, and then, I don't know, it would be too hard to, you know, point fingers at so many colleagues and even students and, you know, that you interact with through the years. But in terms of early years, yeah, I would say, my dad.

Stephen 16:48
Funny that stereotype of a Latin teachers also exists on the other side of the Atlantic. Definitely, been my experience. 

Carolina López-Ruiz 16:58
Yeah, and if I can add in terms of high school, in fact, other high school teachers, you know, and for people out there who are still in those stages, my philosophy teacher, my art history teacher, I had conversations with them that I know were very important when I was trying to make this decision.

Do I do philology? Do I do archaeology or history? The encouragement, I remember one of them saying, just do both, you know, like, Yeah, it's not that hard. You can do it. You know, you're a very good student. And of course I didn't do both, I mean both careers at the same time. But I did do a lot of things and study other languages and, you know, they give you sometimes just somebody just giving you the confidence to the mythologized, let's say a university ahead of you and think, yeah.

Yeah, regular people can do this. I can do it. I'm a good student. So anyway, yeah. 

Stephen 17:54
Well, I wanted to ask, you know, we oftentimes we'll ask people like how their experiences abroad have impacted them. It sounds like your research has taken you around the Mediterranean quite a bit. But I wanted to ask specifically, your, I believe your most recent, book won an award from the American Schools of Overseas Research, if I have that right?

Carolina López-Ruiz 18:00
Yes, yes.

Stephen 18:05
Could you tell us a little bit about that project? Like what it entailed?

Carolina López-Ruiz 18:22
So yes, so this book, it actually won three awards, but that's the kind of the most important one. Yeah, I didn't think I was ever going to write a book that would win awards. You never know how that goes. But it is, yeah, it is kind of the combination of a lot of years of research on definitions. 

Who are these people from? What is today the coast of Lebanon, a bit of Israel, so Tyre, Byblos, Sidon, those cities. So, definitions are known as, you know, sailors in the ancient Mediterranean. They set up colonies and settlements. and harbors like in all over the place in the Mediterranean. We're talking about the ninth, late ninth, eighth, seventh centuries BCE, right?

So we're talking about the, what we call the Iron Age in Mediterranean parlance and in archaeological parlance. So the Iron Age, we're talking about the early Mediterranean history before the classical era of, you know, Pericles and the Parthenon and the Persian Wars and all of that. A couple of centuries earlier. 

So as I was saying, my research is driven by this interest in kind of finding these points of intersection between the Greek world and kind of the classical, what we call the classical world and these other cultures and definitions were really everywhere in the Mediterranean and they interacted a lot with the Greeks. 

For instance, the Greeks write in an alphabet that they borrowed, they adapted from the Phoenician alphabet. And through that is that the Romans also, you know, the Etruscans and the Romans also adapted their alphabets. So basically we use what was a Phoenician alphabet originally. We owe it to them.  

The Greeks write a lot about the Phoenicians. They interacted in many ways. So basically this is a book where I put together, you know, the research I've been doing in how the Phoenicians interact with different people. Not only the Greeks, but even in Spain, where they come from.

So they settled there in all of the southern coast, even the coast of Portugal, there are Phoenician settlements from the late ninth century on. So, they interact with, say, Iberian groups, you know, there are many different groups, but people from that area, they interact with peoples in North Africa, where they also settle like at Carthage and other places.

They interact with the Sicilians, with the Italians, you know, with the Etruscans, and of course, with the Greeks, with the Israelites too, and so on. So my book, basically, I follow this trail of, kind of, the Phoenicians everywhere trail, you know, and what are they doing in every place? Who are they? What are, who are the people who are there? What is their culture like? And show that, you know, there are these very interesting interactions and cultural influences, kind of, in both directions sometimes. Adaptations of Phoenician culture in the local culture and then how this all this, this happens in all these areas, including Greece, creating a sort of network of a very, kind of, interconnected culture.

A new urban alphabetized culture that a lot of these groups shared. And this happened because of definition kind of trail, right? And definition, the common ground of interaction with these Phoenicians. So that's the kind of the main argument. So I call the book Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean, meaning that that was the first time that the ancient Mediterranean world was connected in this way, not only by trade and economic activity, but also by some cultural trends and the technological adaptations and so on that were shared all across. Then this happens before, let's say the Mediterranean gets more split between the expansion of Rome in the West and, you know, the Hellenistic Empire in the East and so on, and that's kind of a different story.

But in these earlier centuries, there is really this almost global trending network of at least elite cultures and so on. So that is kind of what the book is about in a nutshell that has kind of culminated a lot of the work I've been doing, you know, to the year. So I am glad you got some awards. 

Stephen 24:19
Congratulations! What, I'm curious, and I guess we shouldn't linger on this for too much longer, but I'm really curious, what were your sources? Like, are we talking about Phoenician sources?

Carolina López-Ruiz 24:39
That's an excellent question, because there is, there are a lot of challenges in the study of definitions. And one of them is precisely the sources. Why? Well, because we don't have the kind of corpus body of texts that we have for the Greeks and the Romans, right? Or for the Hebrew, you know, for the Israelites for that matter in the Hebrew. So we don't have that manuscript tradition that has brought from the past, this whole body of, you know, of knowledge of history. We don't have that for the Phoenicians or for that matter, from anybody else in the Mediterranean in that period. So, it just doesn't happen. That's the exception. 

So what we have on the Phoenician side is a archaeological record. A lot of sites, there is really a huge amount of archaeological discovery of this period of Phoenician culture, pottery, settlements, sanctuaries, art, you name it, and then inscriptions. So we have about 10,000 Phoenician inscriptions. Most of them, 90 percent of them are very small and formulaic and, you know, funerary or whatever. They don't give you narratives, right? And then there are some that are longer, that are like royal and give you some kind of narrative. But in any case, they give you, you know, interesting data.

So we have inscriptions, we have archaeology, and then we have the Greek sources and the Latin, the Roman sources that speak about definitions, which of course are not exactly unbiased or, you know, impartial sources. And they tell us whatever they choose to tell us. And they don't tell us what we want to know necessarily, but that's what we have.

And they are very important, very useful and, but very external, obviously mediated and limited to certain periods and certain events like the Punic Wars or the Persian Wars or things like that. So yeah, so it's a variety of things, written sources, archaeological sources, art, everything you can get your hands on. 

Stephen 26:48
What is something that you are hoping to do like down the road? I’m curious if you have any projects in mind or just like areas in mind that you're hoping to turn to in the future.

Carolina López-Ruiz 27:00
I think I will just keep digging at the, digging figuratively at, you know, Phoenician materials and trying to, I've been trying to just focus on some specific things like, you know, artistic motifs or mythological motifs or some particular source. I'm just trying to get go deeper into some aspects to just bring light on some aspects of their culture, but also I have an archaeological dig so that keeps me pretty busy.

And this is going to be the third summer we have a dig with the University of Chicago and the University of Malaga in Spain. And it's a Phoenician site and we've been digging it for three years. It's going to be now. And that requires a lot of work also later to publish it and study the materials and all that. What I want to keep trying to find out is who are these Phoenicians who are in Spain, for instance, right? Like what are they doing there exactly? Why did they get there? How do they interact with the locals? That kind of thing. There is a lot of unanswered questions, so I think my projects will be, you know, a bit more tied to the archaeology, perhaps. We'll see. 

Stephen 28:09
Figurative and literal digging. 

Carolina López-Ruiz 28:11
Exactly. Yes, totally.

Stephen: 28:14
Well, thank you. You know, we like big questions here. So, I'm going to ask a pretty broad one just to wrap up.  What would you say you find most fulfilling about what you do? 

Carolina López-Ruiz 28:29
Oh, talk about big questions. 

Stephen 28:33
Yeah, I can't get much bigger than that, right? 

Carolina López-Ruiz 28:34
In a broad sense, I just find very fulfilling the fact that I can do what I am passionate about, what I like, and that, you know, I am paid for it and, you know, and I can transmit it and I feel it's just such a privilege. So that, you know, that is a great satisfaction. that, you know, not everybody has the opportunity to do that. 

You know, I feel very privileged. So that is very satisfying. But being more granular, I guess, when there are those aha moments, it's really fulfilling when you have like an idea that somethings come together, you know, and you're like, Bingo. I found, you know, I found the linchpin to this argument, or I found a new piece of evidence, or you have just a funny idea that you're like, oh, would that work?

And then you start working on it, you know, it's just very fun, to have those moments every now and then. So yeah, there are too many things, traveling and interacting with new colleagues, new students, just the social aspect of the academic profession is very fulfilling to me. 

Stephen 29:40
Thank you, Professor López-Ruiz for your time today, and Course Takers, if you enjoyed today's interview, please check out the other ones. Leave us a comment, subscribe, follow, and share this episode with your friends and family. 

You can find out more about the University of Chicago through uchicago.edu, or the university's campus in Hong Kong through uchicago.hk. Stay tuned for more, and thanks for listening.