News from Members
Portland State University
We are pleased to report that the Portland AIA society is going great
guns, with eight lectures planned for this year, and a free movie
series too! We’ve benefited greatly from forming a student
organization, and getting student fee funding. We continue to offer two
years of Greek and four years of Latin, with adjuncts teaching them.
George Armantrout has joined the ranks of full-time adjuncts, teaching
classes in Greek Civilization and Archaeology as well as the Greek and
Roman surveys. We’ve added a regular catalogue course on the Ancient
Near East and Egypt, and online versions of the junior-level survey
classes, which have been very popular. Anne McClanan published
Representations of Early Byzantine Empresses: Image and Empire with
Palgrave, and an anthology she's co-edited on iconoclasm should appear
in 2004. Her review of Byzantine Religious Architecture appeared
in Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies. She gave papers at College Art
Association, University of Washington, University of Oregon and Venice
International University. Last summer, we were delighted to host the
Tunisian archaeologist Nejib ben Lazreg, who brought an unusual
perspective and wonderful slides to summer school classes on the
Archaeology of Tunisia and the history of Carthage and Rome. Karen
Carr’s book, Vandals to Visigoths: Rural Settlement Patterns in Early
Medieval Spain, came out with University of Michigan Press last
November, and she had a chapter, "From Alaric to the Arab conquest:
Visigothic efforts to achieve Romanitas," in Confrontation in Late
Antiquity (ed. Linda Jones Hall, Orchard Academic Press 2003). She gave
a paper at the AIA on the Roman pottery from Leptiminus. Her website,
historyforkids.org, now serves more than a million pages a month during
the school year.
Reed College
Richard Tron retired last year after 41 years at Reed, and is teaching
an advanced Latin class (Horace's Odes and Epodes) this fall as an
emeritus professor. Walter Englert is chair of the
department, and is teaching Beginning Greek, intermediate Latin, Greek
Tragedy, and Freshman Humanities. His translation of Lucretius'
De Rerum Natura appeared this year (2003), published in the Focus
Philosophical Series. He continues to work on Cicero's philosophical
works. He also was the coordinator of the fifteenth annual Reed
Latin Forum for Oregon and Washington high school Latin teachers and
students in November, 2002, and assisted the Classic Greek Theater
company stage a production of Euripides' Medea (in English) at the Reed
College amphitheater in September, 2003. Nigel Nicholson returned from
sabbatical this year to teach introductory Latin and Greek, an
intermediate Latin class on Cicero, and advanced seminars on Pindar,
Literary Theory, and Roman Aetiological Elegy. In the last year he had
an article published in The Cultures within Greek Culture, edited by
Leslie Kurke and Carol Dougherty (Cambridge, 2003), "Aristocratic
Victory Memorials and the Absent Charioteer," and contributed some
translations, principally those from Xenophon's Symposium, to
Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents in
Translation, edited by Thomas Hubbard (California, 2003). Ellen
Millender, Reed's new tenure track ancient historian who joined us last
year from the University of Iowa, is on leave working on several
writing projects, including editing a volume entitled Unveiling Spartan
Women. Alex Nice, visiting professor in Classics and Humanities,
is now in his second year at Reed. During the summer vacation, Alex
gave papers in Stellenbosch, South Africa at the PacRim and the
CASA (Classical Association of South Africa) Conferences on 'Religion
in Livy' and 'The Character of C. Trebatius Testa in the Letters of
Cicero' respectively. Research activity included a paper in Collection
Latomus XI on the persona of Umbricius in Juvenal Satire 3 and reviews
of religious and historical topics in Scholia and BMCR. Sarah
Cohen joined the department this year as a visiting assistant professor
in Classics and Humanities. She received her Ph.D. from the
University of Chicago, and wrote her dissertation on "Exile and the
political language of the early Principate." Sarah was a
Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean at
Columbia before coming to Reed. She is teaching intermediate and
advanced Greek, beginning Latin, and Freshman Humanities.
At Seattle Pacific University, Dr. Owen Ewald charges on with his
one-person program within the Foreign Languages and Literatures
department. This summer, he and his colleague Dr. Jack Levison
had their co-written article "The Burial of Women at Public
Expense: New Evidence from Josephus" accepted for publication in
Athenaeum in 2005. Drs. Ewald and Levison also recently received
a Faculty Research Grant from SPU to work on Hellenization in the Life
of Adam and Eve, a continuation of Genesis. Dr. Lawrence Bliquez
of the University of Washington delivered the 2003 C. May Marston
Lecture in Classics on ancient medicine to a delighted crowd, and Dr.
Alain Gowing of UW will give the 2004 Marston Lecture on the Appian
Way; the Marston Lecture is free and open to the public (SPU campus,
Demaray Hall 150, 7:30 pm, February 19th, 2004).
University of British Columbia
The new Head of the Department of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious
Studies is Dr. Shirley Sullivan who has been teaching at UBC
since1972. Shirley was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
of Canada this year. Her predecessor, Dr. Phillip Harding, is on
administrative leave this year pending retirement.
Two new members of the department: Dr. Franco de Angelis comes to
us from the University of Calgary to teach ancient history and the
archaeology of Sicily while Dr. David Creese whose PhD is in
Greek music comes to us on the classical literature side.
Another former head of the department and also an FRSC, Tony Barrett,
has been appointed Distinguished University Professor in recognition of
his important contributions to the study of Julio-Claudian women.
Hector Williams stepped down as President of AIA Canada the past four
years and member of the Board of the AIA since 1993. He and his
team continue their work on conservation, study and publication of his
excavations at Mytilene and Stymphalos.
University of Oregon
Lowell Bowditch has published "Propertius 2.10 and the Eros of Empire"
in Being There Together: Essays in Honor of Michael C. J. Putnam on the
Occasion of his Seventieth-Birthday. H. Haskell and P. Thibodeau, eds.
(Afton Historical Society Press, 2003). She will be giving a
paper at the APA in San Francisco on "Propertius and the Pleasures of
Empire: A Reading of 2.16." She is also serving as
University Senate President this year, a job that requires sending
copious diplomatic e-mail. But far and away the most important
event this year has been the birth of her daughter, Elizabeth
Sibley-Bowditch, who makes up with charm for all the sleep she deprives.
Jeffery Hurwit gave two lectures last spring, "The Uses of the Past on
the Athenian Acropolis" at The Vancouver Institute, Vancouver, B.C.,
and the inaugural Dorothy Burr Thompson Memorial Lecturer entitled
"AGON: The Parthenon and the Temple of Zeus at Olympia" at the
University of British. He will shortly give a lecture at a
symposium connected with the new exhibition at Princeton, "The
Centaur's Smile", entitled "In the Realm of the Uncanny: Lizards,
Lions, and Mischwesen," Princeton University, He will chair a
session at the next AIA/APA meeting on 'The Athenian Acropolis' and be
part of a panel entitled 'Teaching the Acropolis'. He has
completed a new book, The Acropolis in the Age of Pericles (Cambridge
University Press, forthcoming) and two articles, "The Setting,"
in J. Neils, ed., The Parthenon: From Antiquity to the Present
(Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) and "The Parthenon and the
Temple of Zeus at Olympia" (forthcoming). He also now serves The
Acropolis in the Age of Pericles (Cambridge University Press,
forthcoming) both on the editorial board of the Art Bulletin and on the
publications committee of the Getty Research Institute.
Mary Jaeger is in her third year as head of the Classics
department. She has published a paper titled "Livy and the Siege
of Syracuse." in Eigler, Ulrich et al., Formen römischer
Geschichtsschreibung von den Anfängen bis Livius
(Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2003).
Steven Lowenstam has two books forthcoming, Yearning for the Infinite:
Desire and Possession in Three Platonic Dialogues. Washington and
Cambridge, 2004; and As Witnessed by Images: The Trojan War Tradition
in Greek and Etruscan Art. Ithaca and London, 2004.
Malcolm Wilson contines as the technology-challenged editor of the CAPN
bulletin. He continues also with research in Aristotelian
philosophy of science and will be giving a paper at the APA this winter
entitled 'The Sources of Scientific Unity in Aristotle’s Meteorologica
I–III.'
University of Washington
Lawrence Bliquez gave the annual C. May Marston Lecture at Seattle
Pacific University and the Fourth Annual UW Faculty Lecture for the
Seattle Chapter of the AIA ("Death and Burial Among the Greeks and
Romans: Attitudes and Practices"). Larry is currently working on
his next book: The Tools of Asclepius. Surgical Instruments of
the Greeks and Romans.
Ruby Blondell wrote the introduction to a forthcoming reissue of Jebb's
edition of Sophocles' Antigone, and presented a paper entitled "How do
you solve a problem like Medea?" at the Birth of Pleasure conference in
honor of Carol Gilligan (selected for the proceedings). Ruby also
serves as the department's Graduate Program Coordinator. Her
first book, Helping Friends and Harming Enemies, is scheduled for
publication in Chinese.
James Clauss presented "Catastrofe Spirituale in Pasolini's Medea" at
the Southwest/Texas Popular Culture Association and a paper on Vergil's
Sixth Eclogue to the Chicago Classical Club. "Vergil's Aeneas:
The Best of the Romans" appeared in Approaches to Teaching Vergil (MLA)
and "Once Upon A Time On Cos" in Harvard Studies.
Catherine Connors' paper "Monkey Business in Plautus" will appear in
Classical Antiquity. Cathy gave a paper entitled "From Turnips to
Turbot: The Politics of Epic Allusion in Roman Satire," at last year's
CAPN/CACW meeting and one entitled "Metaphor and Politics in John
Barclay's Argenis," at the Conference "Metaphor in the Novel and the
Novel as Metaphor" in Rethymnon, Crete.
Alain Gowing saw the publication of his article "Pirates, Witches, and
Slaves: the Imperial Afterlife of Sextus Pompeius" in a collection
dedicated to Sextus and was an invited respondent at the "Seeing
Slaves" conference at UC Berkeley. Several book reviews and a
paper on miscellaneous minor objects in the collection of the American
Academy in Rome, co-authored with Larry Bliquez, are about to appear in
print.
Michael Halleran continues to serve the University as a Divisional Dean
in the College of Arts and Sciences and is sorely missed by his
colleagues in Denny Hall.
Daniel Harmon has completed a number of articles for an encyclopedia of
religion and mythology that is being compiled by the Brown Reference
Group (London). Among the pieces are entries on Faunus, Mars, the
Lares, and the Religion of Rome. He is also in the initial stages
of research on the history of the study of Classics at the University
of Washington.
Stephen Hinds gave papers at Manchester, Holy Cross, Stanford,
CAPN/CACW, and the Groningen Conference on Flavian Rome. Stephen
was also awarded an American Philosophical Society Sabbatical
Fellowship that will allow him to work on his commentary on Ovid's
Tristia 1 and on smaller projects regarding Martial's Ovid and
Petrarch's Latin epistles to ancient writers.
Olga Levaniouk gave a paper, entitled "Erinna's Dialect," at the
Displaced Dialects conference that she and Tim Power organized, as well
as presentations at Calgary ("Truth, Authority, Anxiety: Pindar and
Zarathustra on Songs of Praise") and last year's APA ("A Homeric Locus:
Ephyra in the Odyssey"). Olga also introduced a new course last
year: The Song Culture of Ancient Greece.
Timothy Power presented several papers last year: "Citharodic
Kunstsprache," at the Displaced Dialects conference, "Excess and Frame:
Paenicity and Formal Rhetoric" at the APA, and "'New Music' in
Euripides' Trojan Women" at a conference in Princeton. Tim was
also awarded a Royalty Research Fund Scholarship for work on his
book-length study of ancient demotic music.
Sarah Culpepper Stroup will have several articles appear in the coming
year, including "Adulta Virgo: The Personification of Textual Eloquence
in Cicero's Brutus," "Rituals of Ink?" and "Designing Women:
Aristophanes' Lysistrata and the 'Hetairization' of the Greek
Wife." Together with Andrew Stewart (Berkeley) and Ilan Sharon
(Hebrew U.), Sarah won a two-year Getty Foundation Grant for their
project "Hellenization at Dor: Acculturation and Resistance."
EMERITI: To the good fortune of our students, Paul Pascal returned to
the classroom, teaching the paleography segment of our graduate
Proseminar, and Pierre MacKay treated our undergraduates to a course on
Aristotle's Metaphysics.
This fall, Willamette University's budding Classics Dept. doubled in
size. In addition to Ortwin Knorr, our resident Latinist, we were able
to lure Mary Bachvarova (Ph.D., Chicago) from the University of
Nottingham, U.K., to Oregon's sleepy capital. Mary is a specialist in
Greek literature and religion and a host of other matters, as her
upcoming talk at the 15th Annual Proto-European Conference at UCLA
(Nov.7-8) testifies: "Topics in Lydian Meter: Syllabification and
Accentuation". On the same weekend, Ortwin will be presenting on
"Ornithological Comedy and Problems of Translation in "The Birds" of
Aristophanes" at the Unextinguished Laughter Conference at the
University of Texas at Austin. Both Ortwin and Mary will be at the APA
convention in San Francisco next January. Another new colleague, Tony
Herman in Psychology, will be at the AIA with a talk on the facial
attractiveness of the famous mummy portraits from the Fayoum. In other
news, Willamette started this year with an almost unprecedented two
sections of Elementary Latin. The second section is taught by Becky
Muir, a much revered Latin teacher from West Salem High School. The
Classics Club, founded last year, is also taking off: 22 students
joined us in October to watch a magnificent performance of Euripides'
Medea by Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon in Portland, and even more
have announced their interest in a cookout with real Roman (well, some
Greek) recipes at Ortwin's house