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Univ.-Prof. Dr. J. Cale Johnson

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Professor for the History of Knowledge in the Ancient World, Director

Address
Arnimallee 10
Room 006
14195 Berlin
Telephone
+49 30 838 69923
Email
cale.johnson@fu-berlin.de

Office hours

consultation hours by appointment

please contact the office:

wissensgeschichte@geschkult.fu-berlin.de

+49 30 828-55256

Vita

  • August 2020 — W3-Professur for the History of Knowledge in Ancient Times, Freie Universität Berlin
  • 2018-2020 — Senior Lecturer, University of Birmingham (Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology)
  • 2017-2018 — University Lecturer in Assyriology, Universiteit Leiden (Institute for Area Studies)
  • 2008-2017 — Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter, Freie Universität Berlin (Institut für Altorientalistik, TOPOI, SFB 980, ERC-BabMed)
  • 2004-2006 — Lecturer / Postdoc, University of California, Los Angeles (Department of Near Eastern Language and Cultures / Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative)
  • 2000-2004 — Ph.D. in Assyriology, University of California, Los Angeles (Department of Near Eastern Language and Cultures)
  • 1999-2001 — Zweijähriges Monbusho-Stipendium (um bei Kazuya Maekawa zu studieren), Kyoto University (Institute for Research in Humanities)
  • 1996-2000 — M.A. in Near Eastern Studies, University of California, Los Angeles (Department of Near Eastern Language and Cultures)
  • 1994-1995 — M.A. in Religious Studies, University of Chicago (Divinity School)
  • 1989-1993 — B.A. in Religious Studies, University of California, Davis (Religious Studies)

Gutachtertätigkeit / Herausgeberschaften

WiSe 2024/25

  • Divination in the Ancient World (with Joost Hazenbos)
  • Reading Divinatory Text (with Joost Hazenbos)
  • Agriculture in Ancient China and Mesopotamia: Theories and Practices (with Dagmar Schäfer)
  • Knowledge and its Resources: Concepts, Methods, Historiographies (with Etienne Benson and Dagmar Schäfer)
  • Mythology from the Sumerians to the Presocratics II
  • Fields, Foods and Festivals in Proto-cuneiform 

SoSe 2024

  • Ancient Medicine in Translation
  • Medicine in the Ancient World
  • Mythology from the Sumerians to the Presocratics I
  • Late Uruk Notational Practices
  • The Origin of Writing in Eurasia: Anthropological Perspectives

WiSe 2023/24

  • Divination in the Ancient World
  • Reading Divinatory Texts in Translation
  • Knowledge and Its Resources: Concepts, Methods, Historiographies (with Dagmar Schäfer and Christine von Oertzen)

SoSe 2023

  • Beyond Image and Text: Multimodal Artefact Analysis in Ancient Studies (with Elisa Roßberger)
  • Understanding and Describing Image-Text-Objects form Ancient Western Asia (with Elisa Roßberger)
  • Exploring ancient Near Eastern culture through poetry and metaphor (with Grace Jeongyeon Park) 

WiSe 2022/23

  • Divination in the Ancient World
  • Reading Mesopotamian Divinatory Texts
  • Notation, Writing Systems and Metapragmatic Awareness
  • Agriculture, Slavery and the State in the Ancient World
  • Knowledge and its Resources: Concepts, Methods, Historiographies (with Christina von Oertzen and Anke Te Heesen)

SoSe 2022

  • Medicine in the Ancient World
  • Reading Babylonian Medicine

WiSe 2021/22

  • Divination in the Ancient World
  • Reading Mesopotamian Divinatory Texts

SoSe 2021

  • Perspectives on the Inner Body in the Ancient Near East (gemeinsames Seminar mit Marburg und Leiden)
  • Medicine in the Ancient World
  • Reading Babylonian Medicine

WiSe 2020/21

  • Mythos von den Sumerern bis zu den Vorsokratikern
  • Verwaltungs- und Rechtsgattungen im 1. Jt. der Sklaverei
  • Wissensgeschichte: Notation und Bewusstsein

Research Focus

  • Babylonian Medicine
  • Proto-Keilschrift und der Ursprung der Schrift
  • Sumerische Literatur und Grammatik
  • Diakritische Feste und Wirtschaftsgeschichte
  • Vorderasiatische Rechtsgeschichte

Publications: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8638-2617

Academia: https://fu-berlin.academia.edu/CaleJohnson

Monographs

  • The Class Reunion—An Annotated Translation and Commentary on the Sumerian Dialogue ‘Two Scribes’ (co-authored with Markham J. Geller, Cuneiform Monographs 47, Brill, 2015)
  • Unaccusativity and the Double Object Construction in Sumerian (Neue Beihefte zur Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 7, LIT, 2010)

Editorship

  • Patients and Performative Identities: At the Intersection of the Mesopotamian Technical Disciplines and their Clients (Eisenbrauns/PSUP, 2020)
  • Encoding Metalinguistic Awareness: Ancient Mesopotamia and Beyond (edited with Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum, BBVO 29, Pewe-Verlag, 2019)
  • Visualizing the Invisible with the Human Body: Physiognomy and Ekphrasis in the Ancient World (edited with Alessandro Stavru, STMAC 10, De Gruyter, 2019)
  • In the Wake of the Compendia: Infrastructural Contexts and the Licensing of Empiricism in Ancient and Medieval Mesopotamia (STMAC 3, De Gruyter, 2015)
  • The Growth of an Early State in Mesopotamia: Studies in Ur III Administration: Proceedings of the First and Second Ur III Workshops at the 49th and 51st Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (edited with Steven J. Garfinkle, BPOA 5, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2008)

Essays

  • Statuary Peers: Speaking to the Statues of Famous Kings in the Early Mesopotamian Literature, Archiv für Orientforschung, Band LIV, 2021, 233-254.
  • Citation and Counter-citation in Classical Sumerian Scholastic Dialogue. In: E. Cancik-Kirschbaum, J. Kahl, and E. Lee, eds., Collect and Preserve: Institutional Contexts of Epistemic Knowledge in Pre-modern Societies (Harrassowitz, 2021), 111-151.
  • Near Eastern Myths, Sumerian-Akkadian (Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Classics, 2020)
  • Between Social History and the Life of the Mind: Professionals and Their Clients in Ancient Mesopotamia. In: C. Johnson, ed., Patients and Performative Identities: Professional Practice between Social History and the Life of the Mind (Eisenbrauns/PSUP, 2020), 1-21.
  • Metalinguistic Awareness, Orthographic Elaboration and the Problem of Notational Scaffolding in the Ancient Near East (co-autorisiert mit Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum). In: Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum and J. Cale Johnson, eds., Encoding Metalinguistic Awareness: Ancient Mesopotamia and Beyond (Pewe-Verlag, BBVO 29, 2019), 1-50.
  • Metapragmatic Awareness and the Stratification of Classical Sumerian Literature. In: Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum and J. Cale Johnson, eds., Encoding Metalinguistic Awareness: Ancient Mesopotamia and Beyond (Pewe-Verlag, BBVO 29, 2019), 197-226.
  • Demarcating Ekphrasis in Mesopotamia. In: C. Johnson and A. Stavru, eds., Visualizing the Invisible with the Human Body: Physiognomy and Ekphrasis in the Ancient World (De Gruyter, STMAC 10, 2019), 11-39.
  • Introduction to “Visualizing the Invisible in the Human Body: Physiognomy and Ekphrasis in the Ancient World” (co-autorisiert mit Alessandro Stavru). In: C. Johnson and A. Stavru, eds., Visualizing the Invisible with the Human Body: Physiognomy and Ekphrasis in the Ancient World (De Gruyter, STMAC 10, 2019), 1-7.
  • Meat Distribution in Late Uruk Diacritical Feasts: Second-order Bookkeeping Techniques and their Institutional Context in Late Fourth Millennium BCE Mesopotamia. In: Jürgen Renn and Matthias Schemmel, eds., Culture and Cognition: Essays in Honor of Peter Damerow (Edition Open Access, Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge, Proceedings 11, 2019), 69-80.
  • A Time to Extract and a Time to Compile: The Therapeutic Compendium Tablet BM 78963 (co-autorisiert mit Henry Stadhouders). In: Strahil V. Panayotov and Ludek Vacín, eds., Mesopotamian Medicine and Magic: Studies in Honor of Markham J. Geller (Brill, 2018), 556-622.
  • Towards a New Perspective on Babylonian Medicine: The Continuum of Allegoresis and the Emergence of Secular Models in Mesopotamian Scientific Thought. In: U. Steinert, ed., Assyrian and Babylonian Scholarly Text Catalogues (BAM 9, De Gruyter, 2018), 55-88.
  • The Stuff of Causation: Etiological Metaphor and Pathogenic Channeling in Babylonian Therapeutic Medicine. In: John Z. Wee, ed., The Comparable Body: Analogy and Metaphor in Ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Greco-Roman Medicine (́Studies in Ancient Medicine 49, Brill 2017), 72-121.
  • Deciphering the Late Uruk Butchering Texts. Origini: Rivista de Preistoria e Protostoria delle Civiltà Antiche 37 (2016): 46-55.
  • Food and Urbanization: Material and Textual Perspectives on Alimentary Practice in Early Mesopotamia (Einleitung zur Sonderausgabe von Origini: Rivista de Preistoria e Protostoria delle Civiltà Antiche, herausgegeben mit Maria Bianca D’Anna and Carolin Jauß). Origini: Rivista de Preistoria e Protostoria delle Civiltà Antiche 37 (2016): 7-14.
  • Iteration, Citation and Citationality in the Mesopotamian Scholastic Dialogue The Class Reunion. In: E. Cancik-Kirschbaum and A. Traninger, eds., Wissen in Bewegung: Institution—Iteration—Transfer (Episteme in Bewegung 1, Harrassowitz 2015), 105-132.
  • Introduction: ‘Infrastructural Compendia’ and the Licensing of Empiricism in Mesopotamian Technical Literature. In: J. Cale Johnson, ed., In the Wake of the Compendia: Infrastructural Contexts and the Licensing of Empiricism in Ancient and Medieval Mesopotamia (STMAC 3, De Gruyter 2015), 1-28.
  • Depersonalized Case Histories in the Babylonian Therapeutic Compendia. In: J. Cale Johnson, ed., In the Wake of the Compendia: Infrastructural Contexts and the Licensing of Empiricism in Ancient and Medieval Mesopotamia (Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Cultures 3, De Gruyter 2015), 289-315.
  • Towards a Reconstruction of SUALU IV: Can We Localize K 2386+ in the Therapeutic Corpus? Le Journal des Médecines Cunéiformes 24 (2014): 11-38.
  • Late Uruk Bicameral Orthographies and their Early Dynastic Rezeptionsgeschichte. In: Reinhard Dittmann and Gebhard J. Selz, eds., It’s a Long Way to a Historiography of the Early Dynastic Period(s) (AVO 15, Ugarit-Verlag, 2015), 169-210.
  • The Origins of Scholastic Commentary in Mesopotamia: Second-order Schemata in the Early Dynastic Exegetical Imagination. In: Shai Gordin, ed., Visualizing Knowledge and Creating Meaning in Ancient Writing Systems (BBVO 23, PeWe-Verlag, 2014), 15-59.
  • Sumerian Adjectival Passives using the *im- Prefix: The Old Babylonian Evidence and Some Possible Third Millennium Precursors. In: Steven Garfinkle and Manuel Molina, eds., From the 21st Century BC to the 21st Century AD: The Present and Future of Neo-Sumerian Studies (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 19-48.
  • Middle Assyrian Calendrics (co-autorisiert mit Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum). State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 19, 2011-2012 publ. 2013, 87-152.
  • The Cost of Cosmogony: Ethical Reflections on Resource Extraction, Monumental Architecture and Urbanism in the Sumerian Literary Tradition. In: Ulrike Steinert and Natalie May, eds., The Fabric of Cities: Aspects of Urbanism, Urban Topography and Society in Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome (Brill, 2013), 43-75.
  • Contractual Formalism and Zukunftsbewältigung in Middle Assyrian Agricultural Accounting. In: L. Feliu, J. Llop, A. Millet Albà and J. Sanmartín, eds., Time and History in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 56th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at Barcelona (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 525-548.
  • Contingency and Innovation in Native Transcriptions of Encrypted Cuneiform (UD.GAL.NUN). In: Joshua Englehardt, ed., Agency in Ancient Writing (co-autorisiert mit Adam Johnson, University of Colorado Press, 2013), 165-182.
  • Indexical iconicity in Sumerian belles lettres. Language and Communication 33 (2012): 26-49.
  • The Metaphysics of Mantic/Prophetic Authentication Devices in Old Babylonian Mari. In: G. Barjamovic, J. L. Dahl, et al., eds., Akkade is King: A Collection of Papers by Friends and Colleagues Presented to Aage Westenholz on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday (PIHANS 118, NINO, 2011), 151-161.
  • Sound Symbolism in ‘The Disputation between Bird and Fish’ 102-109. Altorientalische Forschungen 37 (2011): 230-241.
  • The Epistemological Dynamics of Early Writing: Spatiality and Perception. eTopoi: Journal for Ancient Studies, Special Volume 1 (co-autorisiert mit Jochen Brüning, Hagan Brunke, und Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum) 2011): 1-10.
  • The appellate process in a legal record (di til-la) from Ur III Umma. Altorientalische Forschungen 36 (co-autorisiert mit Ronald Veenker, 2009): 349-364.
  • Decomposing the DP in Sumerian: Definiteness, specificity and the BNBV diagnostic. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 98 (2008): 151-188.
  • Corpus-driven models of lexicography and Mesopotamian cultural heritage preservation at CDLI. In R. Biggs, J. Myers and M. Roth, eds., Proceedings of the 51st Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 62, Oriental Institute, 2008), 69-74.
  • Internally Headed Relative Clauses in Akkadian: Identifying Weak Quantification in the Construct State. Journal of Cuneiform Studies 57 (2006): 85-98.
  • The Ur III tablets in the Valdosta State University Archives. Cuneiform Digital Library Journal 2006: 2.
  • Two Ur III tablets from the Tulare County Library. Cuneiform Digital Library Bulletin 2004: 2.
  • Evidence of antipassivization in Sumerian. Bulletin of the International Institute for Linguistic Sciences Kyoto Sangyo University 21 (2000): 205-240.
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