Get to Know...Scott Johnson

Why did you choose your field?

         “I wish I could say my parents took me to the Pyramids in Egypt or the Acropolis in Greece and I decided then and there I would be a Classicist, but that didn’t happen. It was much simpler. I was an eager Latin student in high school and then my senior year I started taking Greek. From there I decided that I wanted to go on and do a full classics degree in college. It was sort of a natural progression; I’m not sure there was a real light bulb moment, but I became very interested in the ancient world and classical languages. I was hooked, like many of our Latin students, from a young age. 

         I attended Vanderbilt University and I had great professors there and, leaning on their guidance, I was able to work out some more specific interests. My specialty is late classics, including the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of the church. Scholars like to call this period Late Antiquity, though “Late” is something of a misnomer. One can keep going for a while with classics training, as long as Latin and Greek continue to be spoken. How Late is Late? The Middle Ages? The Renaissance? So, in my career I seem to keep going later and later — to the point that now I’ve become kind of a Byzantinist, someone who works on the eastern Middle Ages. Not a vocation that many people can call their own! But I identified some areas I was interested in and was lucky to find people in graduate school and after who could teach me. I went straight from Vanderbilt to Oxford, a romantic student experience if there ever was one. Oxford still today is a world center for Late Antiquity and Byzantium.”

What are your research interests?

         “One of the great things about OU’s Classics and Letters degree is that it allows for a little bit more breadth in my area of study. Late Antiquity is on the border of classics both chronologically and geographically.  Chronologically I work on a period around 200 to 800 A.D., and geographically I work mostly on the Eastern Mediterranean and, increasingly, the ancient Middle East.

         Currently, I’m working on a book on the language of Syriac. Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic, a cousin of Hebrew and Arabic. Aramaic is the language that Jesus spoke in the first century A.D. Syriac is a Christian version of Aramaic that gets going in the second and third centuries A.D. I’m writing what I call a biography of Syriac — that is, trying to show how the language itself was kind of an actor through history, both influencing the cultures it came into contact with and being influenced by them. I’m hoping that this book will bring attention to the global history of the Syriac language and its speakers. Even today, there are millions of Christians who speak Syriac or use it in their church services. Sadly, many of them have been displaced from their native homelands in northern Iraq and Syria due to the recent wars and persecutions.”

What have been some of your favorite memories at OU?

         “This is my fifth year at OU, and last year I was very fortunate to be awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.  The congratulations from the university has been really heartwarming. It reinforced what I already knew, that OU is a university that champions excellence in research and teaching. That challenge makes us all work harder.

On a more personal level, I’ve seen students come in who are struggling with their academics or having personal difficulties. Just seeing them work through all that, is always really rewarding. Also, I’ve had several students go on to grad school and with whom I keep in close contact. One of them, who is from New Orleans, sent me a King Cake for Mardi Gras.

         In January 2018, I was able to attend the Rose Bowl playoff game, when OU played the University of Georgia. I am from Atlanta, so I grew up going to UGA games on Saturdays with my dad. I took him and my kids with me — three generations of football fans – at the Rose Bowl together. Even though OU lost, it was a memorable event for all of us, and I couldn’t help but be happy for my dad.”

What are you looking forward to in your coming years at OU?

         “I always like to teach new classes. It keeps me sharp and learning new things. People think that professors just teach the same old thing again and again, which I guess is true in some cases, but I love learning new things alongside the students. So I push myself to do so while I’m also pushing them. My students will tell you that I would much prefer to engage through discussion rather than lecture. Sometimes that gets us off on tangents, but if the students are willing to read, discuss and try to write well, the class is much more effective. I look forward to each school year because every year there’s something new. I’m very fortunate to do what I do.”   

What areas do you see classics and letters students go into after they finish college?

         “I often get the question, ‘how am I going to get a job if I major in classics and letters?’ This is far from an irrelevant question in today’s crowded and competitive job market. But students and parents often don’t realize how well-rounded our classics and letters majors are. They are very successful at finding jobs because employers can tell they are broadly educated and have wide horizons. On an ideal level, it also makes them better citizens and more engaged in their particular communities. It educates them about big-picture political realities and offers them a longer history of social issues that are still pertinent today. In every classics and letters class, the students have the opportunity to develop their critical-thinking and writing skills. I think that serves them very well in whatever field they choose: doctors, lawyers, businesspeople, teachers, they all have to know more than subject-specific information; they have to know how to think, write long form documents, and cite their sources. Classics and letters is a very good preparatory degree. We offer fundamental work and life skills in spades. There’s a reason classics and letters remains one of the most popular majors on campus.”