Professor
Education
PhD, History, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1997
MA, History, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1992
BA, Political Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1990
Biography
Dr Steve Rapp completed his BA in Political Science at Indiana University with a focus on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Shifting his primary research focus to pre-modern times, he spent his graduate career investigating the later Roman Empire, the Caucasus region, and Central Eurasia at the University of Michigan. For ten years Dr Rapp taught world history at Georgia State University and was the founding director of its Program in World History and Cultures. In 2012, Dr Rapp joined SHSU’s Department of History, where he teaches on subjects ranging from ancient history and early Christianity to the Mongol Empire and the “roots” of globalization.
Dr Rapp’s current research resides geographically at the convergence of Europe, Asia, and Africa, the birthplace and early abode of Christianity. He approaches this zone chiefly through the Caucasus region. Already in the fourth century, the baptism of Caucasia’s élites brought the realms of Armenia, Georgia, and Caucasian Albania (in today’s Republic of Azerbaijan) into the emergent Christian commonwealth.
Courses
Undergraduate:
Survey of World History to 1500
Early Christianities
Cross-Cultural Encounters: Silk Roads, Mongol Empire, and Atlantic World
Graduate:
Cross-Cultural Interactions (from the Silk Road to the Columbian Exchange)
World Historiography
Globalization in World History
Roman Empire to Byzantine Commonwealth
Christian Roman Empire: Byzantium to the Fourth Crusade
Ancient Christianities
Mongol Imperialism and Empire
Selected Publications
The Sasanian World through Georgian Eyes: Caucasia and the Iranian Commonwealth in Late Antique Georgian Literature. Farnham, Surrey—Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014.
Studies in Medieval Georgian Historiography: Early Texts and Eurasian Contexts. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, vol. 601, Subsidia, vol. 113. Louvain: Peeters, 2003.
With Paul Crego, eds., Languages and Literatures of Eastern Christianity: Georgian, The Worlds of Eastern Christianity 300-1500, vol. 5. Farnham, Surrey—Burlington, VT: Ashgate/Variorum, 2012.
“The Georgian Nimrod,” in The Armenian Apocalyptic Tradition: A Comparative Perspective, Kevork Bardakjian and Sergio La Porta eds., 2 vols. Leiden—Boston: Brill, 2014. Pp. 188-216.
“Caucasia and Byzantine Culture,” in Byzantine Culture: Papers from the Conference ‘Byzantine Days of Istanbul’ May 21-23, 2010, Dean Sakel ed. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2014. Pp. 217-234.
With Tamila Mgaloblishvili, “Manichaeism in Late Antique Georgia?,” in ‘In Search of Truth’:
Augustine, Manichaeism and Other Gnosticism, Jacob Albert van den Berg, Annemaré Kotzé, Tobias Nicklas, and Madeleine Scopello eds., Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies, vol. 74. Leiden—Boston: Brill, 2011. Pp. 263-290.
“The Iranian Heritage of Medieval Georgia: Breathing New Life into the Pre-Bagratid Historiographical Tradition,” Iranica Antiqua 44 (2009): 645-692.
“Georgian Sources,” in Byzantines and Crusaders in Non-Greek Sources 1025-1204, Mary Whitby ed., Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 132. Oxford: Oxford UP/British Academy, 2007. Pp. 183-220.
