Faculty by Undergraduate Concentration

All history majors select a geographic region of concentration as their primary area of study: Americas and Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe and the Mediterranean World. Majors are encouraged to get to know the faculty in their region of concentration as early as possible.

History majors are also encouraged to carve out their own unique thematic research pathway — religion, social movements, science and environment, and gender, to name a few — and to get to know the history faculty who specialize in those research areas.

***Click on a faculty member's name to view their detailed profile information.***

Elaine A Sullivan
  • Title
    • Associate Professor
  • Division Humanities Division
  • Department
    • History Department
  • Affiliations Anthropology Department, Classical Studies, Archaeological Research Center, Center for the Middle East and North Africa (CMENA)
  • Phone
    831-459-3109
  • Email
  • Website
  • Office Location
    • Humanities Building 1, 236
  • Office Hours Fall quarter 2024: Fridays 2-4PM in Humanities or via Zoom (please email for appointment); note these are canceled Oct 4, Nov 22 & Nov 29 due to faculty travel and holidays
  • Mail Stop Humanities Academic Services
  • Mailing Address
    • Santa Cruz CA 95064
  • Faculty Areas of Expertise Egyptology; Archaeology; Digital Humanities; Virtual Reality, Immersive, and Augmented Reality Environments; Ancient World / Classics; History
  • Courses History 050: When Pharaohs Reigned: The History of Ancient Egypt, HIS 051: Pyramids of Earth, History 159A: Cleopatra to Constantine: Greek and Roman Egypt, History 189: @history: Doing History in a Digital Age, History 159B: Women and Gender in Ancient Egypt, History 159C: Temple and City: The Egyptian New Kingdom and the City of Thebes, History 159M: Curse of the Mummy, History 194S: Who Owns the Past?: Object Lives in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean, HIS 208: An Introduction to Digital Humanities (Graduate Class)

Research Interests

Research interests include landscape, temples and ritual sites, women and gender, and the use of digital toolkits in historical research.

Biography, Education and Training

 

Elaine A. Sullivan is an Egyptologist and a Digital Humanist whose work focuses on applying new technologies to ancient cultural materials. Her born-digital publication, Constructing the Sacred, utilizes a geo-temporal 3D model of the necropolis of Saqqara (near modern Cairo) to investigate questions of ritual landscape and visibility at the site. This digital monograph (https://constructingthesacred.org, Stanford University Press, 2020) was awarded prizes by the American Historical Association and the Archaeological Institute of America. 

Her archaeological work in Egypt includes five seasons of excavation with Johns Hopkins University at the temple of the goddess Mut (Luxor), as well as four seasons in the field with a joint UCLA-Rijksuniversiteit Groningen project in the Egyptian Fayum at the Greco-Roman town of Karanis. She has also excavated at sites in Syria, Italy, and Israel. Sullivan has published extensively on the use of digital technologies for research and scholarship. 

Dr. Sullivan received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Egyptian Art and Archaeology from Johns Hopkins University. Her B.A. (Magna Cum Laude) in History is from Duke University.

Honors, Awards and Grants

ACLS Open Access book prize honorable mention for Constructing the Sacred, 2024 

Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) Award for Outstanding Work in Digital Archaeology for Constructing the Sacred , 2022

American Historical Association (AHA)  Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Innovation in Digital History for Constructing the Sacred, 2020

National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Digital Publication Awardee, 2018-2019

National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant Awardee, 2015-2016

American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Digital Innovation Fellowship, 2012-2013

Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), National Lecture Program speaker, 2012-2013

UC Chancellor's Award for Post-Doctoral Scholarship, 2010

ARCE Dissertation Fellowship, 2005

Selected Publications