THE CONFERENCE SEASON

back to the June 2004 frontpage

The Annual Meetings of the American Archaeological Institute & the American Philological Association
(San Francisco, CA: January 2-5)

Despite the many attractions of San Francisco, several ACM/GLCA classicists capped a long Saturday with a late afternoon session. The following issues were raised:
1) impact of faculty turnover
2) increasing faculty-lines
3) "Classics", or is there a better title?

Most of the discussion was on the first topic. While our organization has been losing some of its venerable members to retirement, is it clear that the younger faculty at our institutions are committed to taking active roles in developing our consortial ties? There is some worry, too, that the replacement of tenure lines with non-tenure-track positions at institutions elsewhere puts pressure on our own new faculty to be concerned more with their research program than with promoting Classics and participating in general education courses. Also worrisome is the lack of knowledge about Classics on the part of younger faculty in other disciplines. There seems, for example, to be less hiring in History programs of faculty with backgrounds in ancient studies. Perhaps it is time for "outreach" to such new hires, to inform them of what we do and how our own work can intersect with theirs.

The issue of how to make a case for new lines in our programs may seem to founder on the (relatively) small number of majors/minors we have in comparison to, say, Psychology. Beloit College brought word, however, that this number is only one of the questions asked when such decisions are made there. The others, equally impotant, are:
-- What are your numbers in service courses?
-- What are your numbers in interdisciplinary courses?

The third topic was touched upon only briefly, perhaps because the titles of our programs already vary widely. Nobody seemed to have any wisdom on the specific question whether "Mediterranean Studies" would be too confusing a label, especially for graduate schools considering our students for admission. Helping to make labels difficult is the fact that our courses may include medieval material as well, or be outright devoted to a topic in, for example, postclassical Latin. (The Department of Classics at St. Olaf even offers a major in Medieval Studies -- 8 students are currently signed on.)

The meeting concluded with the note that the skyrocketing enrollments in our schools is part of a larger trend in favor of small liberal arts colleges. We are regarded as "safe" places for students to attend. It's our job to make sure that Classics is a vital part of the broad education that defines the liberal arts.

Papers that your editor sat in on or otherwise happened to hear about:
Paolo Asso (Kenyon), "And Then It Rained Shields: Lucan's Digressions"
Albert A.Bell, Jr. (Hope) was a panelist for the AIA Workshop "Archaeology and Fiction"
Jon S. Bruss (St. Olaf), "A Missing Chapter in the Reception of Parmenides: Anamnesis in the Symposium?"
W. Joseph Cummins (Grinnell), "The Interpretation of Plato's Euthyphro 15a-b"
Monessa Cummins (Grinnell), "The Relationship of Pindar's Sixth Pythian to the East Frieze of the Siphnian Treasury"
Eric K. Dugdale (Gustavus Adolphus), "Of This and That: The Recognition Forumula in Sophocles' Electra"
Ann Haeckl & Bret Eilander (Kalamazoo) were two of the authors of "Baby Face, You've Got the Cutest Little Baby Face: the Social Psychology of Facial Attractiveness and Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt"
Thomas D. Hall (DePauw), "Intersocietal Encounters: Lessons and Questions from a World-Systems Perspective"
Stephen Heiny (Earlham), "Genre, Rhetoric, and Craft in Pindar's Pythian 3"
Timothy P. Hofmeister (Denison), "Joseph Brodsky's Roman Body"
Lisa B. Hughes (Colorado), "Ovidian Art and Incest in The House of Yes"
P. Nick Kardulias (Wooster) co-authored "The Athienou Archaeological Project: Thirteen Years of Investigations at Athienou-Malloura"
P. Nick Kardulias (Wooster) co-organized the panel on"The Role of World Systems Theory in the Study of Ancient Societies: The Eastern Mediterranean as Test Cases"
Mireille M. Lee (Macalester), "A River-God in Drag? Interpreting a Male Peplophoros"
James M. May (St. Olaf) co-organized the APA session "The Performance of Cicero's Oratory: Theory and Practice"
Jason Moralee (Illinois Wesleyan), "Dedications for Salvation's Sake from Parthian and Roman Dura Europas"
Michael C. Nelson & J. Andrew Overman (Macalester), "A Recently Discovered Roman Imperial Site at Omrit, Israel"
John T. Quinn (Hope), "Classics and the Apocalyptic Present in Derek Jarman's Dream-Films"
Rebecca Schindler & Pedar Foss (DePauw), Poster Session "CCGMA: Collaboratory for GIS and Mediterranean Archeology" -- awarded best poster!
Nancy Sultan (Illinois Wesleyan) facilitated discussion at the APA/AIA joint roundtable discussion on "Teaching Ethics in Archaeology and Antiquities Collecting"
Philip Thibodeau (DePauw) co-organized the three-year colloquium "Earth Sciences in Antiquity"
Nancy Wilkie (Carleton) was moderator of the AIA Presidential Workshop on "Preservation of the Cultural Heritage of China"

The Annual Meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South
(St. Louis, MO: April 15-17)

The ACM/GLCA luncheon was held on April 16 -- a time for informal conversation. We were honored to have with us Jeffrey Buller, President of CAMWS.

Papers that your editor sat in on or otherwise happened to hear about:
Paolo Asso (Kenyon), "The Evil of Mother Africa and Her Monsters in Flavian Epic: Reading Regulus' Fight Against the Serpent in the Punica"
Neil W. Bernstein (Wooster), "Kinship and Polity in Silius' Punica"
Bradley Buszard (Kalamazoo), "Paideia in Plutarch's Alexander-Caesar and Pyrrhus-Marius"
Erik K. Dugdale (Gustavus Adolphus), "The Story of Glaucus: A Cautionary Tale Backfires"
Thomas M. Falkner (Wooster), "The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? Greek Tragedy and Edward Albee's 'Tragi-'Comedy"
Patricia Fitzgibbon (Colorado), "Plutarch's Table Talk: Paradigms for the Symposium"
Anne H. Groton (St. Olaf) spoke on "The Next One Hundred Years" at the CAMWS Centennial Plenary Session
John Gruber-Miller (Cornell), "Ovid Metamorphosed: Naomi Iizuka's Polaroid Stories"
Daniel Hotary (Kalamazoo), "Revisiting 'The Jewish Woman': Ethnic Slur or Ethnographic Archaeology?"
David P. Kubiak (Wabash), "Myth and Characterization in Melville's Billy Budd"
Donald Lateiner (Ohio Wesleyan), "Procul este parentes: Mothers in Ovid's Metamorphoses"
James M. May (St. Olaf), "A Century of Ciceronian Study"
Patrick J. Myers (Wabash), "Reassessing Analogies in Plato's Sophist and Statesman: Fishing, Weaving and Davidson's Courtesans and Fishcakes"
John T. Quinn (Hope), "Stalking the Thyrsos"
Matthew Semanoff (Carleton), "The Rhetoric of Expertise in Aratus' Phaenomena"
Beth Severy-Hoven (Macalester), "A Free Man Lives Here: Sex, Slavery and Status in the House of the Vettii, Pompeii"
David J. Shedivy & Eddie R. Lowry (Ripon), "Roman Environmental Literature: Some Prolegomena"
Janice Siegel (Illinois State), "Euripides' Bacchae as an Inverted Model for Ovid's Procne"
Thomas J. Sienkewicz (Monmouth), "Latin is a Dead Language or the Empire of a Sign: 1900-2000"
Chad Turner (Kalamazoo), "The Spoils of War (Games) in Aeneid 5 and 9"

The Annual Meeting of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States
(New York City: April 23-24)

Not a single one of the schools in our consortia is located in an Atlantic State. But some Eastern Time Zone Midwesterners --plus a certain officer of CAMWS, slumming after the big meeting in St. Louis -- were seen in NYC nonetheless.

Papers that your editor sat in on or otherwise happened to hear about:
Thomas M. Falkner (Wooster) & Donald Lateiner (Ohio Wesleyan) participated in the roundtable discussion "Jews in North American Classical Studies"
Anne Groton (St. Olaf), "Greek with a Grin"
John T. Quinn (Hope) spoke at a workshop devoted to the Latin poetry of Francis Williams, a free black person from 18th century Jamaica
Rachel Sternberg (Wooster), "Double Edge: Slave Torture in Isocrates 17"