Jonathan Winnerman

Jonathan Winnerman is Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and Associate Director of the Jeffrey P. Cunard Center for Global Antiquity. A specialist in ancient Egyptian philology (Old Egyptian through Coptic) and visual culture, he teaches classes on ancient Egypt while also coordinating interdisciplinary ancient studies curricula to complement the vision of Global Antiquity. As Associate Director, he also assists faculty with grant projects, and invites interested colleagues to reach out to him to take advantages of these services.

His research and teaching are grounded in the cultures of ancient north Africa, but he is interested more broadly in the construction and maintenance of sacred power across ancient, premodern, and contemporary worlds. Most recently, this had led him to explore different conceptions of the body politic, the relationships between real and imagined representations of power, and the rise of authoritarianism. His current project focuses on a series of standard and enigmatic hieroglyphic texts and analyzes how they define the divine kingship of Amun-Re and how terrestrial rules inserted themselves into these formulae. He is also part of a working group on ancient Egyptian kingship that advocates for a multifaceted examination of the divine nature of the king as well as an analysis of the social dynamics that created and maintained sacred power.

Pedagogically, he regularly teaches the online asynchronous course, “Foundation Myths: Kings, Heroes, and Sorceresses in Ancient and Modern Imaginations,” and is developing a second course on Ancient Engineering. Both classes benefit greatly from guest lectures by faculty specializing in a large variety of ancient worlds, and he once again invites colleagues who may be interested in participating to contact him.

Before joining UCLA, Jonathan worked in Egypt for many years, most notably as an epigrapher with the Epigraphic Survey in Luxor and with the Tell Edfu project. He continues to be interested in epigraphy and epigraphic methodology, especially in the digital realm.