MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE COLLEGES

back to the June 2004 frontpage

Carleton College
MATT SEMANOFF will be in the Netherlands this August to participate in the Seventh Groningen Workshop on Hellenistic Poetry. His paper is entitled "Undermining Authority: Pedagogy in Aratus' Phaenomena".

Colorado College
Four majors graduated on May 17; one will teach Latin at a private school in Baltimore, another has a job working for a local non-profit organization, and another won a grant to do further research.

The Summer Latin Insitute began on June 7, and is off to a good start, with both undergraduates and practising teachers in attendance. Three are candidates for the MAT in Humanities (with Latin concentration). Director TRISH FITZBIGGON is assisted this summer by two faculty members from University of Colorado-Boulder, Chris Kopff & Noel Lenski, and by the University of Georgia's Richard Beaton.

The next academic year will see four majors at work on senior projects: women & mirrors, labyrinths, contemporary Greek tragedy, and the Cyropaedia. Courses include a Classics/Comp Lit class on Homer & Derek Walcott's Omeros, taught by a visitor from Chicago; going to Chicago is MARCIA DOBSON, who will bring students to the Newberry Library and the Lyric Opera for a "Myth and Meaning" course featuring Wagner's Ring. Starting on November 1, in time for Election Day, will be OWEN CRAMER's "Athenian Democracy," with plenty of fresh comparative material from our own country's attempts at democracy.

Check out Vergilius 49 (2003), pp.69-83 for LISA B. HUGHES' article, "Euripidean Vergil and the Smoke of a Distant Fire". She also conducted 25 students on a drama study-tour of Greeece & Turkey this April-May.

OWEN CRAMER will take part in the Wyoming Council for the Humanities Summer Teacher's Institute on Hoemer, Myth, and Epic.

Cornell College
In February, JOHN GRUBER-MILLER was invited to the University of Iowa to present his paepr, "Seven Myths about Latin Teaching" at the symposium Latin Language Teaching in the Twenty-First Century: Exploring Fact and Fiction.

Denison University
Six graduating seniors were awarded the President's Medal for outstanding academic work combined with significant contributions to campus life. Among them was Latin major NATE EMMERSON.

DePauw University
21 new members were initiated into the DePauw chapter of Eta Sigma Phi. And the department boasted 28 majors this spring -- 14 sophomores, 11 juniors, and 3 graduating seniors.

Now slated to appear from Cambridge in January 2005 is CARL HUFFMAN's book Archytas of Tarentum: Pythagorean, Philosopher and Mathematician King.

PHILIP THIBODEAU co-edited Being There Together: Essays in Honor of Michael C.J. Putnam on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (Afton Historical Societ Press, 2003), and wrote the introductory essay "The Highest Candle: Michael C. J. Putnam as Scholar and Teacher".

SHAWN O'BRYHIM was awarded a Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society, for his digital imaging project of the Ambrosian Palimpsest of Plautus. In April, he gave the paper "Adonis in Plautus' Pseudolus" at the annual meeting of the Classical Association of England & Wales.

Gustavus Adolphus College
BRONWEN WICKKISER is Harry Bikakis Fellow in '04 at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, working on understanding the Telemachos monument via Greek law.

End of year festivities included the Festival of Dionysus, celebrated on May 16, and a Hellenist vs. Latinist soccer game a few days later (followed by dinner at the home of PATRICIA & WILLIAM FREIERT).

Hope College
The spring co-curriculum included a pair of dramatic readings (in English) at JOHN QUINN's home. In January, Plautus' Asinaria was the text. Even more raucous (if that can be imagined) was an evening in early April devoted to pastoral writing, from the more humor-touched poems of Theocritus & Vergil to a shepherd-minded selection from Lucian's Dialogues of the Gods to eclogic parodies written in 18th century England.

Illinois Wesleyan University
This spring, members of the Classics Club & faculty introduced and critiqued films in the "Classics in Modern Film" Series: Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, History of the World Part One, Life of Brian, and The Mummy.

The annual Greek-Roman Banquet was held on March 26, complete with costume contest. Below is a photograph of Io (PHIL LOANE) & Prometheus (ERIK HAUGLAND) from Aeschylus' Prometeus Bound, via, it seems, a bit of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

Kenyon College
The graduating class of 2004 included six Classics students, five majors and one minor. Of these, Andrew Sweet will begin graduate work in Classics at Cornell in the fall. Another hopes to teach Latin in the schools. Others eventually see themselves in grad school (English and Library Science), entering the Foreign Service, and making a career in musical performance (drums). A senior thesis on Homeric influence in the Brazilian poet Sophia De Mello Brunner helped bring the Classics minor/English major to Brazil this summer.

Kenyon's Presiden, S. GEORGIA NUGENT has been lecturing on Sophocles to alumni groups around the country.

ROBERT BENNETT & ADAM SERFASS (who received a competitive subvention) attended the annual meeting of the Association of Ancient Historians in Ann Arbor, MI in May. Also in May, SERFASS delivered the paper "Economics of the Early Church" at the annual meeting of the North American Patristics Society (Chicago, IL).

In mid-April, to coincide with the Kenyon College Dramatic Club production of Mary Zimmerman's award-winning drama Metamorphoses,CAROLIN HAHNEMANN organized a reading of selections from Ovid in Latin (plus Rilke's Eurydice in German) for a group of high school students. They came from Dublin, OH where Daniel Foley (also a football coach at Kenyon) teaches them.

Ovid remains in the Kenyon news, as his Metamorphoses will be the subject of the advanced Latin course offerend in the fall, to be team-taught by S. GEORGIA NUGENT & ROBERT BENNETT.

BENNETT could be seen onstage this spring in two productions. In February & March, he played Victor Velasco in the Mount Vernon Players' production of Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park. In May, he appeared as the Lord Chancellor in Gilbert & Sullivan's Iolanthe.

In Italy for a month this summer is PAOLO ASSO, continuing his work on Roman Africa.

CAROLIN HAHNEMANN will be on sabbatical during the next academic year. She expects to stay in the area, to work both at Kenyon's library and at the Epigraphical Center at Ohio State.

Knox College
Rising to the Szold Distinguished Professorship in Classics is STEVE FINEBERG. Much prestige, even if no fattening of the paycheck. A German colleague told Steve: "I hear you've been sold. I wouldn't have imagined there'd be a market."

Lawrence University
JERE WICKENS, co-director of the Southern Euboia Exploration Project, will spend the summer working in Greece on the publication of an archaeological survey of ancient sites and land routes in the region of Karystos in southern Euboia. He will also be co-authoring two talks on the project: one for the citizens of Karystos to be given this June, and one at the international congress "Euboea in Antiquity: Aspects of Public and Private Life," to be held in Chalkis in October, 2004.

CAROL LAWTON's article "Athenian Anti-Macedonian Sentiment and Democratic Ideology in Attic Document Reliefs of the Fourth Century B. C." was published in The Macedonians in Athens, 322-229 B.C.: Proceedings of an Internatinal Conference held at the University of Athens, May 24-26, 2001 (Oxford, 2003), pp. 117-127. Last November she gave a lecture, "Children in Classical Athenian Votive Reliefs," at the Conference on Constructions of Childhood in the Ancient World at Dartmouth College, papers from which will be published as an Hesperia Supplement. She will become Chair of the Dept. of Art and Art History at Lawrence in the fall.

Macalester College
MIREILLE LEE, Classics at Macalster and Art at St. Thomas, co-organized a student symposuim on Sculpture in the Ancient Mediterranean at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Held in conjunction with a program of the work of senior scholars on the Miller collection of Roman sculpture, the student symposium involved eight undergraduates and graduates from Macalester, the University of St. Thomas, and the University of Minnesota.

LEE's article "Evil Wealth of Raiment: Deadly Peploi in Greek Tragedy" appeared in the February/March (99.3, 2004) issue of The Classical Journal, pp.253-279. Next year, she will be teaching full-time at Macalester in the Classics and Art Departments.

JOSEPH L. RIFE will be directing the third season of the Kenchreai Cemetery Project, and interdisciplinary archaeological study of a major cemetery of Roman date at ancient Kenchreai, eastern port of Corinth (Greece). Professor Rife in collaboration with Dr. Alix Barbet (C.N.R.S., Paris) will be conducting a program of study and conservation of a series of important sepulchral paintings. He will also be working with Dr. Apostolos Sarris (Rethymno) to conduct geophysical prospection of the entire site, as well as with several students and senior staff, to complete documentation of the surface remains of burial and the natural landscape.

Monmouth College
In February, the Fox Classics Lecture was given by Anne Browning Nelson of Assumption College (Worcester, MA), who spoke on "Education in Fourth Century Alexandria: Didymus the Blind's Commentaries on the Psalms".

February also saw a New York Times article on the ancient languages in the film The Passion of the Christ, with TOM SIENKEWICZ weighing in.

Tom co-authored two recent articles in The Classical Journal's Forum: "Linking Latin in the Curriculum Beyond the Latin Classroom: Several Collaborative Models" (99.2, 2003/4), pp.177-188 and "Lingua Latina Liberis: Four Models for Latin in the Elementary School" (99.3, 2004), pp.301-312.

Hot off the Bolchazy-Carducci press in June 2004 is Vergil: A LEGAMUS Latin Transitional Reader, which Tom co-authored with LeaAnn Osburn, a '72 alum of Monmouth.

Tom & a colleague from Art took seven students to the Naples area over Spring Break.

Oberlin College
The number of majors has hit a new record -- 45, at last count. A great number, but it's putting a strain on the faculty of what is a small Department.

A dizzying number of terrific speakers threatened to keep the Department out of the daily classroom altogether. Michael C. J. Putnam was welcomed to campus March 8-12 for the Charles Beebe Martin Classical Lectures. The title of his series was "Poetic Interplay: Catullus and Horace," and featured the individual talks "Time and Place," "Speech and Silence," "Helen," and "Virgil". Next, BEN LEE arranged for noted philosopher & theorist Jean-Michel Rabat to give a talk & faculty symposium on "The Future of Theory." Ann Ellis Hanson came to campus as Phi Beta Kappa lecturer on the use of birthing amulets. Finally, Carole Newlands visited Oberlin (& her son, an Oberlin student); her presentation "The Amphitheatre and the Face of Power, or Lionising the Emperor" was an analysis of Statius' poem on the death of a lion in the arena.

The annual all-night Bardic Reading took place in early February. This year's text, the Iliad, took even longer than anticipated, from a little after noon to 5:30 AM. The few who remained for the finish were looking distinctly drained of energy during the Funeral of Hector.

Three students are studying overseas next year -- two at the Centro in Rome, and one at College Year in Athens.

JIM HELM's article, "Aeschylus' Genealogy of Morals", appeared in the latest (124.1, 2004) issue of the American Journal of Philology, pp.23-54.

Forthcoming in the same journal is an article by KIRK ORMAND, on the story of Mestra from the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. Ormand will be on-leave for the next academic year, writing a book on the Catalogue, as well as beginning work on virginity tests in the novels of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus. His new course on Sexuality in the Ancient Greece and Rome earned him a feature in Oberlin's Faculty Profiles.

TOM VAN NORTWICK recently finished a manuscript on the alternative possibilities of character in the Odyssey, and is continuing work on Hector & masculinity.

At Princeton's Elegy and Subjectivity conference (April 30-May 1), BEN LEE presented "Moods of Representation: The Rhetoric of the Subjective in Tibullus".

Ohio Wesleyan University
BRAD COOK organized the department's first epic reading. On March 23, from 9 AM to 9:30 PM, the Odyssey was recited by nearly 50 students in 24 different translations, ranging from Chapman's (1614-5) to Stanley Lombardo's (2000). Cook is currently working on a book on Demosthenes.

At Barnes and Noble, $6.95 will get you a latte & cookie ... or the 600+ page Herodotus that DONALD LATEINER has put together: introduction, revised translation, footnotes, bibliography, listing of works of art, etc. The book debuted this May. Coming out in September, in the Cambridge Companion to Homer, will be Lateiner's chapter on the unpredictable plot of the Iliad. A current Homeric project, "Telemakhos' One Sneeze and Penelope's Two Laughs" is destined for a collection edited by Robert Rabel for the Classical Press of Wales. Expected to appear in the fall is Lateiner's chapter on pity in the historians Herodotus & Thucydides (the book, like the symposium which preceded it, is under the leadership of Wooster's Rachel Sternberg & Tom Falkner). Also appearing soon in the International Journal of the Classical Tradition is a long review-essay on Dodwell's Anglo-Saxon Gestures and the Roman Stage.

Saint Olaf College
16 majors were in the Class of '04 -- 4 in Classics, 3 in Greek, and 9 in Ancient Studies. Two, KATHLEEN BURT and DAVID SCHIEDLER, will begin the M.A.T. program in Latin at the University of Florida next fall.

On April 7, 18 students were initiated into Eta Sigma Phi. Thanks to a generous donation, KATHLEEN BURT and STEPHANIE WALKER ('05) were able to accompany ANNE GROTON to the the national convention, held in New Orleans, March 19-21. And more Eta Sigm Phi news: St..Olaf students won 3 of the 25 prizes awarded in the 2004 national translation contests. This has been the most active year for the local chapter in twenty years, and included a t-shirt fundraiser. Capping off the success is winning the bid to host the 2005 national convention.

At the CAMWS meeting, JIM MAY offered his annual ovationes, and delighted the crowd at the banquet with his Latin rendition of "Meet Me in St. Louis."

ANNE GROTON and JON BRUSS completed their terms as, respectively, President and Treasurer of the Classical Association of Minnesota (CAM).

STEVE REECE was one of three people in 2003-4 to be awarded a Millicent C. McIntosh Fellowship. This substantial cash award will help him work on the Homeric hapax legomena that can be understood as products of junctual metanalysis, the creation of new words through mishearing the boundaries of established words. He also published the article "Homeric Studies" in Oral Tradition (18.1, 2003), pp.76-78.