MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE COLLEGES

back to the December 2004 frontpage

Beloit College
Enrollment in Beginning Greek has reached the highest level in many years: 23 students. On a campus where there is no foreign language requirement, this number equals or surpasses enrollments in Beginning French and Beginning German. Interest also remains strong in Hieroglyphic Egyptian: 10 of last spring's 20 students continued work in hieroglyphs this fall. The department has now offered a course in Egyptian language every semester for the last four years.

Colorado College
Four majors will graduate this year; they will be writing theses on tragedies, mirrors, mysticism and ethical issues.

13 students are enrolled in a new offering this year: Sanskrit, co-sponsored with the Asians Studies Program. There are 18 students in beginning Latin; 5 in Greek.

MARCIA DOBSON takes her Myth and Meaning course to Chicago in March-April, where she'll concentrate on the Lyric Opera's controversial mounting of Wagner's Ring.

TRISH FITZGIBBON will travel in early May to Rethymno, Crete, to give a paper at the 7th Plutarch Congress. She's eager to hear any recommendations you might have for her itinerary!

Cornell College
In November, students from the course Love and Sexuality in Greece and Rome treated visitors to the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art to a reading of English translations of ancient literature (Sappho, Catullus, Horace, Sulpicia, Petronius). This reading, "What the Romans Talked About at Dinner Parties: Poetry, Gossip, and Lampoon", was held in conjunction with the exhibit Art in Roman Life: Villa to Grave, running through August 2005.

JOHN GRUBER-MILLER's article, "Seven Myths about Teaching Latin" appeared in Syllecta Classica 15 (2004) 193-215.

DePauw University
October 27-29 saw David West Reynolds (Phaeton Group) on campus, delivering the Watkins Lectures. Among his talks were "The Archaeology of Star Wars" and "The Forma Urbis". The Burleigh Lectures occurred in November, with Paul Woodruff (University of Texas) speaking on "The Music of Democracy: Theater as Public Education in Ancient Athens" and "Reverence as a Virtue: Plato vs. the Poets".

Grinnell College
JERRY LALONDE has been chosen to serve on the Committee for the Gennadius Library 2004-2008.

Gustavus Adolphus College
The new president of the Classical Association of Minnesota is MATT PANCIERA, taking the helm from ERIC DUGDALE, who is teaching at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome ("Centro") this year (Gustavus & Macalester joined the Centro in the fall as the "Minnesota Liberal Arts Consortium").

Filling in on-campus for Eric is MARY MCHUGH, who just finished her doctorate at UW-Madison. Her article "Historiography and Freedom of Speech" was published in Sluiter & Rosen, ed., Free Speech in Classical Antiquity (Brill). "Livy, Conubium, and Plebeians' Access to the Consulship" was MATT PANCIERA's contribution to a festschrift in honor of Jerzy Linderski.

PAT FREIERT has completed construction of a Japanese studio for her shibori dyeing work.

The department welcomed Kathleen Coleman (Harvard University) to campus on October 28 for the lecture "Mosaics from A to Z: Antioch, Zeugma, and Floor Decoration in Late Roman Syria".

Traveling stories abound. BRONWEN WICKKISER was in the last group of Americans to travel to Cuba in June as part of Gustavus' Service Learning for Social Justice program. STEWART FLORY is a Visiting Scholar at Yale. And WILL FREIERT is leading the department out of the basement of Old Main into what may well be the Promised Land.

Hope College
The Classics program -- along with those in German and Spanish -- was reviewed by an external team headed by WILL FREIERT (Gustavus Adolphus).

A new offering in Advanced Latin found JOHN QUINN & 16 students (a record) slogging through the History of Apollonius of Tyre in half a semester. Quinn also experimented with on-line Latin-to-Latin drills on the text. The course was capped by a public reading of Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre; it drew a large and appreciative audience. Foolishly, Quinn advertised the play as "Shakespeare's worst", drawing the ire of the campus expert on the Bard. And shortly afterwards in the national press came rapturous notices of the play as mounted in Washington, DC by classics-loving director Mary Zimmerman.

Illinois State University
On December 12, JANICE SIEGEL threw her first Saturnalia party for her students at her house. She made Apicius' recipe for chicken with apricots & squash.

SIEGEL has been busy with work on Tennessee Williams. Her article "Tennessee Williams and Classics" appeared in the Spring 2004 issue of Theatron. Just now published is "Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer and Euripides' Bacchae" (2004/2005 winter volume of Journal of the Classical Tradition). A presentation at this spring's CAMWS will outline aspects of a future article on the general influence of Classics on Williams.

Kalamazoo College
Two sophomores, Elizabeth Platter and Ashley Lloyd, have been the driving forces behind a burgeoning Classics Club. Highlights of the fall semester included attending a local production of Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses and viewing Oliver Stone's Alexander. The Club hopes to team up with area high schools for a Foundation of Rome celebration this spring.

Lawrence University
The Managing Committee of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens elected CAROL LAWTON to the Committee on Committees for 2004-2006.

Macalester College
The department is proud to be sending large numbers of students abroad, to universities in the United Kingdom, and to the Centro and College Year in Athens. In fact, this past year Macalester became a member institution of both the Centro and the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.

This year Macalester has a bumper crop of seniors writing honors theses in Classics: Eeshani Kandpal (comparative study of cultural resource management in Israel and India), Kate Larson (sacrificial meals in Roman and Jewish tradition), Sophie Lowry (translation and commentary on the medieval vita of St. Agnes of Bohemia), C. John Michet (slavery and manumission in classical Athenian society), Johanna Shreve (the life of Christ in text and film).

New to Macalester was a course taught by MIREILLE LEE on artistic, iconographic, social, and economic aspects of Greek vases.

JOSEPH L. RIFE spent the fall semester pioneering two new courses: an advanced Latin course on Apuleius and a seminar on Alexander & the Hellenistic world. He also made two trips overseas to present the first results of his interdisciplinary archaeological study (ongoing since 2002) of a major cemetery of Roman date at Kenchreai, the eastern port of Corinth. In September he co-presented "Influence de la peinture romaine occidentale dans e tombeau no 4 de la nécropole de Cenchrées (Kenchreai) près de Corinthe" at the IX Congreso internacional de la "Association internationale pour la peinture murale antique" at Calatayud & Saragossa (Spain). In November Rife delivered invited lectures on Kenchreai at an international colloquium at the Archäologisches Museum in Frankfurt, at the Insitut für Vor- und Frühgeschichte of the Johannes Gutenburg-Universität in Mainz, and at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. He is also scheduled to speak at the Minneapolis Musem of Arts in April. He is working sporadically on his commentary on the epigraphic corpus from the site -- all the while planning the Kenchreai Cemetery Project 2005.

Monmouth College
The traveling exhibition Twelve Black Classicists came to Momouth's Hewes Library in October. On the 14th, the curator of the show, Michele Ronnick of Wayne State University, spoke on "Classica Africana: The Origins of Black Classicism".

TOM SIENKEWICZ, the Executive Secretary of Eta Sigma Phi, oversaw the initiation of six new members of the college's Gamma Omicron chapter. He encourages all schools with dormant chapters to revive them -- and those that don't have a chapter, to apply to get one!

Tom is also busy as a Vice-President of the American Classical League with preparations for the 2005 Institute, to be held in Alberquerque next summer.

St. Olaf College
The Department is receiving help teaching its plethora of students from TARIK WAREH; in addition, a former student, PAUL MORAN, now a doctoral candidate at the University of Virginia, will teach three classes in the spring for STEVE REECE, the recipient of a faculty development grant.

The College has upped, effective next academic year, the Department from 3.0 to 3.5 FTE. May overloads be a thing of the past! But with nearly 60 majors ...

30 students will travel to Greece with STEVE REECE for the annual January interim term abroad.

St. Olaf alum GWEN COMPTON-EAGLE (John Carroll University) won the APA's Gildersleeve Prize for her AJPh article on Aristophanes.

Wabash College
Reveling in retirement is JOHN FISCHER,who spent September & October in Greece. For the first time, he was able to pick grapes from his own arbor.

College of Wooster
EDITH FOSTER wrote a press-release to explain what happens when a department offers a prize for the best Greek or Latin interpretations of "This Little Piggy Went to Market".