Testimonials of APA Fellows
The work at the Thesaurus fundamentally changed my professional life. I had been striving to develop a methodology to use words in order to understand implicit assumptions about Roman institutions. The training at the Thesaurus gave me the skills to analyze word usage and the connection between grammar and semantics. There is nothing I do in my current work that has not been facilitated and improved by my post-doctoral work at the Thesaurus. It was truly a foundational intellectual experience for my career in Classics.
Roberta Stewart, Associate Professor of Classics, Dartmouth College
APA TLL Fellow, 1988–89
My time at the TLL allowed me to reflect in new ways on how the continuities of Roman civilization can be investigated through careful attention to vocabulary. Because of the insistence at the Thesaurus on viewing Latin as a language without artificial boundaries of genre or period, marginalized authors such as grammarians, antiquarians, and medical writers have become central spokespersons in my scholarship. I am confident that this maturity in my own research would not have developed so rapidly without my twelve-month fellowship from the APA.
Anthony Corbeill, Professor of Classics, University of Kansas
APA TLL Fellow, 1990–91
My experience at the Thesaurus has heightened my awareness of Latin context in two dimensions: horizontal and vertical. By ‘horizontal’ I mean the other words used in the neighborhood of the one or ones I am presently reading, the words that have influence on the one I’m reading, which in turn has influence on them. By ‘vertical’ I mean all the layers of meaning that a single word has accumulated in all its long history; they are unseen, lying deep in the meaning of the word as I read it, but now I can perceive them.
Peter Cohee, Program Director in Classics, The Public Latin School of Boston
APA TLL Fellow, 1995–96
When people ask what I got out of the Thesaurus Fellowship, I say that it made me a Latinist. I use the skills I learned there every day; they inform everything I do as a scholar.
Gregory Hays, Associate Professor of Classics, University of Virginia
APA TLL Fellow, 1996–97
My year at the TLL in Munich was a formative one in every sense of the term. From a professional standpoint it enabled me to acquire a much richer and more highly developed background in Latin philology. This has had a lasting impact on my scholarship. On the interpersonal level the collegiality at the TLL was unsurpassed. To be surrounded by professionals who love what they do in a city like Munich makes for a very memorable experience that I would wholeheartedly recommend to anyone.
Mark Beck, Assistant Professor of Classics, University of South Carolina
APA TLL Fellow, 2000–1
My year at the TLL has proven to be indispensable to my development as a scholar, teacher, and citizen of the international Classics community. I was able to begin my teaching career with a deeper understanding of the Latin language and literary history, fluency in German, and memories of delightful weekends spent hiking in the Bavarian Alps with my TLL colleagues. I also made amazing contacts; I am struck by how many of the opportunities that have come up in recent years go back in some way to my year in Munich.
Jennifer Ebbeler, Associate Professor of Classics, University of Texas at Austin
APA TLL Fellow, 2001–02
There are so many reasons to recommend the TLL—the work, the people, the city—but of prime importance is the library. Surely the best of its kind in the world, the TLL’s collection is arranged chronologically rather than alphabetically, and thus to the sweep of the eye it offers a vivid image of over 800 years of Latin. It is an edifying experience simply to be there every day, and the rigorous philological work I did at the TLL has proved invaluable both in my research and in my teaching.
Matthew McGowan, Assistant Professor of Classics, Fordham University
APA TLL Fellow, 2002–03
What does the APA/NEH fellowship at the TLL offer? A stimulating intellectual environment, a year away to get a different perspective on American academia, and a great chance to work on one of the most important projects for scholars of the Latin language and Roman culture. Munich is a brilliant city, among the most livable in Europe: museums, theater and opera, beer gardens, the Alps. The colleagues are friendly and welcoming, and it's a great chance to improve your German skills.
Christopher S. van den Berg, Assistant Professor of Classics, University of Arizona
APA TLL Fellow, 2006–07
The APA/NEH fellowship at the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae gives recipients the opportunity to participate in what is surely the most important collaborative research venture ever undertaken for the Latin language. The project and its ongoing evolution are fascinating in themselves; the work is challenging, rich and rewarding; and the rigorous training one receives along the way is of immense value for Latinists, at any stage of their career. There is simply no other place or institution on the planet that offers a comparable experience.
Andrew Zissos, Associate Professor of Classics, University of California at Irvine
APA TLL Fellow, 2007–08
The work at the TLL took me beyond my areas of specialization: I encountered authors like Oribasius, puzzled over the Vetus Latina, and squinted at the facsimiles of the Alexandri Tralliani medici Graeci operum versio Latina; I had to track down Greek originals or sources, struggle with text critical problems, and study the manuscript traditions. But, above all, my time at the TLL taught me what to look for mostly inside, sometimes outside, a given passage in order to narrow down the meaning of a specific instance of my lemma. This is without doubt a most useful skill for a philologist, and it is one that I will treasure.
Christopher B. Krebs, Associate Professor of the Classics, Harvard University
APA TLL Fellow, 2008–09
TLL Fellows
Names are linked to webpage, CV, or news article; years are linked to the Fellow's Report (PDF).
- Robert Newman, 1984–85
- †Tadeus Maslowski, 1985–86
- Frances Hickson Hahn, 1986–87
- Patrick Sinclair, 1987–88
- Roberta Stewart, 1988–89
- Gerald Malsbary, 1989–90
- Anthony Corbeill, 1990–91
- Jefferds Huyck, 1991–92
- Shirley Werner, 1992–93
- Gustaf Hansen, 1993–94
- Hans-Friedrich Mueller, 1994–95
- Peter Cohee, 1995–96
- Gregory Hays, 1996–97
- Byron Stayskal, 1997–98
- David Banta, 1998–99
- Joseph Romero, 1999–2000
- Mark Beck, 2000–01
- Jennifer Ebbeler, 2001–02
- Matthew McGowan, 2002–03
- Kristina Giannotta, 2003–04
- Yelena Baraz, 2004–05
- Joshua Davies, 2005–06
- Christopher van den Berg, 2006–07
- Andrew Zissos, 2007–08
- Christopher Krebs, 2008–09
- John Schafer, 2009–10
- David M. Goldstein, 2010–11, 2011–2012
Performance Archive
UPDATE - JANUARY 2011
Last fall, the Association posted the report below which invited institutions to submit pre-proposals for the creation of an archive of performances of classical works. As of the time of the Annual Meeting in San Antonio, the task force in charge of this project had received one good pre-preposal and some additional preliminary inquiries. At its meeting on January 9, 2011, the Board of Directors set March 31, 2011 as the deadline for full proposals to be submitted to Professor C. W. Marshall, the chair of the task force (toph@interchange.ubc.edu). Institutions that did not respond to the earlier call for pre-proposals are still welcome to submit a proposal by this date.
OCTOBER 2010
The following report was submitted by the Task Force on Performance Archives appointed last winter at the recommendation of the Committee on Research. At their meeting on October 2, 2010, the APA Board of Directors approved this report and embraced its principal recommendation, that the Association solicit proposals from institutions interested in becoming the home of an archive as described in the report. The members of the Task Force have agreed to serve as a committee to evaluate such proposals and make recommendations to the Committee on Research.
Proposals should be as responsive as possible to the mission and guidelines laid out in this report, indicating what schools, departments, institutes, and centers in a university would be involved in the creation and maintenance of an archive, where it would be housed, which individuals would provide leadership and oversight, and what sources might provide funding. It is not expected that universities making proposals will provide all or even most of the initial funding themselves; fundraising will undoubtedly be needed. At the same time, some initial commitment of university funds to get the project launched would be helpful.
The Task Force would welcome preliminary proposals by the time of the annual meeting, but the Directors have not set a deadline for its work in finding a suitable institutional base for the archive. Send proposals to the Task Force Chair, Prof. C. W. Marshall, at toph@interchange.ubc.ca
Roger S. BagnallVice President for Research
Report of the Task Force on Performance Archives
Committee on Research, 2010
- K. Bosher, Northwestern University
- M.-K. Gamel, University of California (Santa Cruz)
- C. W. Marshall (chair), University of British Columbia
CASE FOR AN ARCHIVE
In the past the APA through its Committee on Research has supported many worthwhile large projects, but none that clearly represent Reception Studies. Reception (the study of how the ancient world has been understood and disseminated within and since antiquity) has grown, especially since 1995, as a sub-discipline of the field, and offers great opportunities for interdisciplinary contact with other academic fields. Indeed, Reception provides a rubric within which many of the traditional fields of Classics can profitably be examined.
A particular focus of Reception has been in performance studies, particularly in theatre. Since theatre is by definition ephemeral, any opportunity to document or preserve information about such performances should be pursued, in order to preserve transient information for future generations of scholars and theatre practitioners.
The Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD,
An Archive of Classical Performance for North America would be able to complement the UK and European initiatives, while providing a platform from which other reception projects could be launched.
Given limited resources, choices must always be made for coverage, and these choices shape the discussion. These choices may fall along three axes: time, geography, and medium. (Other axes could be devised, but these convey the point.) Is the time period to be constrained (e.g. “since 1950”)? What geographical limitations will be placed (all of North America? global? the state of Delaware)? Theatre only, or also cinema, comics, sculpture, architecture…?
The specific parameters of what the archive would cover will depend on the interests of the director. We suggest that in order best to complement parallel efforts, a performance archive might focus on theatre and cinema performances in North America – performances both of ancient texts and (more generally) that represent the ancient world. Conceivably, direct adaptations in other media of ancient performance texts could also be included.
LOCATION AND RESOURCES
While any location could serve as an archive, for long-term viability and ease of consultation, an archive site would need
- infrastructure to be provided by a research university
- some staff (possibly students) to maintain the archive
- clear leadership from a team or individual working on reception
- A large, urban center would be ideal: within the US, New York, Chicago, Boston, or Los Angeles would be the obvious candidates if a suitable host institution could be identified.
- Staff, space, bandwidth. The greatest financial cost is likely to be staff, for maintaining archives and digital archives and for research. One model that would be worth pursuing would be doctoral fellowships and postdoctoral fellowships, a model that has proved successful for reception and database projects at Oxford, Northwestern, and Hamilton College, among others.
OPPORTUNITIES
It must be asked what a North American Archive can accomplish that the APGRD cannot. Five things seem immediately relevant:
- A fuller archive and database of North American performances, both professional and amateur (with a better search interface).
- Digital encoding of posters, programs, production material, reviews, photos, notes, essays, and other archive works and contextual information, to increase accessibility for researchers. This could duplicate materials stored offsite.
- A digitized library of video performances (or excerpts).
- A location to house physical objects when a local one does not exist.
- Researchers. Rather than waiting for information to come to the archive, researchers could be trained and employed to gather archive materials, and preserve them in a digital format.
An archive would not only look to the past. Given the rapidly growing number of productions of ancient drama on both amateur and professional stages in North America, one major function of the archive would be to preserve records of new productions. This might in itself encourage collaboration between directors, actors, and producers, and also serve to inspire directors/producers to look to antiquity for new productions.
There are also opportunities to build links with (and support) other projects. These might be based in Reception (such as Classicizing Chicago, based at Northwestern), or in Performance (such as the work of Aquila Theatre Company, based in New York).
The APGRD has undertaken a successful programme of publications on reception that also should be emulated.
RECOMMENDATIONS
- An Archive of Performances in North America is a viable, valuable Reception project that deserves support.
- Further study is needed, and the APA should support an ongoing ad hoc committee to investigate how much interest there is among the membership, what interested parties think about the parameters, etc. This could be done through the Committee on Research or through the Committee on Ancient and Modern Performance (CAMP).
- Of chief importance in the first instance is the identification of a host institution. At present there is no single, obvious individual around whom an Archive could be established.
- The APA should not try to replicate the accomplishments of the APGRD, yet it should surely work to do more than fill the gaps it has left. One possibility is to develop more local archives, employing a centralized administration and online presence. Another option is to focus on research, and recruit individuals to gather materials actively. An online periodical might provide an appropriate venue for such materials.
- An accessible video archive and online journal are crucial needs. As long as performance studies as a field is seen as descriptive rather than analytical (and with print as the dominant medium that will likely remain the case) there is a black mark against the field. An archive could make significant, meaningful steps towards the maintenance of rigorous, analytical standards in Reception.
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Specific funding opportunities should also be pursued. The availability of the NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant (
Thesaurus Linguae Latinae
Supported by a Generous Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities
Every year since 1984, thanks to a series of generous grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the APA has sent a post-doctoral Fellow to Munich to contribute to the world's most detailed lexicographical project on classical Latin, the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. This project began in 1894, sponsored by the five German-speaking learned societies then in existence, under the direction of the distinguished philologist, Eduard von Wölfflin. It is now administered by an international body, the Internationale Thesaurus-Kommission, to which the APA belongs; the APA representative on the Kommission is Professor Kathleen M. Coleman.
The project aims to compile a monolingual dictionary—composed in Latin—that is based upon every existing instance of every Latin word from the beginning until the second century CE, and a lexicographically significant sample of the material available from the next four centuries, i.e., until the end of the sixth century. It is based in Munich, in elegant accommodation within the Bavarian Academy (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften), which is housed in the Residenz, formerly the palace of the Bavarian royal family.
The APA Fellow is assigned to a Redaktor (Editor) who is responsible for guiding the Fellow in the research and composition of entries for the lexicon, starting with a small word with (usually) fewer than a hundred attestations and a relatively straightforward semantic profile. As the Fellow gains experience, he or she is assigned words of greater complexity. As far as possible, the personal interests of the Fellow are taken into account in making the more advanced assignments.
The attestations are compiled on slips of paper (Zettel) that are stored in boxes in the Thesaurus archives (Thesaurus-Archiv) adjacent to the library. The entries themselves constitute primary scholarly research pursued to a very exacting standard. The Fellow's Redaktor and other members of the team of approximately 20 Redaktoren (Editors), Mitarbeiter (Contributors) and Stipendiaten (Fellows) are always available to guide the new Fellow. The entries are referred to as "articles," and each appears under its author's name, just the same as an article in a journal.
To be eligible for the Fellowship, candidates must have the PhD in hand at the time of taking up the Fellowship, and be American citizens or permanent residents, as stated in the annual advertisement. An applicant's dissertation need not be on a strictly philological or lexicographical topic, nor even necessarily on Latin. Prospective applicants are sometimes nervous about their lack of fluency in spoken German; in fact, funds are available to help the successful candidate get some tuition prior to departure, and one of the benefits of the Fellowship is the chance to acquire fluency once the Fellow gets to Munich, although this, of course, requires total immersion in the language. Everyone at the TLL can speak English, but the less a Fellow falls back on it, the more fluent his or her German will become.
Munich is an expensive city, and affordable accommodation is scarce, but the TLL administration, under the direction of the very friendly and helpful Secretary, Herr Flieger, assists the new Fellow with this and other practical issues. The city’s location at the foot of the Alps, surrounded by lakes, is exquisite, and public transport within the city and its immediate environs is excellent. For trips further afield, German Rail (Deutsche Bahn) goes everywhere and often. Cultural life is rich, and in addition to the library at the Thesaurus, the Bavarian State Library (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek) and the library of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität are less than a kilometer down the road.
Technological innovation in the twenty-first century is obviously having an impact on the dissemination of the TLL; the published fascicles are now available by site-license on the internet. Digitization also has the potential to affect the composition of the articles, although that is only one of the factors in the evolution of the lexicon, whose history reflects a constant process of refinement in lexicographical theory and principles. These issues were the topic of a panel sponsored by the TLL Fellowship Committee at the APA meeting in Montreal in 2006 and subsequently published in TAPA. The TLL Fellowship Committee will sponsor a panel on "Latin Lexicography: Theory, Practice, and Influence from Republican Rome to the Carolingian Court" at the 2012 meeting of the APA in Philadelphia. International meetings devoted to specialized branches of lexicography are advertised in the Newsletter of the Dictionary Society of North America.
Many of the members of the APA TLL Fellowship Committee are available to conduct a seminar on the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae to a group of graduate students or advanced undergraduates, or else they can suggest someone local who might be able to do so. These seminars are designed to help scholars and students to make full use of the lexicon, which upon first acquaintance may appear to be a somewhat daunting resource. Anyone requiring further information about the Fellowship itself is welcome to contact the Chair of the Committee, Professor Anthony P. Corbeill.
