History

Lee Brice

Dr. Lee L. Brice, Professor

Dr. Lee L. Brice joined the Department in Fall 2003 after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His historical interests include Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, Numismatics, and Military History. He offers the Department's undergraduate courses on Ancient Near East & Egypt [Hist 319], Ancient Greece [Hist 320], Ancient Rome [Hist 321], Early Military History [Hist 322], The Crusades [Hist 323] as well as an upper-division/graduate courses on Alexander the Great [History 431(G)] and an upper-division/graduate topics course in ancient history and film [History 430(G)]. In addition to these field-specific courses, he also teaches the first half of the Department's World History Survey [Hist 115]. He has been recognized by WIU as an award-winning teacher, having won an award for Outstanding FYE Teaching and the College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Faculty Award for Undergraduate Research Mentoring.

Dr. Brice also maintains an active research agenda. His specific areas of research focus are the sociology of the Roman military especially during the late republic and early empire and Greek Numismatics, especially of Ancient Corinth. His chapter and article publications have been on an array of topics including treatment of the Roman army in the HBO/BBC TV series Rome, Octavian Caesar, the Athenian invasion of Sicily in 415 BCE, military unrest in the Roman military, military unrest in the army of Alexander the Great, the coins of Corinth, and teaching with experimental history. In addition, Dr. Brice has published six books on military and institutional history including Brill Companion to Insurgency and Terrorism in the Ancient Mediterranean (co-edited with Tim Howe, Brill, 2016)), Aspects of Ancient Institutions and Geography (co-edted with Daniëlle Slootjes, Brill, 2015) and most recently New Approaches to Greek and Roman Warfare (Wiley, 2020).

Dr. Brice's research efforts have led to numerous grants and fellowships as well as honors. He received a number of grants from the University, College, and Department to fund his students' undergraduate research projects. He has won a variety of competitive internal grants, including from the WIU Foundation and the University Research Council to initiate research. The value of his research has also been recognized in a variety of external grants and fellowships, including from the University of Cincinnati's Tytus Fellowship, the American Numismatic Society, the Royal Numismatic Society, Phi Alpha Theta, as well as two Franklin Research Grants from the American Philosophical Society. In 2014 and 2018 he was selected as a Gertrude Smith Professor at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, the oldest American foreign research institute. In 2017 he was selected to be a 2017-2018 Elizabeth A. Whitehead Distinguished Scholar at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. Also in 2018 he was Senior Fellow at the Australian Center for Ancient Numismatic Studies, Gale Distinguished lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney Australia and Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Auckland University in Auckland. Most recently, he was selected in 2019 to be the Distinguished Faculty Lecturer at WIU and deliver the 2020 lecture, "The Colts of Corinth Revisited: A Numismatic Study".

Within the field of ancient history, Dr. Brice is active and busy. He has been President of the Association of Ancient Historians, and President of the Society of Ancient Military Historians. Currently he is Senior Editor for the journal Research Perspectives in Ancient History, Series Editor for the Brill’s classical studies series Warfare in the Ancient Mediterranean World, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Military History. He is also Book Review Editor for the publication Res Militares.

He also has led WIU’s short-term Summer study-abroad trips to Greece and Rome. He has co-directed two summer programs for the American School of Classical Studies in Greece and continues to teach sites in summer as a Senior Visiting Scholar at the American School.