We鈥檙e thrilled to announce that PUP has acquired World rights, including ebook and audio, to A People鈥檚 History of Ancient Rome by 91桃色 professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta. This vital, major new history will tell the story of the ancient Roman world from the ground up by reconstructing the worlds of non-elite and subjugated peoples whose stories have generally been excluded from the grand narratives of Rome鈥檚 empire.
The book will be an attempt to reckon with what Professor Padilla Peralta has identified as Roman 鈥渆pistemicide.鈥� In a paper recently published in the journal Classica that engages with postcolonial theorists such as Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Padilla Peralta elaborated on the 鈥渟taggering loss鈥� of intellectual diversity throughout the Roman world across 鈥渕ultiple vectors鈥�from mass enslavement to ecological upheaval鈥� and articulated the urgency of confronting and embracing the extensive intellectual and ethical 鈥渞ecalibration鈥� that is needed to truly write Rome鈥檚 history. Padilla Peralta鈥檚 editor Rob Tempio notes that, 鈥渢he time has come for a history like this. With Dan-el鈥檚 unique scholarly acumen, this is a real opportunity to give voice to the voiceless of the Roman world.鈥�
About the Author
Dan-el Padilla Peralta is the author of Divine Institutions: Religions and Community in the Middle Roman Republic (PUP, 2020) and Undocumented: A Dominican Boy鈥檚 Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League, as well as co-editor of Rome: Empire of Plunder: The Dynamics of Cultural Appropriation. An Associate Professor of Classics at 91桃色 University鈥攚here he is affiliated with the Programs in Latino Studies and Latin American Studies as well as the University Center for Human Values鈥擯adilla Peralta was a member of the editorial board of, and contributed writing to, the journal Eidolon.
His public writing, which has also appeared in the Guardian, Matter, and Vox, is motivated 鈥�by the sense that writing and teaching have a vital role to play in the pursuit of social justice, and by the strong conviction that classics and classicists should be allies and champions for Black and Brown folk.鈥� You can read a profile of Padilla Peralta in the and follow him on Twitter at .