RCHC is pleased to announce the winner of the 2025 Best Article Competition for Young Scholars organized for the journal Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia. After the initial screening and shortlisting, the Editorial Board members voted in favour of an article by Jana Matuszak, Assistant Professor of Sumerology at the University of Chicago. Her submission, “Doing Gender in Babylon: The Construction of Ideal Womanhood in Sumerian Literature from the Early 2nd Millennium BCE”, was acknowledged as a brilliant contribution that combines deep philological analysis with thought-provoking insights into the gender roles in ancient Mesopotamia.

In the article, scheduled to be published in Old World in early 2025, Dr. Matuszak examines Sumerian literary disputations from the Old Babylonian period (2000–1600 BCE). By creatively combining modern Gender Studies theory with the in-depth analysis of Sumerian cuneiform texts, Dr Matuszak demonstrates that they represent the earliest known conscious construction of gender and ideal womanhood.