The Founding of the ASP





BASP: The Journal that Shouldn’t Have Been
Perhaps the most significant accomplishment of Samuel’s tenure as Secretary-Treasurer 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 members’ 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 typesetting font 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 among the 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 appointed G. Michael Browne as the inaugural editor of the new Bulletin, with J.A.S. Evans as 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. (Samuel seems to have been responsible for the early volumes of the monograph series, but there was no formal editorial post.)
LIST OF BASP EDITORS & EDITORS-IN-CHIEF (1963– )
Years | Editor |
---|---|
1963-1972 | Alan Samuel |
1973-1985 | G. Michael Browne |
1986-1995 | James Keenan |
1996-1998 | Terry Wilfong |
1999 | Timothy Renner |
2000-2005 | Traianos Gagos |
2006-2023 | Peter van Minnen |
2024- | Sofia Torallas-Tovar |
LIST OF MONOGRAPHS EDITORS (1979– )
Volume | Editors |
---|---|
20-22 | Ludwig Koenen, Gerald Browne, and Ann Hanson |
23 | Ludwig Koenen, Roger Bagnall, Gerald Browne, and Ann Hanson |
24 | Ludwig Koenen |
25 | Deborah Hobson, Ludwig Koenen, and Susan Stephens |
26 | Ludwig Koenen |
27 | Gerald Browne, Ludwig Koenen, Michael Haslam, and Ann Hanson |
28 | Ann Hanson |
29 | Gerald Browne, Michael Haslam, and Ann Hanson |
30 | Ludwig Koenen, Michael Haslam, and Ann Hanson |
31-32 | Gerald Browne, Ludwig Koenen, Michael Haslam, and Ann Hanson |
33-48 | Ann Hanson |
49-50, 52 | James Keenan |
51, 53 | James Keenan, Kathleen McNamee, and Arthur Verhoogt |
54-56 | Rodney Ast, Christelle Fischer-Bovet, AnneMarie Luijendijk, Tonio Sebastian Richter |
In 1984, BASP, too, gained a full editorial team. For the publishing of BASP and its book series the Society had by the 1980s partnered with academic publishing agency Scholars Press, a novel consortium of learned societies for which the ASP was an early sponsor. After the dissolution of Scholars Press in 1999, the publishing enterprises of ASP were managed for the next 15 years mostly in-house, using a succession of distributors for the book series. Now, BASP is published by Peeters Publishers, and older issues of the journal are available on-line through Peeters and JSTOR; the Monograph and other book series are published and distributed by the University of Michigan Press.

This group was intellectually diverse: 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 with 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.
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 purpose. Honoring Samuel and the Rostovtzeff-Welles tradition, the inaugural 2003 Institute—led by Robert G. Babcock and Ann Hanson—was held at Yale and focused on the papyri from Yale’s Dura-Europos collection.




In 1995, then ASP President Roger Bagnall, with future President Traianos 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 member institutions. 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 Duke professor Josh Sosin (himself a student of Willis and Oates), papyri.info is the latest example of papyrologists’ dedication to exposing as many people as possible to the merits of studying the scraps of ancient life preserved in papyri. Importantly, however, papyri.info includes at its core not only the original and ongoing North American projects, DDbDP and APIS, but also the Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis der griechischen Papyrusurkunden Ägyptens (HGV) and the Bibliographie Papyrologique (BP); and it depends heavily on close collaboration with the Leuven-based interdisciplinary portal Trismegistos for rigorous maintenance of relationship mapping and unique identifiers.
ARCHIVES
ASP Leadership (1961– )
ASP PRESIDENTS
C. Bradford Welles (1961-1964)
Naphtali Lewis (1965-1969)
William Willis (1970-1971)
J.F. Gilliam (1972)
Alan Samuel (1973-1975)
John Oates (1976-1980)
Ludwig Koenen (1981-1985)
Deborah Hobson (1986-1989)
James Keenan (1990-1994)
Roger Bagnall (1995-1997)
Timothy Renner (1998-2000)
Traianos Gagos (2001-2002)
Kathleen McNamee (2003-2005)
Maryline Parca (2006-2011)
Jennifer Moss (2012-2017)
Todd Hickey (2018-2022)
Christelle Fischer-Bovet (2023– )
Honorary Presidents
Herbert Youtie was appointed Honorary President-for-Life in 1973
Roger Bagnall was appointed Honorary President-for-Life in 2019
ASP SECRETARY-TREASURERS
Alan Samuel (1961-1972)
Roger Bagnall (1973-1979)
Susan Stephens (1980-1985)
Kathleen McNamee (1986-1997)
Jennifer Moss (1998-2000)
David Martinez (Secretary, 2001-2003)
William Johnson (Treasurer 2001-2003)
William Johnson (Secretary-Treasurer, 2004– )
ASP BOARD OF DIRECTORS
2025
Christelle Fisher-Bovet, President
University of Southern California
C. Michael Sampson, Vice-President
Manitoba University
William A. Johnson, Secretary-Treasurer
Duke University
Sofia Torallas-Tovar, BASP Editor in chief
University of Chicago
Arthur Verhoogt, Editor, ASP Monographs
University of Michigan
Katherine Blouin, Director at large
University of Toronto
Irene Soto Marín, Director at large
Harvard University
Brendan Haug, Director at large
University of Michigan
W. Matt Malczyki, Director at large
Auburn University
Alejandro Quintana, Director at large
Yale University
Michael Zellmann-Rohrer, Director at large
Freie Universität Berlin, Macquarie University
Todd Hickey, Immediate Past President
University of California, Berkeley
Jennifer Sheridan Moss, Financial Trustee
Wayne State University
Phil Venticinque, Financial Trustee
University of Chicago
2024
Christelle Fisher-Bovet, President
University of Southern California
C. Michael Sampson, Vice-President
Manitoba University
William A. Johnson, Secretary-Treasurer
Duke University
Sofia Torallas-Tovar, BASP Editor in chief
University of Chicago
Arthur Verhoogt, Editor, ASP Monographs
University of Michigan
Katherine Blouin, Director at large
University of Toronto
Irene Soto Marín, Director at large
Harvard University
Brendan Haug, Director at large
University of Michigan
W. Matt Malczyki, Director at large
Auburn University
Todd Hickey, Immediate Past President
University of California, Berkeley
Raffaella Cribiore‡, Financial Trustee
New York University
Jennifer Sheridan Moss, Financial Trustee
Wayne State University
Phil Venticinque, Financial Trustee
University of Chicago
2023
Todd Hickey, President
University of California, Berkeley
Christelle Fisher-Bovet, Vice President
University of Southern California
William A. Johnson, Secretary-Treasurer
Duke University
Sofia Torallas-Tovar, BASP Editor in chief
University of Chicago
Arthur Verhoogt, Editor, ASP Monographs
University of Michigan
C. Michael Sampson, Director at large
Manitoba University
Phil Venticinque, Director at large
University of Chicago
Katherine Blouin, Director at large
University of Toronto
Irene Soto Marín, Director at large
Harvard University
Jennifer Sheridan Moss, Immediate Past President
Wayne State University
Raffaella Cribiore‡, Financial Trustee
New York University
Jennifer Sheridan Moss, Financial Trustee
Wayne State University
2022
Todd Hickey, President
University of California, Berkeley
Christelle Fisher-Bovet, Vice President
University of Southern California
William A. Johnson, Secretary-Treasurer
Duke University
Peter van Minnen, BASP Editor in chief
University of Cincinnati
Sofia Torallas-Tovar, Editor, ASP Monographs
University of Chicago
Andrew Monson, Director at large
New York University
Phil Venticinque, Director at large
Cornell College
Katherine Blouin, Director at large
University of Toronto
Jennifer Sheridan Moss, Immediate Past President
Wayne State University
James Keenan, Financial Trustee
Loyola University, Chicago
Jennifer Sheridan Moss, Financial Trustee
Wayne State University
1 Director at large position left vacant
2021
Todd Hickey, President
University of California, Berkeley
Christelle Fisher-Bovet, Vice President
University of Southern California
William A. Johnson, Secretary-Treasurer
Duke University
Peter van Minnen, BASP Editor in chief
University of Cincinnati
Rodney Ast, Editor, ASP Monographs
University of Heidelberg
Andrew Monson, Director at large
New York University
Phil Venticinque, Director at large
Cornell College
Katherine Blouin, Director at large
University of Toronto
Sofia Torallas-Tovar
University of Chicago
Jennifer Sheridan Moss, Immediate Past President
Wayne State University
James Keenan, Financial Trustee
Loyola University, Chicago
Jennifer Sheridan Moss, Financial Trustee
Wayne State University
2020
Todd Hickey, President
University of California, Berkeley
Giovanni Ruffini, Vice President
Fairfield University
William A. Johnson, Secretary-Treasurer
Duke University
Peter van Minnen, BASP Editor in chief
University of Cincinnati
Rodney Ast, Editor, ASP Monographs
University of Heidelberg
Elizabeth Pollard, Director at large
San Diego State University
Andrew Monson, Director at large
New York University
Christelle Fisher-Bovet, Director at large
University of Southern California
Phil Venticinque, Director at large
Cornell College
Jennifer Sheridan Moss, Immediate Past President
Wayne State University
James Keenan, Financial Trustee
Loyola University, Chicago
Kathleen McNamee, Financial Trustee
Wayne State University
This brief history was put together from ASP records and other archival materials by Gabrielle Stewart, in collaboration with William Johnson.