Bond received her PhD in history from the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011.[2] Her doctoral thesis was entitled Criers, Impresarios, and Sextons: Disreputable Occupations in the Roman World.[3] Her PhD was supervised by Professor
Richard Talbert. Bond received a master's degree from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 2007.[4] She was awarded a BA in Classics and History from the University of Virginia in 2005.[5]
Career
Bond is the author of numerous articles on tradesmen and law in the later Roman empire, and her first monograph, entitled Trade and Taboo: Disreputable Professionals in the Roman Mediterranean, was published in 2016 by
University of Michigan Press.[6] A review found it to have made a "significant advance in our understanding of attitudes and reality throughout antiquity."[7]
Bond was appointed assistant professor of classics at the
University of Iowa in 2014,[8] after holding an assistant professorship in Ancient and Early Medieval History at
Marquette University from 2012.[9] She is chair of the
Society for Classical Studies communication committee, associate editor for the Digital Humanities' Pleiades Project and co-Principal Investigator for the Big Ancient Mediterranean Project.[10][8] She is also a member of the executive committee for the American Society of Greek and Latin Epigraphy for the period 2018–2021.[11] As of July 2019, Bond is no longer part of the University of Iowa Classics Department, and has taken up appointment as an associate professor with the history department.
Bond is a strong advocate for academic public scholarship and sustains a high level of visibility on social media. She has more than 25,000 followers on Twitter, and maintains her blog, History From Below.[12] She is the editor-in-chief of the Blog for the
Society for Classical Studies.[13] She is a regular contributor to
Hyperallergic.com, and she has written for Forbes,
The New York Times, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, and the online Classics journal Eidolon.[14][15] Bond created the website Women of Ancient History (WOAH), a crowd-sourced digital map and catalog of women who specialize in classical and biblical history.[16] In April 2019 she appeared on a segment on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee talking about
polychromy on ancient statues.[17]
Bright Ages review controversy
In 2022, Bond commissioned a review of the book The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe for the Los Angeles Review of Books. The publication was then accused by historian
Mary Rambaran-Olm of rejecting her own critical review, in which she said the book followed a white-centric narrative, in order to protect the authors. Bond accused Rambaran-Olm of giving a selective version of the facts and pushed back against her accusations. Others became involved in the controversy, and two scholars falsely claimed Rambaran-Olm lied about her race and was not part Black. Bond later apologised, condemned the racist attacks against Rambaran-Olm, and deleted her Twitter account.[18][19]
Awards
In 2019 she won the Society for Classical Studies' Outreach Prize for Individuals.[12] In her commendation, the SCS praised her expertise on 'an impressive array of subjects with the varied goals of inspiring curiosity and self-reflection...the work Prof. Bond does is highly intelligent—true public scholarship—and a tribute to our discipline.'[12]
Bibliography
Monographs and edited volumes
Trade and Taboo: Disreputable Professionals in the Roman Mediterranean (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016)
Articles and book chapters
“The State, Governance, and Regulation in Ancient Shopping,” A Cultural History of Shopping: Antiquity, edited by Ray Laurence and
Mary Harlow (London: Bloomsbury, 2022) 177-94.
'This is Not Sparta. Why the Modern Romance with Sparta is a Bad One', Eidolon (May 2018)[20]
'Pseudoarchaeology and the Racism Behind Ancient Aliens',
Hyperallergic.com (November 2018)[21]
'Work and Society from the Principate to Late Antiquity: 44 BCE-565 CE', A Cultural History of Work in Antiquity: Volume I: The Ancient World, 500 BC-800 AD, edited by Ephraim Lytle (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2018)
'The Corrupting Sea: Law, Violence, and Compulsory Professions in Late Antiquity', A History of Anticorruption: From Antiquity to the Modern Era, ed. by Ronald Kroeze, André Vitória and Guy Geltner (Oxford University Press, 2018), 49-64
(with T. H. M. Gellar-Goad) 'Foul and Fair Bodies, Minds, and Poetry in Roman Satire', Disability in Antiquity, ed. by Christian Laes (London: Routledge, 2017)
'Dear Scholars, Delete Your Account At Academia.Edu', Forbes (January 2017)[22]
'Whitewashing Ancient Statues: Whiteness, Racism And Color In The Ancient World', Forbes (April 2017)
'What 'Game Of Thrones' Gets Right And Wrong About Eunuchs And Masculinity', Forbes (August 2017)[23]
'Currency and Control: Mint Workers in the Later Roman Empire', Work, Labor and Professions in the Roman World, edited by Koen Verboven and Christian Laes (Leiden: Brill, 2016) 227-245
(with Peter Martens) 'Review article of A. Di Berardino et al., Historical Atlas of Ancient Christianity', Journal of Early Christian Studies 24.4 (Winter, 2016), 601-607
'Curial Communiqué: Memory, Propaganda, and the Roman Senate House', Aspects of Ancient Institutions and Geography: Studies in Honor of Richard J.A. Talbert, ed.by Lee L. Brice and Daniëlle Slootjes (Leiden: Brill, 2015)
'‘As Trainers for the Healthy’: Physical Therapists, Anointers, and Healing in the Late Latin West', Journal of Late Antiquity 8.2 (Fall, 2015), 386-404
'Altering Infamy: Status, Violence, and Civic Exclusion in Late Antiquity', Classical Antiquity 33.1 (April, 2014), 1-30
'Mortuary Workers, the Church, and the Funeral Trade in Late Antiquity', Journal of Late Antiquity 6.1 (Spring, 2013), 135-151
^Bond, Sarah E. (5 October 2013),
Curriculum Vitae, retrieved 28 February 2019
^Bond, Sarah (2018-01-20).
"Sarah Bond". Society for Classical Studies. Retrieved 2018-12-07.
^"Executive Committee". ASGLE: The American Society of Greek and Latin Epigraphy | Société americaine d'épigraphie grecque et latine. 2016-01-10. Retrieved 2019-07-22.