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- Paula Kay Lazrus
Paula Kay Lazrus is an archaeologist and native New Yorker. She teaches for the Department of Core Studies (First Year Seminar, and Scientific Inquiry), as well as for the Sociology and Anthropology Department (Intro to Archaeology, Looters and Poachers, Chaos to Compromise, and Physical Anthropology) and for the Environmental Science Program (the Senior Seminar, Into to GIS and Methods and Analysis).
Her research interests range from the protection and conservation of antiquities to changing land-use patterns in Italy, where she has worked professionally since 1980. She has also been engaged in using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software as a tool for better visualizing and understanding the past. This has led her to experiment with visualizing historical census and map data with First Year Seminar classes which help illuminate the cities physical and cultural changes over the years, and to introduce her Scientific Inquiry and ESP students to spatial thinking.
Paula has excavated and conducted field surveys in Rome, Sardinia, and southern Calabria, and has written about the problems concerning the international trafficking in antiquities, and on settlement and land-use issues in ancient Italy. She is also very involved in the exciting and stimulating world of the Reacting to the Past pedagogy which offers students a challenging way to take command of their studies through intensive role-playing activities organized around pivotal events in history and the documents and literature that surround them. In her long association with the Reacting Consortium she has served on several committees and the board. Currently she is a member of the Reacting Editorial Board.
Dr. Lazrus has presented her work at professional conferences in Archaeology and for the GIS community. She is chair of the Education Committee of the New York State GIS Association, and she served as the president of the local New York Society of the Archaeological Institute of America from 2009-2016.
Books:
2019 Paula Kay Lazrus, Building the Italian Renaissance. Brunelleschi’s Dome and the Florence Cathedral. Reacting Consortium Press/University of North Caroline Press: Chapel Hill. https://uncpress.org/book/9781469653396/building-the-italian-renaissance/ .
Monograph is accompanied by separate Instructor's Manual published but accessible only to faculty (manual pp 206). These protected materials include PowerPoints for setting up the activity and reviewing the actual historical outcomes in addition to the manual.
2012 Paula Kay Lazrus & Alex Barker (Eds), All the Kings Horses: Looted or Unprovenienced Artifacts and the Valid Construction of the Past. Washington, DC: SAA Press.
Articles:
2022 Paula Kay Lazrus, “Land Use and Social Dynamics in Early 19th Century Bova, Calabria” Land 11(10), 1832; https://doi.org/10.3390/land11101832
2020 John Robb, Meredith S. Chesson, Hamish Forbes, Lin Foxhall, Helen Foxhall-Forbes, Paula Kay Lazrus, Kostalena Michelaki, Alfonso Picone Chiodo, David Yoon, "The Twentieth Century Invention of Ancient Mountains: The Archaeology of Highland Aspromonte". International Journal of Historical Archaeology https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-020-00543-x.
Paula Kay Lazrus, Florin Catrina, Alison Hyslop, Charles Fortmann, Richard Rosso, "Combining Cross-Disciplinary STEM Collaborations and Academic Service Learning to Help a Community in Need". Science Education and Civic Engagement an International Journal 12(1):12-17, http://new.seceij.net/articletype/winter2020fromtheeditors/ .
2019 Meredith Chesson, Isaac Ullah, Giovanni Iriti, Hamish Forbes, Paula K Lazrus, Nicholas Ames, Yesenia Garcia and Sarah Benchekroun, John Robb, Nicholas P S Wolff, Maria Olimpia Squillaci, "Archaeology as Intellectual Service: Engaged Archaeology in San Pasquale Valley, Calabria, Italy", Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11759-019-09376-5.
Meredith Chesson, Isaac Ullah, Nicholas Ames, Sarah Benchekroun, Hamish Forbes , Yesenia Garcia, Giovanni Iriti, Paula K Lazrus, John Robb, Maria Olimpia Squillaci, Nicholas P S Wolff, "Laborscapes and Archaeologies of Sustainability: Early Globalization and Commercial Farming in the San Pasquale Valley, Calabria, Italy from ad 1800-2018", Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 32.1. https://doi.org/10.1558/jma.39327