Gary Devore's Academic Research Interests:

• Roman art, culture, archaeology, and history
• The subaltern in the Roman world
• Roman Britain
• The Hadrian's Wall frontier zone
• Pompeii
• Ancient gender and sexuality studies
• Heritage and archaeological resource management
• Cinema studies and the classical tradition

Dr. Devore wrote this video about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum. The awesome folk at TED-Ed illustrated it.

Dr. Devore teaches online classes on a variety of ancient subjects for Stanford Continuing Studies. These classes are open to anyone anywhere in the world.

To see if I am teaching anything this quarter, you can search my name in the current academic catalogue.

Dr. Devore has published two guidebooks for the city of Rome focusing on its archaeological and historical remains.

You can find out more on the Walking Tours of Ancient Rome page.

Now We Are Rome:
Ancient Roman torture on film and in modern America

This essay is about torture and its (changing) depiction in films about the ancient Roman world. It was originally published as an article in The Awl, but I have expanded it and included full academic citations.

I focus on the films "The Sign of the Cross" (1932), "The Fall of the Roman Empire" (1964), and HBO's "Rome" (2005 & 2007). I also discuss the history of torture both in Rome and the US, specifically under Republican administrations, and how modern torture scandals have influenced how Roman torture has been depicted in film.

A print copy of the expanded essay can be found here.

Fellini Satyricon WTF
A Scene-by-scene analysis of Fellini's Satyricon

This is a DVD commentary in book form, with full color illustrations and scene-by-scene analysis of Frederico Fellini's strange version of the Satyricon. It focuses not only on what the director was attempting to say about ancient culture, but also his use of Roman history and culture to tell the bawdy story of Encolpius and his friends.

It can be found in printed form "at cost" at this site. A free pdf version is available for students and instructors of ancient cinema classes by emailing the author directly (see the ABOUT page for contact info).

Gary Devore was one of the directors of the Binchester Archaeological Project.

Between 2009 and 2017, an international team drawn principally from Durham University (UK) and Stanford University (US) excavated the Roman fort and town at Binchester.

Known to the Romans as Vinovium ("On the Wine Road"), Binchester protected Dere Street, the main road that ran from the legionary headquarters at York northwards to Hadrian's Wall. It was a key element of the complex frontier system that lay on both sides of the Wall, forming the edge of empire for nearly four hundred years. Previous excavation uncovered the best-preserved Roman bath house in the UK and some of the most impressive mausolea seen on a Roman site for 150 years. Geophysical survey has revealed a large town that continued to thrive long after the empire fell.

More information about the project can be found at this link.

Gary Devore was one of the founding directors of this archaeological project.

From 2005 to 2009 while at Stanford, Dr. Devore co-founded a new project in the ancient ruins of Pompeii with a colleague from the University of Cincinnati.

Excavation focused on a non-elite neighborhood in the southern quadrant of the city, right inside the Porta Stabia. The project uncovered a dynamic urban landscape undergoing several periods of development that echoed dramatic changes in the city, the Campanian region, and the greater Roman Empire.

From student to Field Director.

During the first wave of new excavations in Pompeii in the 1990's, Dr. Devore spent a decade with the Anglo-American Pompeii Project, originally sponsored by CUNY-Hunter College in the US and the University of Bradford in the UK.

The project aimed to stratigraphically uncover the entire history of a single city block inside the Herculaneum Gate in northwestern Pompeii. Dr. Devore began as a student, and was invited back as a supervisor and eventually Field Director. He spent a decade with this group excavating in the ruins from 1995-2005.

Education:
Ph.D. in Archaeology, University of Bradford
M.A. in Classics, State University of New York at Buffalo
B.A. in Archaeology, College of Wooster

Academic Postings:
Stanford University (Lecturer)
University of California at Santa Cruz (Lecturer)
University of Bradford (Instructor)
State University of New York at Buffalo (Instructor)

Collaborative Research:
Binchester Roman Fort and Town Excavations (Co-Director, 2009-2015)
Pompeii Archaeological Research Project: Porta Stabia (Co-Director, 2005-2009)
Anglo-American Pompeii Project (Field Director, 2000-2004)

Taught Courses:
The Roman World
The History and Archaeology of the City of Rome
The Roman Republic
When Rome Fell
Pompeii
Greek Archaeology
Greece and Rome
The Roman Emperors and Their World
The Romans in Britain
Roman Archaeology
Roman History: An Introduction
The Romans in Film
Ancient Empires I [Mesopotamia-Greece]
Ancient Empires II [Rome]
Sex: Its Pleasures and Cultures
World Archaeology and Global Heritage
Explanation in Archaeology
Reading Antiquity: Historical Fiction Book Club
World Civilizations

"The Re-Discovery and Excavation of Pompeii and Herculaneum". Pompeii & Herculaneum: Rediscovering Roman Art & Culture. Humanities West Conference.

"The Ancient Roman World in Film". The Commonwealth Club of California.

"Edges of Empire- the new excavations at Binchester Roman town, UK" (with Shanks, M.). Electrum Magazine.

"Life Among The Plebs: The Archaeology of a Lower Class Neighborhood in Pompeii". UCSC Society of the Archaeological Institute of America.

"The Binchester Virtual Worlds Program: Using Emergent Technologies to Communicate Archaeological Research". Stanford Archaeology Research Workshop, Stanford, CA.

"The Value of Ruins: Towards a Significance Model for Large, Complex Roman Archaeological Monuments". Critical Roman Archaeology Conference, Stanford, CA.

"Digging the Non-Elite House: New Evidence from Pompeii". California Classical Association (Northern Section) Spring Conference, Stanford, CA.

"Plebs versus the City: The Competition for Space between Public and Private Interests at Pompeii". American Philological Association/American Institute of Archaeology Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.

"New excavations near the Porta Stabia at Pompeii, VIII.7.1-15". Nuove ricerche archeologiche nell'area vesuviana, Palazzo Venezia, Sala del Mappamondo, Rome, Italy.

"Erotic Rome". Review of John R. Clarke's Roman Sex. Archaeology Magazine.