History
The Founding of the ASP
 Herbert C. Youtie
The American Society of Papyrologists (ASP) was founded in 1961, formed during a critical moment in papyrology’s development. By the 1960s, multiple institutions across the continent had begun conducting papyrological work, notably the University of Michigan, Columbia University, the University of Toronto, and Yale. Many of those who steered the course of the Society's development hailed from these institutions. In particular, the University of Michigan and Yale produced many of ASP's early leaders. Michigan, America's first papyrological shop, was the alma mater of BASP's first chief editor, G. Michael Browne, and home to Monographs editor and President (1982-1985) Ludwig Koenen. Both of these men were trained by the distinguished papyrologist Herbert C. Youtie, for whose pioneering work the Society honored him with the title of "Honorary President" in 1973.
Scholars from leading papyrological institutions, however, did not have a space to congregate; they lacked a community from which they could field ideas and collaborate on larger projects. Before 1961, it would be misleading to refer to the papyrology practiced across North America as North American papyrology; rather, the discipline existed as “papyrological shops,” distinct styles of papyrological study concentrated in several, largely disconnected hubs scattered across the continent. As the dissolution of Yale papyrology in the mid 1960s was soon to illustrate, moreover, the continued existence of such hubs was not guaranteed.  C. Bradford Welles
Yale historian and papyrologist C. Bradford Welles saw this state of affairs as unsustainable. If the practice—then “vanishingly small,” as Roger Bagnall notes in his obituary for Alan Samuel in BASP—were to survive in North America, papyrology needed to be rooted in something greater, and more reliable, than the few Classics departments keeping it afloat. In 1961, Welles fielded the idea of founding a North American papyrological society to fellow members of an informal documentary studies group that gathered at the American Philological Association (now the Society for Classical Studies) annual meeting. The idea resonated, and The American Society of Papyrologists was born. Its twenty-five members voted Welles President and his student Alan Samuel Secretary-Treasurer. Lists of the original members and of directors over time are displayed below:
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BASP I, Issue 1
Laying the Groundwork: Alan Samuel and the Society's Formative Years
 Alan Samuel
Alan Samuel was the Society’s first Secretary-Treasurer, holding the position from 1961 to 1973. Samuel—a papyrologist, historian, aspiring politician, entrepreneur, and avid gardener—had a knack for crafting new identities for himself. While Secretary-Treasurer of the ASP, Samuel forged an identity for the young learned society. Indeed, Roger Bagnall rightly named Samuel as the “main engine” of the Society’s development, and his contributions still largely define the character of the ASP today. The Society’s early growth, therefore, is best understood through the lens of Alan Samuel and the precedents he introduced during his tenure as Secretary-Treasurer.
BASP: The Journal that Shouldn't Have Been Perhaps the most significant accomplishment of Samuel’s Secretary-Treasurer-ship was his creation of The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists (BASP). Today, BASP is the premier—the only, in fact—North American journal dedicated to papyrology and its related disciplines (see more information at BASP). While BASP has been a bona fide academic journal for most of its existence, Samuel had a very different vision for the publication when he sent out the first issue in 1963: This Bulletin is not intended to be a journal, and with good fortune it will never become one. I plan it to be a means of rapid dissemination of information, and now that it is started, I shall send out the material as it is received Indeed, Samuel’s BASP achieved this unconventional goal. Flipping through the early issues of the Bulletin, the reader finds member’s notes for potential articles, announcements of young members’ dissertations in progress, full transcripts of meetings, as well as Samuel’s quarterly updates in the Society’s Activities section—which includes mundanities such as his decision process regarding which typeset to use, his struggle figuring out how to use his new VariTyper, and candid reports on the Society’s finances. Though it lacked in formality, Samuel’s BASP was an authentic endeavor to cultivate a sense of community amongst ASP’s members—a North American brand of the amicitia papyrologorum.
It was not long, however, until members of the ASP tapped BASP’s potential to become a bona fide academic journal. In 1973, Samuel’s Doktorkind Roger Bagnall assumed the Secretary-Treasurership. Immediately, Bagnall and fellow directors separated editorship of the journal from other Secretary-Treasurer duties and nominated G. Michael Browne as the inaugural editor of the Bulletin, as well as J.A.S. Evans the editor of book reviews. With a team of directors exclusively devoted to its editing, BASP was able to grow into the journal it is today, and the Society had space to tend to other publications, including the Monograph series. In 1979, an editorial board for the Monographs was established, and its inaugural members--G. Michael Browne, Ann Hanson, and Ludwig Koenen--contributed their services to the series for decades. In 1984, BASP, too, gained a full editorial team. BASP, too, partnered with academic publishing agency Scholars Press, a novel consortium of learned societies and publishers for which the ASP was an early sponsor. Now, BASP is published by Peeters Publishers, which maintains access to back issues as well; the journal is available online through JSTOR.
The Summer Institutes The second seminal project Samuel spearheaded was the ASP Summer Institutes in Papyrology. An idea of Welles’, the Summer Institutes furthered the ASP’s goal of expanding papyrology’s horizons beyond the few Classics departments that had dominated the field. In the 1960s, few American institutions—namely, University of Michigan, Yale, University of Toronto, and Columbia with not many others—offered papyrological training. Offering an intensive course on the methodology and value of papyrological research, the Summer Institutes were designed to address this problem. Today, the newly revived Summer Institutes continue to honor their original goal of widening access to papyrological training. Samuel was the force behind the first five Summer Institutes, which ran from 1966 to 1970. Using his remarkable persuasive skills, Samuel made the institutes possible by securing one of the first grants ever awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. With this funding, Samuel recruited a corps of papyrology heavyweights to teach the course. Included were international scholars such as Eric Turner of UCL and Peter Parsons, later to become the Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, but the bulk of lecturers and assistants were recruited from ASP’s membership—which included ASP’s second president Naphtali Lewis and its founder C.B. Welles. The cohort of students trained by these papyrologists hailed from a wide array of institutions, most from schools without developed papyrology programs. A list of participants in the inaugural 1966 institute is displayed below: |
This group was intellectually diverse, as well: Though some participants—notably BASP editor Michael Browne and John F. Shelton—went on to become papyrologists in the strict sense, others left equipped to employ papyrological evidence across a variety of disciplines and a refined appreciation for the discipline. Among the Institutes’ alumni/ae are historians, religion scholars, experts in Greek poetry metrics, scholars of Latin literature, and businessmen, among others.
The Society ceased hosting the institutes until Roger Bagnall and the ASP directors worked to revive them in 2003. Though separated from their predecessors by a gap of three decades, today's Institutes are similar in format and goal. Honoring Samuel and the Rostovtzeff-Welles tradition, the inaugural 2003 Institute—led by Bob G. Babcock and Ann Hanson—was held at Yale and focused on the papyri from Yale’s Dura-Europos collection.
The Society ceased hosting the institutes until Roger Bagnall and the ASP directors worked to revive them in 2003. Though separated from their predecessors by a gap of three decades, today's Institutes are similar in format and goal. Honoring Samuel and the Rostovtzeff-Welles tradition, the inaugural 2003 Institute—led by Bob G. Babcock and Ann Hanson—was held at Yale and focused on the papyri from Yale’s Dura-Europos collection.
Collaboration and Innovation: ASP and Digital Technologies
The Summer Institutes illustrate the Society’s dedication to growing the discipline. Since the Society’s founding, ASP’s members have pioneered ways of advancing the science and making it accessible to students and non-specialists. In the realm of digital technologies in papyrological research, their innovations have altered the landscape of papyrological study not only within the continent, but across the globe. What sets North American papyrology apart on the international papyrological scene is its leadership in digital technologies, and the ASP has facilitated much of this progress through connecting members across institutions, skill sets, and specialties.
As early as the 1960s, American papyrologists were thinking about digital technologies. The first International Papyrological Congress held in North America—which the ASP helped organize—was also the first Congress that had a panel on technology’s place in papyrology: “Computer Uses in Technology.” The Congress took place in 1969. Two decades later, Duke papyrologists Bill Willis and John Oates developed the Duke Database of Documentary Papyri (DDbDP), an electronic corpus of documentary papyri comparable in scope and utility to the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. The database not only simplified the research process for papyrologists but made papyrological evidence far more accessible to non-specialists. By smoothing the fragmented, decayed, and near illegible scraps of antiquity into clean, searchable bytes, the database opened the world of papyrology to anyone with a working knowledge of Greek.
As early as the 1960s, American papyrologists were thinking about digital technologies. The first International Papyrological Congress held in North America—which the ASP helped organize—was also the first Congress that had a panel on technology’s place in papyrology: “Computer Uses in Technology.” The Congress took place in 1969. Two decades later, Duke papyrologists Bill Willis and John Oates developed the Duke Database of Documentary Papyri (DDbDP), an electronic corpus of documentary papyri comparable in scope and utility to the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. The database not only simplified the research process for papyrologists but made papyrological evidence far more accessible to non-specialists. By smoothing the fragmented, decayed, and near illegible scraps of antiquity into clean, searchable bytes, the database opened the world of papyrology to anyone with a working knowledge of Greek.
Two avidly involved ASP members, Roger Bagnall and Traianos Gagos, propelled the digitization movement to new heights. In 1995, Bagnall and Gagos founded the Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS). APIS is a consortium of North America’s leading papyrological institutions and international collaborators that has collected and published online “physical descriptions, provenance, dating, and bibliographic information” about papyri in collections belonging to its collaborators. In 2013, APIS was incorporated into the online aggregator papyri.info, which makes information on papyri from five databases available to anyone with internet access. Headed by Josh Sosin, papyri.info is the latest example of North American papyrologists’ dedication to exposing as many people as possible to the merits of studying the scraps of ancient life preserved in papyri.