Our tireless Gateway Campaign Committee is leading the APA down the home stretch as we approach our July 31^st deadline for completing our NEH Challenge Grant match.  Nearly 1,000 APA members and others devoted to classical antiquity have contributed to the Gateway Campaign to date.  We have a total of $2.2 million and the Endowment for Classics Research and Teaching has become a reality.  We need another $400,000 if we are to keep every NEH dollar in the Endowment working to provide sophisticated and accessible tools for Classics scholars, develop future generations of inspired and diverse Classics teachers, and make high quality information about Classics available to the largest possible audience both inside and outside the scholarly community.  Visit the Campaign News section of the APA web site for the most up-to-date information and learn how you can help us to fill our Campaign amphora.

Update: The problem appears to have been resolved. Please report any errors to Samuel Huskey or Heather Gasda.

For years, Gac Filipaj mopped floors, cleaned toilets and took out trash at Columbia University.

A refugee from war-torn Yugoslavia, he eked out a living working for the Ivy League school. But Sunday was payback time: The 52-year-old janitor donned a cap and gown to graduate with a bachelor's degree in classics.

As a Columbia employee, he didn't have to pay for the classes he took. His favorite subject was the Roman philosopher and statesman Seneca, the janitor said during a break from his work at Lerner Hall, the student union building he cleans.

"I love Seneca's letters because they're written in the spirit in which I was educated in my family — not to look for fame and fortune, but to have a simple, honest, honorable life," he said.

His graduation with honors capped a dozen years of studies, including readings in ancient Latin and Greek.

More here…

ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World reconstructs the time cost and financial expense associated with a wide range of different types of travel in antiquity. The model is based on a simplified version of the giant network of cities, roads, rivers and sea lanes that framed movement across the Roman Empire. It broadly reflects conditions around 200 CE but also covers a few sites and roads created in late antiquity.

The model consists of 751 sites, most of them urban settlements but also including important promontories and mountain passes, and covers close to 10 million square kilometers (~4 million square miles) of terrestrial and maritime space. 268 sites serve as sea ports. The road network encompasses 84,631 kilometers (52,587 miles) of road or desert tracks, complemented by 28,272 kilometers (17,567 miles) of navigable rivers and canals.

Read more here: http://orbis.stanford.edu/.

ORGANIZER: ANTONY AUGOUSTAKIS, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, USA
JULY 2-4, 2012
EUROPEAN CULTURAL CENTER OF DELPHI

Registration Fee Of € 250,00 Includes Lodging And Meals For The Participants At The Conference Centre Guest House (Single Room) For The Nights Of July 2-4.
Declare Interest In Participating By May 31st, 2012 To Aaugoust@Illinois.Edu

Monday, 2 July 2012

From 3.00 Pm Registration

17 Welcome: Antony Augoustakis (University Of Illinois, USA)

17–18:30 Session 1: Silius Italicus (Chair: Bob Cowan)

·      17–17:30 Joy Littlewood (Oxford, UK), Dining Dangerously: Pythian Odes And Capuan Banquets

·      17:30–18 Michiel Van Der Keur (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands), Meruit Deus Esse Uideri. Silius’ Homer In Homer’s Punica

·      18–18:30 Marco Fucecchi (Università Di Udine, Italy), The Philosophy Of Power: Greek Literary Tradition And Silius’ On Kingship

Dinner

Tuesday, 3 July 2012

9.00–11.00 Session 2: Valerius Flaccus I (Chair: Marco Fucecchi)

·      9–9.30 Darcy Krasne (University Of Arkansas, USA), When The Argo Met The Argo: Poetic Destruction In Valerius’ Argonautica

·      9.30–10 Christiano Castelletti (Tll Munich, Germany), Aratus And Aratean Tradition In Valerius’ Argonautica

·      10–10.30 Daniela Galli (Italy), Valerius’ Argonautica And Dionysius Scytobrachion

·      10.30–11 Irene Mitousi (Aristotle University Of Thessaloniki, Greece). Valerius’ Argonautica As An Ideological Epic Of The Flavian Era

11–11.30 Coffee Break

11.30–1.30 Session 3: Martial (Chair: Michiel Van Der Keur)

·      11.30–12 Margot Neger (Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, Germany), Martial And Greek Epigram

·      12–12.30 Craig Williams (Brooklyn College, USA), Epigrammaton Lingua: Greek Elements In Martial’s Metapoetics

·      12.30–13 Ana Maria Dos Santos Lóio (University Of Lisbon, Portugal), Inheriting Speech. Talking Books Reach Flavian Rome

·      13–13.30 Sarah Blake (York University, Canada), Poems On Objects: Martial’s Xenia And Apophoreta And The Conventions Of Greek Inscriptive Epigram

13.30–14.30 Lunch

14.30–16 Session 4: Statius’ Thebaid I (Chair: Federica Bessone)

·      14.30–15 Jean Michel Hulls (UK), Greek Author, Greek Past: Statius, Athens And The Tragic Self

·      15–15.30 Cecilia Criado (Universidad De Santiago De Compostela, Spain), The Theban Γηγενεισ And The Roman-Thessalian Sown-Men

·      15.30–16 Robert Clinton Simms (Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan), Eteocles’ Sword And Angry Snakes

16–17 Break

17–19 Session 5: Greek Literature Under The Flavians (Chair: Pavlos Sfyroeras)

·      17–17.30 Katarzyna Jazdzewska (Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University In Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland), Do Not Follow The Athenians! Athens As A Negative Example In Dio Chrysostom’s 13th Oration

·      17.30–18 William Hutton (College Of William And Mary, USA), The Roman Euboea Of Dio Chrysostom

·      18–18.30 Aleksandra Kleczar (Jagellonian University, Krakow, Poland), The Hero For The Greeks: Alexander The Great As Focus For Greek Identity In The Literature Of The Flavian Period

·      18.30–19  Lydia Langerwerf (Lebanese American University, Byblos, Lebanon), Daring Titus. Flavius Josephus’ Use Of Τoλμη Aλoγιστοσ In The Jewish War

Dinner

Wednesday, 4 July 2012

 (Morning OPTIONAL Visit To Site And Museum)

10-11.30 Session 6: Flavian Poetics (Chair: Stavros Frangoulidis)

·      10-10.30 Bob Cowan (University Of Sydney, Australia), Quid Tibi Raptus Hylas? Callimachus’ Flavian Shadow Reconsidered

·      10.30-11 Ariana Sacerdoti (Seconda Università Degli Studi Di Napoli, Italy), Iuuenis Placidissime Diuum ... Somne: Greek Models And The Sleep

·      11-11.30 Marta Compagnone (Seconda Università Degli Studi Di Napoli, Italy), Sors And Fortuna From Lucan To Flavian Epic: Greek Stoicism And Latin Reinterpretation.

11.30-12.00 Coffee

·      12-1.30 Session 7: Statius’ Siluae And Achilleid (Chair: Vassiliki Panoussi)

·      12–12.30 Cecilia Pavarani (Università Di Milano, Italy), Greek Roots In The Encomiastic Poetry Of Statius’ Siluae

·      12.30–13 Randall Ganiban (Middlebury College, USA), Thetis And The Fate Of Achilles At Troy In The Achilleid

·      13-13.30 Pavlos Sfyroeras (Middlebury College, USA), Red On White: A Homeric Simile In The Achilleid

13.30-14.30 Lunch

14.30–16 Session 8: Valerius Flaccus II (Chair: Mark Heerink)

·      14.30–15 Cary Seal (University Of California At Davis, USA), Civil War And The Apollonian Model In Valerius’ Colchian Narrative

·      15–15:30 Simone Finkmann (Oxford, UK), Direct Speech In Valerius And Apollonius Of Rhodes

·      15:30-16 Marco Van Der Schuur (University Of Groningen, Netherlands), Conflating Funerals: The Deaths Of Idmon And Tiphys Between Greek And Roman Rewriting In Valerius

16–17 Coffee

17–19 Session 9: Statius’ Thebaid II (Chair: Randall Ganiban)

·      17–17.30 Federica Bessone (Università Di Torino), Polis, Court, Empire. Greek Culture, Roman Society, And The System Of Genres In Statius’ Poetry

·      17.30–18 Fernanda Mοura (Universidade De Sao Paulo, Brazil), Reassessing The Iliadic Model: Statian Narrative Strategies In Thebaid 4.684-696 And 7.246-252

·      18-18.30 Jörn Soerink (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Netherlands), Statius’ “Hypsipyle”

·      18.30-19 Vassiliki Panoussi (College Of William And Mary, USA), Hypsipyle’s ‘Greek’ Rituals In Valerius Flaccus And Statius

Dinner

I'm delighted to announce the release of an iPad app for introductory and intermediate Greek readers. Its name is Attikos and it includes a selection of familiar texts, including morphological information. The author is Josh Day, himself recently an intermediate Greek student.

Link to the app store page: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/attikos/id522497233?mt=8

Writing the app would not have been nearly as feasible without the Perseus Project's generous policies of making its data available to third parties. It includes links to logeion.uchicago.edu, which is an interface for dictionaries and reference works, including Liddell and Scott. Again, that website is based for the most part on resources from the Perseus Project at Tufts. When not connected to the internet, the app itself offers short definitions, as familiar from Perseus.

Texts include the Iliad, some Lysias and Plato, and the Antigone. Some texts have been parsed completely; no translations are included, however. Bonus features allow the user to look up morphological parses of words they type in, or figure them out with the included morphological charts.

6th Trends in Classics
International Conference on Hellenistic Poetry

Hellenistic Studies at a Crossroads: Exploring Texts, Contexts and Metatexts

25-27 May, 2012

Auditorium I

Aristotle University Research Dissemination Center
(September 3rd Avenue, University Campus)

Organising committee:

• Richard Hunter (University of Cambridge)
• Franco Montanari (University of Genova)
• Antonios Rengakos (Aristotle University)
• Evina Sistakou (Aristotle University)

Hellenistic poetry and poetics have attracted the attention of scholars such as Wilamowitz, Powell, Pfeiffer, Fraser and Gow whose editions and studies mark a milestone in the history of classical scholarship. However, it is only in the last 25 years that Hellenistic studies have been established as an independent discipline in the field of classics. Numerous editions, specialized companions and histories of Hellenistic poetry are only some of the tools that have been developed in recent years. The subject matter of Hellenistic studies is vast and diverse, since it comprises not only the three major Alexandrians, Callimachus, Apollonius and Theocritus, but also a huge corpus consisting of fragments, dramatic poets such as Menander and Lycophron, new genres (the idyll and the epyllion), didactic poetry, as well as a wide range of epigrammatic and epigraphic material. And although previous scholars have seen the key to reading Hellenistic poetry in the mastering of the allusion, contemporary trends from literary theory, narratology, cultural studies and so on, provide new insights into Hellenistic poetics.

Texts views Hellenistic poetry from a textual perspective. What does collection or poetry book denote for the Hellenistic audience, and in what terms were books compiled and read during the Hellenistic era? A different problem concerns modern day philology: how to provide new editions and commentaries for fragmentary works, how to compile anthologies, and if new editions and translations are still necessary.

Contexts explores Hellenistic poetry against various backgrounds−the political ideology, the religious framework, the cultural trends, the progress of science, the establishment of scholarship, the artistic movements. In most cases, the dominant context is the Ptolemaic court; however, the exploration of contexts may take account of other factors, such as the existence of other cultural centers besides Alexandria, the Egyptian background or the rise of Rome.

Metatexts discusses the intertextual dialogue between Hellenistic poetry on the one hand, and archaic/classical Greek and Latin poetry on the other; it also focuses on genres, modes and styles. Metatextual interpretation involves a series of questions: Is the old thesis about ‘neoteric poetics’ still valid? Which aesthetic trends can we distinguish within the corpus of Hellenistic poetry? Can modern critical theories (reception, feminist studies or narratology) contribute to a better understanding of Hellenistic poetics in the 21st century?

PROGRAM

Friday May 25, 2012, 9.00-12.00

Welcome Speeches
Michael Chrysanthopoulos, Antonios Rengakos and Franco Montanari

Opening Speech
Richard Hunter (University of Cambridge): “My back pages? Theocritus and the style of Hellenistic poetry”.

Contexts
Chair: Antonios Rengakos

• Annette Harder (University of Groningen): “Between poet and philologist”.
• Gregory Hutchinson (University of Oxford): “Hellenistic poetry and Hellenistic prose”.
• Andrew Faulkner (University of Waterloo): “Hellenistic poetry and scripture”.

Friday May 25, 2012, 12.30-14.00

Aesthetics
Chair: Franco Montanari

• Marco Fantuzzi (University of Columbia/Macerata): “Hellenistic πρέπον ‘decency’: character’s coherence and author’s appropriateness”.
• Evina Sistakou (Aristotle University): “From emotion to sensation: the discovery of the senses in Hellenistic poetry”.
• Filippomaria Pontani (University of Venice): “ ‘Your first commitments tangible again’—Alexandrian poetry as an aesthetic category”.

Saturday May 26, 2012, 9.30-11.30

Genres
Chair: Theodore Papanghelis

• Giulio Massimilla (University of Napoli): “Callimachus and the elegiac tradition”.
• David Sider (New York University): “Didactic poetry: the invention of a pre-existing genre”.
• Benjamin Acosta-Hughes (Ohio State University): “Reflections of polyeideia: poets reading one another”.
• Évelyne Prioux (Université Paris Ouest): “Ecphrastic epigrams of the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE”.

Saturday May 26, 2012, 12.00-14.00

The Epigram
Chair: Stephen Harrison

• Manuel Baumbach (Ruhr-Universität Bochum): “The spatial turn and Hellenistic studies: a geopoetic reading of the New Posidippus”.
• Ivana Petrovic (Durham University): “Posidippus’ travelling stones”.
• Silvia Barbantani (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore): “ ‘Déjà la pierre pense où votre nom s’inscrit’. Identity in context in verse epitaphs for Hellenistic soldiers”.
• Kathryn Gutzwiller (University of Cincinnati): “Dialect variation in the epigrams of Meleager”.

Sunday May 27, 2012, 9.30-12.00

Style and Narrative
Chair: Richard Hunter

• Alexander Sens (Georgetown University): “Simile and narrative in the Alexandra”.
• Christophe Cusset (University of Lyon): “Similes as textual space devoted to metapoetics in Hellenistic poetry”.
• Annemarie Ambühl (University of Köln/Mainz): “(Re)constructing myth: elliptical narrative in Hellenistic and Latin poetry”.
• Damien Nelis (University of Geneva): “Catullus 64, the Neoterics and Alexandrian poetry”.

Concluding Remarks
Richard Hunter and Antonios Rengakos

For more information please visit the Conference website (http://www.lit.auth.gr/en/node/1393), or contact Evina Sistakou (sistakou@otenet.gr).

Sally’s publications ranged from Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis to Thelma and Louise, and her teaching was similarly wide-ranging. A signature course was based on her book Superheroes and Greek Tragedy: Comparing Cultural Icons, and at the time of her death she was teaching a new course entitled “Racism (or not) in Antiquity”; these two courses epitomize Sally’s scholarship, teaching, and profound understanding of the relevance of Classics in the modern world. In addition to her service at Agnes Scott, Sally was a long-time member of the Women’s Classical Caucus and served as its newsletter editor form 2004-2010.

The WCC has posted a brief and poignant tribute to Sally: http://wccaucus.org/.  Sally’s family has assembled an obituary tribute to her here: http://teamsallymac.weebly.com/obituary.html.  A public memorial will be held at the Friends School of Atlanta on Saturday, May 5 from 1-3pm.

Respectfully submitted,
Megan Drinkwater

For 44 years, Burian, a professor of classical studies, has transported his students to the ancient world, a place inhabited by emperors and slaves, gods and heroes. And along the way, he has taught them about their own time and place, and maybe a bit about themselves.

Burian’s last class at Duke was Wednesday. At 68, he’s retiring from the classroom, but will spend a year as dean of humanities at Duke, where he will put his wisdom to work on larger questions about the study of languages, literature, history, philosophy, religion.

Read more…

April 24, 2012 – On April 10, the National Endowment for the Humanities launched a new website. After a complete overhaul, the new neh.gov provides a more user-friendly platform for people seeking grants and for the public interested in humanities research, scholarship, and public programs.  A new “EXPLORE” section allows users to access information about more than 200 documentaries, radio programs, and apps produced by broadcasters and others with NEH grants. A prominent new rotator will showcase news of NEH and books, seminars, and other projects growing out of Endowment funding.  Each NEH division and program will have its own series of pages to feature projects, news about grants and opportunities to meet program officers in the field. 

Other features include:

• Links to all 56 state and territorial humanities councils and their calendars of activities
• HUMANITIES Magazine, now in a richly illustrated magazine format
• EDSITEment, the Endowment’s prize winning K-12 educational site funded by a partnership between NEH and the Verizon Foundation
• Chronicling America, the joint project of the NEH and the Library of Congress to digitize historic American newspapers
• Information on NEH’s funded projects sorted by topics of interest, state by state and at particular universities

According to the NEH, the redesign is part of an administration effort to modernize and streamline web operations, to consolidate websites for ease of maintenance, clarity and cost savings over time, and to make the work of government more accessible to all Americans.  The new neh.gov was built in-house using Drupal, an open source content management system.  It is hosted on cloud infrastructure.  It replaces an 11 year old interim site.   The new back-end architecture makes it possible to alter and enlarge the website’s capabilities without costly new redesigns.

Additional information about the new site is available on the NEH website.

Key Note Speakers: Dr. Kostas Vlassopoulos and Prof. Christopher Tuplin

Academic treatment of any historical problem entails a proper appreciation both of the relevant primary evidence and of the framework of understanding established by earlier scholarship. Historiography – the study of the way in which evidence and the interpretation of evidence present themselves to the historian – is therefore an essential component of all historical investigations.   In the last thirty years many historically oriented disciplines have seen an immense growth in the study of historiography and a number of themes have begun to emerge. The purpose of this conference is to identify and elucidate some of these common themes, reflect on the role they play in current research in the fields of Classics, English, History, Modern Languages, Philosophy and Politics, and seek to advance an inter-disciplinary understanding of the issues they raise for students of history, intellectual thought and literary representation. 

The Conference registration fee is £20.00 for students and £25.00 for non-students. In addition there is a conference 3-course dinner on Saturday night for £24.00 (including service charge and drinks). 

For further details please visit our website: http://themesinhistoriography.yolasite.com/

To register for the conference, please visit: http://payments.liv.ac.uk/browse/product.asp?catid=122&modid=1&compid=1

We look forward to seeing you,

David Griffiths, Jan Haywood and Jason Wickham

On April 5, 2012 the Dean of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at Pitt announced the suspension, effective immediately, of the graduate programs in Classics, German and Religious Studies. We would like the Dean to know that there is a collective voice of support for our graduate program.

http://www.change.org/petitions/dean-of-graduate-studies-the-university-of-pittsburgh-reinstate-the-department-of-classics-graduate-program