Robert Joseph Rowland, Jr. (2007)

Robert Joseph Rowland, Jr. (1938-2007) was born in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, Professor of History and Dean of Arts and Sciences at Loyola University, New Orleans. A graduate of LaSalle College (1959), he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania (1961, 1964), while working as an instructor at his alma mater (1959-65). He remained in the Philadelphia area as instructor and assistant professor at Villanova (1961-7) before he began a well-travelled and distinguished career as an expert on Sardinian history and archaeology. He moved to the University of Missouri, where he was associate professor of classics (1967-72), associate professor of history (1972-4) and professor (1974-84). To this period belong not only numerous studies of Sardinia and Ritrovamenti Romani in Sardegna (1981), but also the beginning of his long and meritorious service both to CAMWS as president of the Southern Section (1982-4) and the APA as president of the Friends of Ancient History, but especially to the Vergilian Society of America as Executive Secretary (1980-91), which led to the founding of the journal Augustan Age and his editing of Vergil and the American Experience (1987). In 1984 he moved to the University of Maryland as professor and chair of the Classics Department (1984-91). There he burnished his reputation with Studies in Sardinian Archaeology (edited with Miriam S. Balmuth) in two volumes (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984-6) and served as President of CAAS (1989-90). In 1991 he moved yet again, this time to Loyola University in New Orleans as Professor of History and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. His last major publication was The Periphery in the Center: Sardinia in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (Oxford: Archeopress, 2001). He died on March 14, 2007.