Robert Martin Frakes (born 1962)[1] is an American classics scholar. He is the dean of the School of Arts & Humanities at California State University, Bakersfield, where he is also a professor of history.[2] His research concerns "political, legal, and religious history in the later Roman Empire".[3]
Education and career
Frakes grew up in Santa Barbara, California, where he became interested in classics through the mentorship of Vernon P. Ziolkowski.
He is a 1984 graduate of Stanford University. After earning a master's degree and teaching certifications in Latin and Social Science through the Stanford Teacher Education Program, he completed a Ph.D. in history at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1991.[2] His dissertation was Audience and meaning in the "Res gestae" of Ammianus Marcellinus,[4] supervised by Harold A. Drake.[5]
In 2017, he moved to California State University, Bakersfield as dean of the School of Arts & Humanities and professor of history.[3][7]
Personal life
Frakes is married to Susan Frakes, a bookbinder.[8][9]
He is the son of historian George E. Frakes and teacher and librarian Catherine Rose Kay Davies Frakes. Like Frakes, both of his parents were educated at Stanford University.[10]
Books
Frakes is the author or editor of several books on ancient history, as well as a college writing textbook.[11] They include:
Contra Potentium Iniurias: The Defensor Civitatis and Late Roman Justice (Münchener Beiträge zur Papyrusforschung und Antiken Rechtsgeschichte 90, C. H. Beck, 2001)[12]
Writing for College History: A Short Handbook (Cengage, 2004)[13]
Religious Identity in Late Antiquity (edited with Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, Edgar Kent, 2006)[14]
The Rhetoric of Power in Late Antiquity: Religion and Politics in Byzantium, Europe and the Early Islamic World (edited with Elizabeth DePalma Digeser and Justin Stephens, Tauris Academic Studies, 2010)[15]
Compiling the Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)[16]
