Assistant History Professor Stephanie Rost Receives Felix Gross Award
Every year, the CUNY Academy for the Humanities and Sciences awards a small number of assistant professors the Feliks Gross or Henry Wasser Award in recognition of their work.
And this year, Assistant History Professor Stephanie Rost counts herself among that number.
“I was very happy to receive [the Feliks Gross Award] and felt that it was meaningful recognition by CUNY Central of the work I’m doing,” Rost said about her achievement. “It was especially encouraging given that I had not been successful in securing internal CUNY grants for my research projects thus far, which had been somewhat discouraging. This, however, really gives me a boost.”
Earning either award is no easy feat.
To begin, the potential nominee needs to be an assistant professor in the humanities or sciences; and then said professor needs to either be nominated by the department chair and/or the provost of the college, or ask if they could support their nomination.
In Rost’s case, she was nominated by Provost & VP of Academic Affairs Dr. Phyllis Curtis-Tweed, and received letters of support from History Department Chair Dr. Gilmar Visoni-Alonzo and New York University’s Dr. T. Daniel Potts.
After the selection committee has a hold of a nomination, they have to determine whether the nominee is conducting “outstanding research” or displaying the potential for such.
However, this is CUNY, so there were many talented candidates. And with typically only ten winners being selected per year (including this one), Rost’s work had to be a cut above the rest.
It is.
Rost’s research addresses the “complexities of the human-environment interaction by examining the state economy in South Mesopotamia at the end of the Third Millennium BCE.”
In particular, she’s looking at how the social and political systems of Early Mesopotamia impacted the way said society exploited the Tigris River, not just for irrigation but also for water-based transportation and flood safety — thus deviating from traditional studies of ancient hydrology which typically focus on irrigation alone.
Rost argues that all three hydrological imperatives were critical to the health of the society’s economy and therefore subject to the state’s interest.
This all ties into Rost’s larger research agenda which focuses on a more thorough investigation into the “economic foundation of early urbanism and early states that combines archaeological/paleo-environmental research with textual analysis.”
She notes that Southern Mesopotamia is a prime subject for such research because of all the accessible records, but argues those records haven’t been explored to their full potential since they have never been integrated with archaeological and scientific data — primarily because such data haven’t been collected yet.
So just like before, she’s doing it herself.
“To pursue this project, I conduct archaeological fieldwork in south Iraq since 2018 as the director of The Umma Survey Project. The fieldwork aims at detecting and document ancient settlements irrigation and landscape features in an approx. 2000 km2 area near the modern city Al-Rifai in South Iraq. The goal is to use the data collected to reconstruct the historical geography and ancient landscape to better understand the larger context within which the recorded economic transaction took place.”
Overall, her research will provide new insight into the political and cultural mechanisms that created an economy capable of supporting both early urbanism and statehood; and more broadly, contribute to the understanding of how specific power relations shape the dynamics of social/environmental systems.
Now with this win, Rost joins an elite group of Henry Wasser/Feliks Gross winners at Queensborough. Starting from 2020, past awardees include: Dr. Jillian Bellovary (Physics) in 2020, Dr. Clarence Jefferson Hall (History) in 2021, as well as Dr. Sarbani Ghoshal (Biological Sciences and Geology) and Kebedech Tekleab (Art and Design) in 2022.
And to make it official, Rost will receive a commemorative plaque and a $1000 stipend at a lecture series later this academic year. During this time, she will also give a talk and present her research.
That’s not all in store for Rost in the coming months.
During the winter, she expects to head back to Iraq for her sixth season of the Umma Survey Project. If things pan out, she expects to begin the first excavation season at the site of Abu Jarabie (located in Southern Iraq) where easy access to an occupation layer (a layer of remains left by a single culture on an archaeological site) will allow Rost and her team to gain new insight into a portion of Mesopotamian history that is understood by researchers to be a time of urban revolution, but the details about said period remain a relative mystery.
“We have further reason to believe that an excavation at Abu Jarabie will yield a wealth of significant artifacts that will be foundational in resolving many of the chronological issues that has plagued the understanding of these periods and their contribution to early urbanism. The surface finds gathered so far illustrate the extraordinary richness of this site. 58% of all small finds (e.g., figurines, various clay tools and models, stone tools and objects, clay pestles, spindle whorls, etc.) that have been collected on the 57 surveyed sites thus far by the Umma Survey Project, come from Abu Jarabie alone. The artifacts include stone tools and figurines, such as a clay model of a boat, small bull figurines, and even a leopard figurine—evidence that this animal still roamed the region in the early phases of Mesopotamian history.”
Then come May 2026, a book authored by Rost and published by Oxford University Press will hit the shelves. Titled Taming the Tigris: Hydraulic and Social Engineering in Early Mesopotamia, it will offer the first book-length study of one of the most ancient water control systems in human history, comprehensively documented in cuneiform (the writing system used in Mesopotamia) sources.
Rost may have voiced some disappointment about not receiving any grants from CUNY up to this point, but this win is evidence that her efforts are being recognized. And with so many exciting projects coming up, this won’t be the last time we hear from her.
Queensborough congratulates you on your achievements!
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