Faculty profile: Steven Garfinkle

Western associate professor Steven Garfinkle writes books on translations of ancient cuneiform texts, is the president of the United Faculty of Western Washington and still finds time to lead conferences in Madrid, volunteer in his twins’ middle school class and play cards on the weekends.

Garfinkle grew up with a fascination for history and archeology. His love of history was instilled in him when he was younger, after working on archeological excavations.

“It’s exciting to find things that have been buried for thousands of years,” Garfinkle said.

Today, he researches state formation and the origins of commerce in ancient Mesopotamia in the earliest historical records in the world. After receiving his bachelor of arts degree from Tufts University near Boston, he attended the University of London for his master’s degree and then proceeded to Columbia University for his master’s of philosophy and his Ph.D in Ancient Near Eastern Studies.

Garfinkle said he came to Bellingham for Western Washington University, where he has been since 2001 as an ancient historian in the history department, teaching a variety of classes on Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean.

Since June 2009, Garfinkle has also been president of the United Faculty of Western Washington. He said the role has given him an opportunity to be in touch with faculty across the campus and to see what goes on outside of his department. One of his future goals within the union is to see the faculty and administration negotiate a successful second contract. He said the union has already strengthened the role of faculty in the university and increased collaboration with the university president and the rest of the administration.

“Having a union has given us another voice in Olympia to argue in support of higher education,” Garfinkle said.

Garfinkle recently completed Ur III Tablets From The Columbia University Libraries a book he co-authored with H. Sauren and M. Van De Mieroop. Currently he is working on two research-related projects. He is writing a book on the investigation of the origins of commerce using the earliest written documents—clay tablets from Mesopotamia. The tablets document commercial transactions, refer to the first merchants and state organizations, and discuss loans and the sale of property. Garfinkle says that within the records he can locate individuals whose archives can be put back together—archives of individual people who did business four millennia years ago.

The largest archive of a private individual from this early period is of a man who organized a group of shepherds. Garfinkle has learned that this man was in business with several of his sons—doing early banking. They were loaning money out to individuals so they could start their own businesses.

“When you gather dozens of records, you can paint a picture of daily life over 4,000 years ago,” Garfinkle said. “One can gain a broader understanding of how society worked.”

From the tablets Garfinkle can learn a merchant’s story by uncovering where he lived and where he traveled to conduct business. What his family life was like and things he bought or sold. Through records of inheritance, one can tell how many children someone might have had and what property they received.

Garfinkle’s book is four years in the making—after gathering data and traveling to visit unpublished tablet collections. The tablets that he studies in his research are all over the world—some are located at the British Museum in London, Yale University Library and even in the Spokane Public Library.

His other research-related project is a textbook on the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East in Antiquity. Garfinkle says the textbook is something that would be helpful in some of his courses at Western and he hopes in other classrooms as well. He says this book will be distinct because it will bring together the history of regions that are usually studied separately.

This past July, Garfinkle was a co-organizer of a conference in Madrid that brought together scholars from all over the world on the topic of the Ur III period (2112-2004 BC). The conference was titled "From the 21st Century BC to the 21st Century AD: The Present and Future of Neo-Sumerian Studies." Western helped sponsor the event.

As if that was not enough, Garfinkle is also a world recognized poker player—he competes each summer at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. He says anyone can get into it if he or she is willing to take the risk.

“It is a like a mental vacation from everything,” he said. “My wife calls it a good summer job.”

Although anyone with his work load would need a mental vacation, Garfinkle has found his time teaching at Western to be rewarding. He said his students always seem to have enthusiasm for the subjects he teaches and he enjoys learning about his colleagues through the faculty union. Garfinkle, originally from New Jersey, is content with his life in Bellingham—for the future he hopes to survive being the parent of two kids in middle school, and he hopes to see Western get the support it needs to continue to do what it is doing.

For more information e-mail Steven Garfinkle at steven.garfinkle@wwu.edu or visit the website for the WWU Department of History.