| Last revision: September 2000 Liffey Thorpe & Steve Heiny, co-editors Earlham College Richmond, Indiana 47374 erato@earlham.edu
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From Illinois Wesleyan University
Nancy Sultan writes (September 2000):
What's new in Classics at Illinois Wesleyan University? Our only classicist just returned from a year-long sabbatical (that would be me). I had a replacement, Ken Mayer, who kept things going in my absence. He had thirteen people in Greek 101 but by Greek 102 only 4 were left (all seniors, too, which means no 201 will be offered this year). This Fall we have only 8 students in ancient Greek 101-102. Very disturbing. Would like to discuss ways of building a language program on a campus that is generally apathetic toward the humanities and language training in particular. Our biggest hurdle is the language component. We just hired our first ancient historian, Martha Jenks, who will offer a full ranger of courses in ancient Greek & Roman history. She will also offer some Latin courses, but we need a Latinist. We continue to meet resistence from the administration and apathy from faculty concering language training. Somehow we need to convince them that we have to HAVE a program first in order to recruit students. They seem to have the opposite opinion. We have thirteen + minors, but no major. I don't think distance learning is the answer, but would like to talk about Kenny Morrell's grant project with Rhodes, where they face similar small program woes.
NancyFrom Earlham
Liffey Thorpe writes (September 2000)
Steve Heiny, Andrew Reece and Mickey White (of Earlham's Theater Department) took a dozen students to Greece last May-June ("May Term in Greece"). It was, as in 1998, a great success. We currently have 10 declared Classics majors and a number of minors. Andrew is replacing Liffey for the third year, now, while she finishes a stint as Earlham's Associate Academic Dean. As well as language courses, Andrew's teaching Greek Mythology and Hellenistic Philosophy this semester, and will teach Ancient Greek Philosophy next semester.
From St. Olaf
Anne Groton writes (August 2000):
1999-2000 was a banner year for Classics at St. Olaf. In the Eta Sigma Phi contests for 1999 our students won 7 of the 23 prizes. Matthew Steenberg, a Classics major in the Class of '01, was featured by USA Today as one of 20 students on the All-USA College Academic First Team. The Class of 2000 included 7 Classics majors, 2 Greek majors, 3 Ancient Studies majors, and 3 Medieval Studies majors. Of these 15 students, 1 won a Fulbright Scholarship, 2 were nominated for Rhodes Scholarships, and 10 were elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Three have gone on to graduate school in Classics (at U. of Michigan, U. of Virginia, and Bryn Mawr, respectively). Wow!
Course enrollments remained strong across the board, with 53 survivors of Beginning Latin, 20 of Beginning Greek, and plenty of students in Intermediate and Advanced Latin and Greek as well as in our Classical Civilization courses. To help promote Latin in the area, we devised two contests for Latin students in Minnesota secondary schools, with $200 in prize money supplied by CPL. An ad (in Latin) for feta cheese won the advertisement contest, and a Pyramus & Thisbe video (in Latin), modeled on The Blair Witch Project, won the myth-based skit contest.
During 1999-2000 we enjoyed guest lectures by Peter Green on "Alexander's Alexandria" and by Cecil Wooten on "Noon Becomes Night: Petronius and Cultural Turbulence." We also co-sponsored a talk at Carleton by Jeffrey Henderson on "Lost Ladies: Women in the Fragments of Old Comedy." Thanks to a few generous donors, we now, for the first time, have some endowed funds to pay for yearly prizes in Latin and Greek and to help cover the cost of departmental activities, including our biennial Plautus play (scheduled for March 2-3, 2001).
In the spring Steve Reece received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor--hooray! After spending the summer at the Center for Hellenic Studies, he is now on sabbatical, finishing his book on junctural metanalysis in Homeric Greek. He recently had two articles on word etymologies in Homer published in Glotta andClassical World . Not to be outdone, Gwen Compton-Engle recently had two articles on Aristophanes published in Classical Journal and Classical Philology , along with a book review. Jim May's annotated English translation of Cicero's On the Ideal Orator (co-authored with Jakob Wisse) will be published soon by OUP. Meanwhile Jim is editing Volume I (Oratory and Rhetoric) of E. J. Brill's series of companion guides to Cicero. The third edition of Anne Groton's From Alpha to Omega: A Beginning Course in Classical Greek has just appeared, sporting a new blue cover. Gwen is beginning her fourth year at St. Olaf, filling in for Jim, who has one more year to serve as Associate Dean for Humanities; he will also be teaching in St. Olaf's Great Conversation program this year. Replacing Steve during his sabbatical is Kent Gregory, a Ph.D. candidate at the U. of Minnesota who has taught at Baylor and Tulane and rowed in Greece with Jim back in 1990 (when Kent was still an undergrad at Washington & Lee).
Kent and Anne will both be giving papers at the CAMWS-SS Meeting in October; Kent is on the program of the APA Meeting, too. While Jim, Steve, and Kent are sun-bathing in San Diego, Anne and Gwen will be in Greece, teaching our annual January interim abroad course. Ah, the joys of academic life!
From the GLCA/ACM meeting in Dallas:John Fischer writes:
ATTENDING:
Joe Day, Wabash
Leslie Day, Wabash
Steve Fineberg, Knox
John Fischer, Wabash
Pedar Foss, DePauw
David Guinee, DePauw
Anne Groton, St. Olaf
Jim May, St. Olaf
Jack Nyenhuis, Hope
Rebecca Shindler, DePauw
Tom Sienkewiscz, Monmouth
Here are things we discussed in the order we discussed them.
- get the dues to Steve Heiny at Earlham. It is not a good idea to stop such a thing once we have it in the budget.
- we should try to expand ourselves to include the ACS, all the more since the Mellon initiative includes the three consortia (John Fischer will write the letter).
- we talked about Jere and Carol's e-mail of last year about the possible Greek program and Pedar Foss mentioned the new Turkey Program which might well fit our needs. It was decided that we would not proceed with trying to create a Greek Program, since there seemed to be little enthusiasm among the group members to do so. Pedar suggests we work with the tri-consortial Turkey Program and John Fischer will write to the three groups we had contacted to explain our position. Steve Fineberg mentioned that we could create our own program within CYA, if anyone were interested.
- CAMPUS REPORTS:
St. Olaf--they have a new person (Senta) who is an art historian; Jim May is still Associate Dean. Steve Reese is up for tenure. Gwen Compton-Engle is still there. There are lots of good students: 20 in beginning Greek and 55 in beginning Latin; 9 in advanced Latin and 9 in advanced Greek. Their Latin and Greek Prize is working well.
Hope--John Quinn is on tenure track now. Enrollment in Greek is somewhat down (15 in beginning where there were 27 in 98-99). Ruth Todd retired in 1986 and lives in Dallas (she would be 81 in 2 days on the 30th of December). Wayne State Press has accepted Jack's book on Myth and the Creative Process.
Knox--Steve and Brenda are on leave. Keith Jones (a Knox graduate) from the University of Chicago is replacing them. There are 12 in elementary Greek. A very lively CYA representative was on campus named Melissa--highly recommended by Steve. Steve did his first course in New Testament Greek and quite liked it (to his surprise). The students read at sight every day. There were 6-7 going on in the languages.
Monmouth-Ton did advanced New Testament and Greek Lyric Poets. Paul Safire really inspired their students and is highly recommended. There are 20 in Latin. Greek is every other year. In the myth and word elements courses there were lots of students. He will take a small group of students to Turkey and next year to Roman France. The department has been designated for assessment--any ideas from colleagues?
Wabash--Leslie Day reported that there were good enrollments: 11 in elementary Greek and 27 in elementary Latin; smaller enrollments in the upperlevel courses. There are some very good freshmen. Some students will be doing the Iliad with her in the Spring. All of the department will be back together this coming semester, since David Kubiak will return from sabbatical. Jerome Pollitt came to lecture in the Fall and was superb--a high recommendation. Leslie taught a freshman tutorial entitled "Feast or Famine" where students studied and ate.
DePauw-David Guinee reported that DePauw had added Pedar Foss and Rebecca Shindler to their staff--a new line--and that their presence gave a new verve to the department. There was a new freshman seminar program which has generated interest in the Classics, but decimated the elementary language program. Also, there was the fact of the general DePauw requirements. He asked a question: did any of us have experience with Latin 1 in semester 2 and Latin 2 in semester 1 of an academic year? Students seemd to forget everything in the summer, some noted. Steve Fineberg added that the same thing occurred during Knox's long hiatus between Thanksgiving and January. Carl Huffman has finished a book on Archytus and intends to move on to work on another philosopher. He raised the question of an electronic course which someone at Wabash gave with 2/3 other colleagues.
- there was a general discussion on whether we were producing Latin teachers for secondary schools. We should talk more about this. Some of us have sent students to Kent State and U Mass and Washington of St. Louis for an MAT--where else can students go? We discussed the problem some more and noted that we had discouraged people years ago and now were were not encouraging young people. This becomes even more problematic with the loss of Latin programs at the high school level. As part of this discussion, Joe Day (who has been involved at the state level in Indiana) suggests that Latin teachers keep a running cv and he will be leading a seminar at the state organization this Spring on that topic.
- apropos of the Wabash Theatre course, we discussed whether we could work on small courses via electronic means. This would obviate one-person courses. Pedar and Rebecca added that the new Global Partnership (via the Mellon initiatives to the three consortia) might assist in this. They did this with a web site. Could we approach the ACS with this and share some of the labor around?
- we discussed translation courses and how we approach students. Some schools do not offer courses in translation and that means that they are not reaching a wider group with ancient literature.
ADJOURNMENT
From Knox College:
Steve Fineberg writes:
Classics at Knox continues to prosper. We have had respectable enrollments in both beginning and advance languages, and this Fall Steve finally, after an untarnished 20 year plus policy of nothing-after-the-death-of-Socrates, succumbed to the temptation of NT Greek 4 students lured him for the first time into reading the Gospel of John (had someone told me earlier that it was neoplatonism, Id have done it long ago) one of the best times I can recall in recent teaching history.
For the second time this year we have one of our graduates here for a 5th year in a special post- baccalaureate program. The student does a special project to support some aspect of the classics program, also some tutoring of beginning students, and generally takes a couple classes. Last years post-bac. is now in graduate school at Indiana and this years student is in the process of applying to graduate programs. The extra year seems to have allowed each of these students a necessary breather before grad school, and they have each made wonderful contributions to our program.
We continue in our tradition of public readings from the classics in translation at the Finebergs this year we assembled at Halloween and read ancient ghost stories. These texts were new to our canon of Friday readings; they proved a great success.
Brenda and Steve will be on sabbatical leave this Winter and Spring terms -- no exotic plans. We will for the most part stay home and work on our various projects. Brenda continues to focus on Roman elegy and Steve on Dionysos (in the Attic literary texts and on the vases). Our leave replacement will be Keith Jones (Knox BA; Texas-Austin MA), who is finishing his dissertation (Ovid) at the Univ. of Chicago.
From Ohio Wesleyan University:
Don Lateiner writes:
Donald Lateiner and Dan Levine (University of Arkansas) are leading a three week study-trip to Greece and Crete (23 May-13 June) for which one credit will be awarded. For further details contact Donald Lateiner (dglatein@cc.owu.edu) or visit his website at http://www.owu.edu/%7Egreece2k. Or you can telephone Lateiner at 740-368-3575. Please tell students who might be interested. Lateiner can send brochures as well, if any are wanted.
Laurie Churchill has led Ohio 5 foreign language folks into a page on Medieval Women Writers, still under construction. Cliff Weber has annotated Egeria and Don Lateiner is working on Constantia, a disciple of Ovid's. See: http://cc.owu.edu/~o5medww/index.html
From Wooster:
Tom Falkner writes:
The academic year 1999-2000 begins with congratulations, greetings, and a farewell. Tom Falkner has been named Dean of Faculty and has relocated a corner office in Galpin Hall: administrative whiplash is he still teaches Greek and, for this academic year, still chairs Classical Studies. Greetings to Basil J. Dufallo and Rachel Hall Sternberg, who have joined the Department of Classical as assistant professors; Professor Dufallo is teaching mythology and Latin, Professor Sternberg history and Greek. Greetings also to Professor Dianna Kardulias, who is teaching a first-year seminar called "The House that Homer Built"; Professor Jeffrey Pinkham these days can most often be found at work in the library but we hope he continues to teach classics courses as schedule permits. And finally, a farewell is due to Professor Vivian Holliday, who retired in the spring after 38 years of inspired teaching and leadership.
Majors and minors in Classical Studies are enjoying plenty of comaraderie these days. Many of them now live on the some corridor in Kenarden Lodge, known officially as the Classics Suite, and therefore are able to study together and discuss classical subjects whenever they like. They also sponsor events, including parties and classic films like A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which aired in September.
Members of our local chapter of Eta Sigma Phi, the national classics honor society, have sponsored, in conjunction with the Classics Suite, a play-reading of Euripides' Bacchae, held on a Friday evening in October, complete with ivy garlands and the severed head of Pentheus. They plan to induct new members into Eta Sigma Phi this fall, and to organize a Latin competition for high school students in nearby counties sometime in April or May.
Students and faculty meet for Classics Table every Friday at noon in Lowry Center 250-251 to catch up on news and to discuss entertaining topics such as, for example, ritual sacrifice, scapegoating, and ridicule.
The Classics Forum convened in October at the home of Tom and Rose Falkner, where Professor Sternberg presented a paper entitled, "Getting Home: The Long-Distance Transport of Sick and Wounded Soldiers in Ancient Greece." The question-and-answer session that followed was lively and continued informally over snacks.
Professors Dufallo and Sternberg both presented papers at the October meeting in Cleveland of the Ohio Classical Conference. Professor Dufallo spoke on "Grave Appius Claudius Caecus: Cicero's Ambivalent Portrait in its Performative Contexts," and Professor Sternberg on "Bravery and Beside Manners: Home Nursing in Ancient Greece."
It was exactly a year ago that Tom and Rose Falkner led Wooster-in-Greece for the fall semester of 1998, a huge success by all accounts. The program will next run in the fall semester of 2001, and all students at the College of Wooster, whether or not they plan to major in classics, are cordially invited to seize this chance to study the spectacular monuments of ancient Greece on location in Athens, Crete, Delphi, Mycenae, and as far afield as Istanbul.
From Wabash College:
Joe Day writes:
Interesting lecture by Hal Haskell (Southwestern Univ) in early October on the relationship between mythical traditions about the Crete and the Trojan War, and the actualities of excavation, especially the whole complicated issue of the Greeks in Crete and the fall of the Minoan palaces (about which issue Leslie's excavation at Kavousi is not exactly irrelevant!).
Our main event of the year came in mid October, with Jerome Pollitt's wonderful lecture on Images of Patriotism in Athenian Art. A fascinating correlation between the view of their society expressed in Epitaphioi and that found in public art, with special attention to the Parthenon. Included his interpretation of the frieze which is currently only available in a hard-to-find publication.
Headline: course-work suggests Classics alive and well at Wabash: (1) We have five seniors (one Greek, one Latin, three Classics) doing independent study projects. The joint meetings we've had have been wonderful, with exciting exchanges of information and interaction among the students. The success may result (aren't we all doing, yuk, assessment?) from our making sure they all read each other's work before the joint meetings. Young men and subjects as follows:
- Andy Closser: The Image of Athena as Judge in the Eumenides (advisor, J. Fischer).
- Isaiah Kalinowski: A Translation of Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae for the Stage (advisor, J. Day).
- Adam Packer: The Aeneas Panel on the Ara Pacis Augustae (advisor, L. Day).
- Brady Rife: Popular Latin: Sermo Plebeius vs Sermo Classicus (advisor, J. Fischer).
- Ryan Tipps: The Motif of Dexiosis in Classical Athenian Grave Stelai (advisor, J. Day).
(2) My seminar (mostly Classics majors, but a few others too) on Greek Religion and Society is, I think, going swimingly. The first half of the semester, we held seminars based on some very very tough reading, including a lot of Sourvinou-Inwood and equally difficult stuff. It was to greater and lesser extents over their heads, but they plowed on, trying to make sense of it, and, with a bit of prodding from me, the seminars were exciting. We're really exploring some of the ways religion for the Greeks was embedded totally in the fabric of society, inseparable from that fabric, reflecting it and constructing it simultaneously. Now the students are working on their individual projects: battleline sacrifice, women's construction of their own gender roles in ritual, human sacrifice as a metaphor for girls' coming of age rituals (esp. myths of Iphigeneia), the role of the Athenian archon basileus, what's Dionysian about the Oresteia, Spartan military rituals, Zeus as panhellenic deity and the origins of Olympia, and the festival pompe (procession) and its function of reflecting and constructing social structure.
(3) One should be quiet about apparent success for fear of causing a pesky divine response, but it's difficult not to share our pleasure over the biggest elementary Greek class in a long time: 12 students (our student body is only about 800). It remains to be seen how many go beyond the first year (or even the first semester, alas); but we're hoping for the best. I'm teaching it with Athenaze, which Leslie began using several years ago. Paradigms still have to be learned the old way, but the readings are engaging the students in a light-hearted way, and giving them the constant repetition of forms and vocabulary within a context of pretty sound (though of course extremely basic) Greek prose style that traditional methods just don't do. Initial thought on assessment: for the really good and motivated student: there's probably not much difference in effect (measured by performance in third semester) between, say, Chase and Phillips and Athenaze. But for the majority of the students, the latter seems to offer more (though not everyone here agrees). Still to be discussed re. assessment: which method (or some other) works best as a liberal-arts language experience for the student who does not go on? Any wisdom out there????
(4) On the negative side, the intermediate Latin is smaller than it's been in recent years. And fewer incoming Freshmen took the Latin placement exam than ever. Does that mean fewer Indiana (?and other) high-school students are doing Latin? Or does it mean something else? John Fischer is sifting through our admissions records, trying to get a handle on this troublesome ?trend.
(5) Images on the College net. Good-bye to the days of carefully placing an art-history course's slides in a glass case hooked to a wall, hoping students will come look at them before they have to be taken down for the next class's set of slides. Leslie is placing slides from each day's class in her Greek art-archaeology survey in the course's folder on the College net, using a PDF format, with brief identifying comments. Students in her course can access them any time they want.
From Hope College:
John Quinn writes:
I'm not sure if any of this is newsworthy, but here is "stuff" from Hope College: It was a busy summer: My colleague Kelly Osborne won from the college a grant to do research, in collaboration with one of our students, at The Scriptorium. (This is a center for Christian Antiquities, with extensive holdings in manuscripts and early printed editions of the Bible. It is located in the next city "up the lake" from here.) They began work on an unpublished collection of papyrus fragments.
Meanwhile, I was pondering some papyri myself -- courtesy of an NEH Summer Seminar on Roman Egypt conducted by Roger Bagnall of Columbia University. I was very happy to have as a suite-mate in NYC Ed Burke of Coe College. The fall semester: The college's Theatre Department in October put on Sophocles' *Electra* -- I helped out as general consultant. (Perhaps my biggest contribution was to correct a typo in the script!).
Otherwise, we've supplied out-of-class opportunities for our students, and the college at large, via such events as a dramatic reading of Terence's "The Eunuch" (in English) and a "classical-film" series featuring British comedies set in ancient Rome & made "in the era of Austin Powers."
Our newest colleague, Aegean archeologist Senta German, is offering a Mayterm to Greece this spring. For more information, she can be reached at german@hope.edu or (616) 395-7411.
From Beloit:
Art Robson's web page contains his commentary on the Electra: the Greek text appears in one window (about ten or so lines at a time), vocabulary help in another, and commentary in a third. Check it out at http://beloit.edu/~robsona/electra/main.html.From Lawrence University:
Dan Taylor writes:
Ciao,
The big news from Lawrence is that I have a full time colleague in Classics for the first time in 22 years. Randall Baba McNeill joined the Lawrence University faculty this fall as an Assistant Profesor of Classics. He is from Chicago originally, received his BA and Phi Beta Kappa Key summa cum laude from Harvard, and took his PhD at Yale. His credentials are impeccable, he already has a good start on a scholarly career, and his teaching is garnering acclaim even as I type. Best of all, he's just a fine human being. This year he will teach a beginning, an intermediate, and an advanced language course, a survey and an advanced course in ancient history, and a section of our required Freshman Studies.
Unfortunately the administration is not allowing us to keep Stan Szuba on board in even a half time position. That's especially bad news for students interested in classical mythology, because his course was a true winner. For a decade now Stan has rendered first-rate service to the department, taking on tutorials and independent studies even though the terms of his partial position did not require him to do so. I will miss Stan and can only hope that he lands on his feet somewhere where good teaching is appreciated.
Carol Lawton, our senior art historian, and her husband Jere Wickens are spending the year at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, where she is serving as the Whitehead Visiting Professor. So far they have survived the earthquakes and other travails of life there. Meantime, back here at home Anne Grevstad-Nordbrock is filling in for Carol quite nicely.
Our women's soccer team, to which I am devoted, got a new coach this year, and guess what?--she's a Latinist! Moira Ruhly has an MA in European History and has been sitting in on my Augustine class. (Unfortunately my Vikings lost to LaLonde's Pioneers in the conference championship.)
That's about it for the new stuff; the old stuff is the same: attending conferences, writing papers, engaging students, et cetera.
Arrivederci, Dan
From Macalester
"Jeremiah Reedy attended the IX International Symposium on Greek Philosophy at ancient Olympia, Greece from August 2-6. The theme of the meeting was "The Philosophical Interpretation of Tragedy." Reedy's paper was entitled "Walter Kaufmann's Philosophy of Tragedy." He was one of three participants who were awarded engraved plaques for promoting the study of ancient Greek thought and culture.Reedy also attended a conference on "Philosophy and Ecology" held on the island of Samos in the Aegean from August 23-18. He contributed a paper entitled "Greek Thought and the Right to a Clean and Healthy Environment" to the program. During the intervening weeks the Reedys traveled in Turkey visiting such ancient sites as Ephesus, Aphrodisias, Antalya, Aspendos, Nyssa, and Perge." [from Macalester faculty newsletter]
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| E-mail links to ACM/GLCA Classicists |
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Bell, Albert. Hope : bell@hope.edu Kaster, Bob. U. of Chicago:
r-kaster@uchicago.edu |
May, James M. St. Olaf : may@stolaf.edu Osborne, Kelly. Hope: osborne@hope.cit.hope.edu Overman, Andrew. Macalester: overman@macalester.edu Phillips, Ed. Grinnell : phillips@ac.grin.edu Polley, Patrick. Beloit : polleyp@beloit.edu Quinn, John. Hope : quinn@hope.edu Reece, Andrew. Earlham : reecean@earlham.edu Reece, Steve. St. Olaf : reece@stolaf.edu Robson, Arthur G. Beloit : robsona@beloit.edu Home page, including Electra commentary: http://beloit.edu/~robsona/ Sienkewicz, Tom. Monmouth : toms@monm.edu |
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