2017 Candidate Statements

Click on the links below to read the statements from candidates for each office. The statements submitted by candidates address the following issues: (1) why each candidate has chosen to stand for the elected office and what each hopes to achieve if elected; (2) the qualifications of each candidate for the position for which he / she is standing. Candidates were also asked for links to online CVs and/or other relevant resources. Some have provided brief resumes instead of links.

President-Elect

Mary (Tolly) Boatwright

Professor of Ancient History, Department of Classical Studies, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708-0103.

As President of the Society for Classical Studies, I hope to expand upon the excellent work of previous officers and committees, particularly by focusing on the academic and educational value of Classical Studies. Previously, SCS support of digital work and technology has successfully brought classical and post-modern worlds into fruitful dialogue, making information accessible as well as appealing to the technologically savvy. The SCS continues to emphasize inclusivity and rigor, explicitly valuing multiple perspectives while insisting on precision and objectivity. Our professional standards are exemplary and constructive, as are our collaborations with the AIA and other organizations. Building on such strengths, as President I would like to address the place of Classical Studies in colleges, universities, and high- and middle schools. I want to help transform the amazing research and teaching of our members into more conspicuous resources for the institutions at which we work, and for society at large. In a world that may seem ever more antithetical to the humanities, this will simultaneously raise the repute of individual members and departments, and reassert the value of deep study of the ancient classical world’s languages, literatures, histories, and cultures.

Besides periodic service with the SCS, AIA, Association of Ancient Historians and other organizations, I have served in all departmental offices and many university-wide ones during my 38 years at Duke University. Duke has developed globally and interestingly in my time here. Its position as simultaneously a liberal arts college and tier-one research university furnishes me a good perspective while visiting and speaking at colleges and universities in over 39 states. Just as formative is my active 25-year association with the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome, which has allowed me to team-teach and (more frequently) learn from the innumerable, impressive Centro applications and interviews I have covered. The immense talent, knowledge, and dedication of our younger colleagues impels my desire to maintain and amplify the numbers of teaching and research positions in our field.

CV: https://classicalstudies.duke.edu/sites/classicalstudies.duke.edu/files…

Jonathan Hall

Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities and Professor in the Departments of History and Classics, and the College, University of Chicago.

Statement
I am standing for SCS President because I am dedicated to the society’s drive for greater inclusivity. The SCS has, in recent years, promoted important initiatives regarding adjunct faculty, K–12 instruction, and diversity in the academy but we must continue building on those efforts and achievements in order to recruit the widest possible pool of talent to serve as future curators of the classical legacy. In the precarious political climate in which we currently find ourselves, two additional challenges are of paramount importance. The first – as President Nugent has recently had cause to note – is the imperative to defend the pedagogical, ethical, and civic value of the humanities and humanistic social sciences, as well as the place of classical studies within them. The key to meeting this challenge is to intensify our outreach initiatives, and I would welcome the opportunity to work with President-Elect Farrell in strengthening a regional network of associations along the lines of the AIA’s local chapters. We also, however, need influential advocates among the ranks of policy-makers and educators more broadly and I firmly believe that the SCS should champion as forcibly as it can the various opportunities and vocations that are available to students of classical studies beyond the world of tertiary education. The second challenge is that, in defending the importance and value of our fields to government and civil society, we must avoid pandering to a contemporary rhetoric that is narrow-mindedly provincial and fails to comprehend that the potent legacy of the cultures we study transcends historically contingent national boundaries (and populist referenda). As a committed internationalist, my hope is for the SCS to be not only a forceful campaigner for the interests of its members in North America but also an influential participant within the global community of scholars.

Qualifications
Although I am by training an ancient Greek historian, I have published on both Greek and Roman history and archaeology and am a former co-director of the American Academy in Rome’s Summer Program in Archaeology. In addition, I was for six years (2004–2007; 2008–2011) the Chair of a largely philological department and am currently researching issues concerning reception and cultural heritage. I therefore feel confident that I could advocate effectively for the numerous and varied constituencies that make up the SCS. I gained an intimate working knowledge of the SCS when I served concurrently on the Board of Directors and on its Executive Committee in 2011–2014 – a vital period in the society’s history, which saw both the successful conclusion of the “Gatekeeper to Gateway” campaign and the rebranding of the former APA.

Link
http://classics.uchicago.edu/faculty/hall

Vice President for Education

Sally Morris

Instructor in Classical Languages
Director of Exeter's Winter Term in Rome
Phillips Exeter Academy

I am honored to be nominated to stand for the office of Vice President for Education. My principal interest is the important bridge that spans between the K-12 instruction and the college and university instruction of the Classics and Classical Studies. How do we interconnect? Are we K-12 instructors preparing our students well and energizing our students sufficiently to continue with their classical studies in post-secondary school opportunities? How do our students fare when they make the leap? Are we perhaps inspiring new students to take up the Classics when they reach college, based on the stories they might hear from their high school peers who elected to study Latin and/or Greek? And most importantly today, how can we maintain and augment our student pool in all the states across the country? I would like to share the work of the ACL and other regional Classics organizations with the Society for Classical Studies to bolster our discipline nationwide.

Over the years I have benefitted personally from the interplay between university and high school teachers of the Classics. Serving on committees for CANE and attending its summer institutes, attending the Classical Summer School of the AAR, presenting and attending ACL workshops, and writing a few book reviews for NECTFL Review all contributed to my sense that we must continue to share ideas back and forth. Through my years as AP Latin instructor, grader, website tip author, test question author, and finally workshop speaker, I learned so much while I witnessed my AP colleagues learning from each other as we came together formally and informally to enhance the study of Latin. Tours with the Vergilian Society have provided me with yet additional meaningful interchanges between high school and college instructors.

In good measure due to the AAR summer program, I was selected as the first instructor to teach Latin and Greek for School Year Abroad's classical immersion program in Viterbo, Italy, 2001-02. I taught 11th or 12th grade students from schools all around the US, two sections of AP Vergil, one section of AP Catullus-Horace, and a regular and an accelerated course in Ancient Greek. The many different ways these students had learned Latin created a fascinating challenge to find common parlance in as short a time as possible. Although I have been a private school instructor, my own Latin study began at a large public school. Thus, I have experience learning in large classroom settings, and teaching in a very small school setting (Brooks School) for twenty years, then the special experience of School Year Abroad, and now twelve years at the much larger Phillips Exeter Academy. I also designed and direct Exeter's Winter Term in Rome, which has run in the winters of 2013,'15,'17.

Instructor profile: https://www.exeter.edu/faculty/sally-weissinger-morris

Ariana Traill

Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

I know first hand that Classicists are exceptionally committed to teaching and learning. The SCS, as our national organization, is in a unique position to strengthen education in the Classics, the benefits of which are, as we all know, substantial. Our work as educators begins with communicating its value, including making a broader case for the liberal arts in an age of intense social and economic pressures for students to focus on narrowly job-specific fields. I’m familiar with this conversation. I have had it with students, colleagues in the humanities and in STEM fields, administrators, teachers, children (and their parents), board members, principals, and one district superintendent. For me, this position is an opportunity to continue that conversation on a national level. I’m interested in promoting connections, both within the field (K-20 education, SCS to CAMWS, philology to archaeology) and outside it (humanities to STEM, classical to modern languages). National organizations like the SCS can and should collect and publish information about the state of education in the field, as well as resources for educators. The SCS has made excellent progress in this area, as for example in the new education section on its website, but we can do more. I plan to build on the work of my predecessors, notably their efforts to involve the whole profession in education. I will expand events for the pre-collegiate membership, advocate for the committee’s awards, and reach out to non-traditional employers such as community colleges. Pedagogical panels and roundtables will focus on topics important to graduate instructors and newer faculty, and we will make these available digitally to extend their benefits to those who are unable to attend meetings. I strongly support bridging disciplinary divides through initiatives such as the SCS graduate seminars in material culture: my home institution is hosting one in 2018. I believe the SCS can play more of a role in sharing resources for programs looking to build enrollments, as many of us are. It is important to recognize the increasing educational role played by non-tenure track faculty, who might particularly benefit from shared resources such as teaching materials. I also believe that expanding interest in the classical world at younger ages is a trend that should be encouraged through SCS action, both for its own sake and for its potential to strengthen undergraduate (and graduate!) programs, while creating new employment opportunities. I believe strongly in collaborating with ACL, NCLG, CAMWS, and ACTFL and state organizations (such as the Illinois Classical Conference, for which I’m currently VP).

The most relevant of my administrative experience is my service on the SCS Education Committee (2014-2016), where I learned about its regular responsibilities and projects in hand. I have also been a member, and now chair, of the CAMWS Subcommittee on the Semple, Benario and Grant awards, which provides travel funds to graduate students and K-12 teachers (and have served briefly on the ASCSA Managing Committee). I was Head of my PhD-granting department at the University of Illinois for five years, during which time the size of our faculty doubled and we revitalized our graduate and undergraduate programs. During my time as Head, our faculty received a number of awards - including the SCS teaching award - and I was nominated by my colleagues for and won a campus leadership award. My experience is broad: I work with everyone from nine-year-olds to provosts. I have served on committees within my institution at high levels (e.g., search/advisory committees for deans and provosts). Education at all levels is important to me, and I’ve taught a lot of what my department offers: Classics teaching methods, Greek, Latin language, Myth (c. 650 students), classical civilization, graduate and honors classes. I have been honored on our university’s “List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by their Students” for 50% of my classes. As a Latin Program Coordinator since 2004, I work closely with graduate students and BAT candidates. In 2005, I created a program to add Illinois State Educator’s License to the MA, MAT, or PhD. This program has produced one-two graduates a year with a 100% placement rate, and I work on an ongoing basis with staff and faculty in foreign language teacher education. I also collaborate with K-12 programs regularly, as described in TCL Spring 2010. I’m on the editorial board for Classical Outlook and Illinois Classical Studies and have been a member of the ACL and Classical Association of Canada (par parenthèse: je suis elevée lὰ & j’admire encore la culture bilingue) since the late 1990s. I also strongly believe in collaboration with modern languages. In coordination with our Spanish Department, I created and have directed Classics Summer Camps for children aged 9-12 since 2015. These camps introduce Latin and ancient Greek language and culture to more demand than we can meet, particularly for the Greek camp. I’m currently working with a low income school district to create a special program for their students.

Profile and CV

Board of Directors

Clifford Ando

David B. and Clara E. Stern Professor; Professor of Classics, History and Law; and Chair, Department of Classics (2017-2020), University of Chicago. Also, Research Fellow, Department of Biblical and Ancient Studies, University of South Africa (2011– )

A flourishing national organization is both an expression of our shared project and serves to sustain us, as individuals and departments, scattered as we are across the land. The SCS provides a framework within which an amazing array of individuals and communities can find common cause and mutual support, in defense of Classics in particular and the humanities more broadly. As important as any notion of defense, the solidarity that the SCS nourishes is also social and intellectual: the projects of the SCS help us as scholars, and the annual meeting reminds us that we are colleagues and contributes to make us friends.

I have served the APA on the Placement and Program committees and as Chair of Local Arrangements for the Annual Meeting in 2008. I have worked at both public and private universities and performed a wide array of citizenly and administrative duties at my home institutions and for scholarly organizations in the US, Canada and abroad. I am also a senior editor of BMCR. I therefore have wide experience of the academic and institutional landscapes within which we work, and I'd like on that basis to contribute as best I can to what we do.

CV: http://classics.uchicago.edu/faculty/ando

Mary Jaeger

Professor, Classics, University of Oregon

It is easy to take for granted the hard work—most by volunteers—that the SCS does to promote teaching and scholarship in classics: publications, prizes, and scholarships; the development of new avenues of outreach; the annual meeting; the placement service. I have contributed very little to its operation. It is time I did so. I bring to the board the perspective of a faculty member from a public university, one which increasingly looks towards Asia more than Europe, but also from a department that has, over the past decades, survived budget cuts and still has grown. This has been a group achievement in the face of adversity; and the process has taught me valuable lessons about solidarity, advocacy, and persistence. I should like to see if any of them scale up to the SCS.

I bring to this position years of experience as a member of advisory committees, task forces, and executive boards (at the University of Oregon, and for the Classical Association of the Pacific Northwest, which I now serve as secretary). I have evaluated: abstracts (for CAPN), book manuscripts, article manuscripts (for various journals, and as a member of the editorial board for Classical Antiquity), tenure and promotion files, internal and external, as well as dossiers for job candidates, and those of candidates for awards both local and national. I have been the chair of my department and am presently director of a small interdisciplinary program in the humanities. A twenty-six-year stint teaching at a chronically underfunded tuition-driven state university has given me a clear view of the challenges faced by our field. It is has also taught me to be entrepreneurial, experimental, and to try to use what resources I have—money, energy, the goodwill of people of all kinds—to the greatest advantage.

Faculty profile: https://classics.uoregon.edu/jaeger/

Joshua Katz

Cotsen Professor in the Humanities; Professor of Classics
Princeton University

A director’s job is to direct, and giving good direction requires knowing one’s constituents, listening to them, and having a vision that is ambitious while at the same time realistic. The greatest challenge facing classicists today, and humanists more generally, is clearly the job market; there is no need to describe how difficult it has become to land a reasonably secure position or how dispiriting the combination of high course load and low pay is for those who are comparatively fortunate to have found adjunct teaching. Just a few years ago, we were sparring over the name of our Society, but there are far bigger problems and we need to stand together and not allow differences to divide us. We must think hard about what it means to be a societas, above all how to foster and present to the wider world the academic, creative, and pedagogical work of our socii. In an era when agencies such as the NEH and NEA are under threat and when there is a drumbeat of complaints about the decreasing ratio of benefits to cost of attending the annual meeting, even from professors at institutions that have jobs on offer, we must remind ourselves of the intellectual and social reasons we belong to the SCS and never stop demonstrating the good we do to those on the outside who might supply intellectual and financial support. The next few years are likely to be exceptionally volatile, and I don’t know what anyone will be able to achieve. Still, if elected to the Board of Directors, I promise to do what I can to give the study of the past a brighter future. This means two things in particular: (1) directing a greater share of resources to students and colleagues who actively need help and (2) advocating for the development of more pre-college Latin programs.

I joined the SCS/APA in 1995 when I was a graduate student and preparing to give my first talk at an annual meeting; I hope I never forget how sad I felt as I wandered, invisible, through the throngs of older people who all seemed to know one another. Things got better for me reasonably quickly, but not everyone is so lucky. Besides acting as a session chair most Januaries and writing occasional referee reports for TAPA, I have served the SCS/APA in four formal capacities: as member of the Membership Committee (2016– ), member of the Nominating Committee (2012–2015), member of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae Fellowship Committee (2002–2005), and co-director of the Society for the Study of Greek and Latin Languages and Linguistics, an affiliated group (2001–2006). Primarily a historical/comparative linguist, I have catholic tastes across classical studies, am more or less equally interested in teaching and research, and have a genuine fascination with both the many forms of evidence that our interdisciplinary field values and the many methodologies that colleagues apply to this evidence. To judge from the worrisome number of committees and boards I sit on at my home institution and well beyond, it would seem that people find my judgments to be fair, reliable, and neither boringly predictable nor inflexibly radical.

CV: http://www.princeton.edu/classics/people/display_person.xml?netid=jtkatz

Christina Kraus

Thomas A Thacher Professor of Latin, Yale University

I have decided to stand for the Board of Directors because it seems to me that this is one of the places that an SCS member can do the most good for the association. I am interested in administration and would like to understand the SCS better from the inside; I would hope to use my experience in balancing viewpoints and in advocating for institutional policies in ways that would benefit the SCS. I am particularly concerned with outreach and with continuing to rethink the format of the annual program.

My qualifications include several APA/SCS positions held over the last 30 years (TLL Fellowship Committee, Editorial Board for Non-print Publications, Pearson Fellowship Committee, Nominating Committee, Goodwin Award Committee, Search Committee for editor of TAPA [2012-13], Membership Committee [current]). I have also served on the Executive Committee for the AAR, have been Chair of the Yale Department of Classics and am just finishing a stint as Acting Chair of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

CV link: https://yale.academia.edu/ChristinaSKraus/CurriculumVitae

C. W. (Toph) Marshall

Professor of Greek, University of British Columbia (Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies).

The importance of the Board of Directors for setting the priorities of the organization and ensuring they are carried out became clear to me when I was serving on the search committee for the new Executive Director in 2015. I have been active in the Society of Classical Studies for more than 25 years, and have taught at several public universities across Canada. My primary concern with the SCS has been to make the organization increasingly receptive to the needs of emerging scholars, addressing hierarchies and inequalities that (perhaps inevitably) exist in our profession. I have worked to encourage new research, especially in reception and performance studies, and to make the experience of the annual meetings more supportive for those early in their careers. In addition to continuing to pursue these issues, if elected to the Board of Directors I would also bring a non-U.S. perspective to the Board of Directors.

I have experience with many aspects of the Society of Classical Studies across many divisions, having served on the Committee on the Performance of Classical Texts (1993-96), the Committee on Ancient and Modern Performance (2001-04, chair 03-04), the Committee on Outreach (2004-07), the Committee on Research (2007-11), the Outreach Prize Committee (2009-11, chair 10-11), the Committee on Placement (2013-16, chair 14-16), the Professional Matters Committee (2014-16), and the Executive Director Search Committee (2015-16). I have organized or co-organized panels at the APA and SCS with the LCC, WCC, Committee on Outreach, CAMP, SORGLL, and as an individual; four of these have led to edited or co-edited academic collections. Since 2002 I have directed or acted in seven of the CAMP performances and in two other conference performances. In 2016 I was invited to speak in the Presidential Panel on contingent labor in the profession. I have also held various offices in the Classical Association of Canada (1998-2012) and served as the Academic Director of the International Comic Arts Forum (2010-16).

Departmental webpage: http://cnrs.ubc.ca/people/cw-marshall/.

Program Committee

Barbara W. Boyd

Henry Winkley Professor of Latin and Greek, Bowdoin College
http://www.bowdoin.edu/faculty/b/bboyd/

Response:

The Program Committee has a big and important job: to review, evaluate, and craft a coherent and representative program out of the random abundance of each year’s submissions. Our field is remarkably diverse, and our annual program should reflect that diversity while ensuring that the very best new work receives the recognition and audience it deserves. Too often, however, the sheer volume of abstracts considered by the Program Committee makes rejection of many abstracts, even (often) very strong and exciting ones, inevitable; the grumbling that results only serves to detract from what should be the collegial atmosphere of the meeting. I am very pleased, therefore, that the number of members serving on the committee is increasing: though the increase in the committee membership has been described as a way to lighten each member’s workload, I think the far more important and beneficial consequence will be better advocacy for every aspect of the discipline, from foundational work in philology and ancient history to the latest developments in digital humanities and classical reception.

In my own experience, seminars have been an outstanding feature of recent meetings, and I would like to work to find ways to encourage more of them. I am also a fan of organizer-refereed panels—they tend to be more intellectually rewarding, at least in my view, than sessions of individual papers, at least as currently organized. At the same time, the individual paper should remain a meaningful option, especially since this is often the format in which younger members of the profession have their first opportunity to present work in progress. But I would like to work with colleagues to improve these sessions by inviting senior scholars to serve as interlocutors and respondents, and to develop other ideas and venues for the discussion of our work beyond the podium and the 20-minute paper.

Qualifications:
Evaluation of others’ work is a fundamental part of what we do as university/college classicists, so that is a qualification I share with my other colleagues on this ballot. As a faculty member in a small department at a small liberal arts college, I also have a lot of experience with college committee service of all sorts. But I think my recent stint on the Goodwin Award Committee is of particular value, since that assignment entailed the comparative assessment of the newest and best work being published in our field: it was both exciting and humbling to be charged with representing the membership of SCS in the selection of each year’s winners. Therefore, if elected to the Program Committee, I would be honored to assume a similar responsibility for our annual program.

Brief CV:

Education: Ph.D. in Classical Studies, the University of Michigan, 1980; M.A. in Classical Studies, the University of Michigan, 1976; B.A. with honors in Classics, Manhattanville College, 1974

Academic Positions: Assistant to Full Professor of Classics, Bowdoin College, 1980-present; Visiting Associate Professor of Classics, Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies, 1994-1995; Visiting Professor, Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies, 1997-1998.

Academic Honors and Awards: NEH Fellowship, 1986-1987; Residential Fellowship, Bogliasco Foundation, fall 2002; Visiting Fellowship, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, Lent term 2003; Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship, 2008-2009; NEH Fellowship, 2014-2015; National Humanities Center Fellowship, 2014-2015.

Five Representative Publications: Ovid’s Homer: Authority, Repetition, and Reception (Oxford University Press, forthcoming); “’One equal temper of heroic hearts’: Nostos, Home, and Identity in the Odyssey and Mad Men,” in Sheila Murnaghan and Hunter Gardner, eds., Odyssean Identities in Modern Cultures: The Journey Home (Ohio State University Press, 2014) 192-210; “On Starting an Epic (Journey): Telemachus, Phaethon, and the Beginning of Ovid’s Metamorphoses,” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 69 (2012) 101-118; “Two Rivers and the Reader in Ovid, Metamorphoses 8,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 136 (2006) 73-108; “Vergil’s Camilla and the Traditions of Catalogue and Ecphrasis (Aeneid 7.803-817),” American Journal of Philology 113 (1992) 213-34.SCS Service and Offices: Member, Pearson Fellowship Committee, 1992-1995; Member, APA/SCS Board of Directors, 2008-2011; Member, Goodwin Award Committee of the APA/SCS, 2013-2016.

Raffaela Cribiore

Professor of Classics New York University

When invited to be a candidate for the Program Committee, I cautiously and thoroughly considered not only whether I had the capacity to contribute energetically to the project but also seriously wondered if I wanted to undertake the challenge. The profession of classics which we have embraced with passion faces increasing challenges. We continue to combat claims of irrelevance which we must counter by increasing the visibility of our discipline and by readiness to embrace many different areas of research. From 2009 to 2012 I was a member of the Society Publication Committee, an experience I found invaluable, and in the course of which I became especially interested in encouraging works that covered antiquity in its entirety. The opportunity to serve on the Program Committee offers me occasion to encourage interdisciplinary research and to increase the diversity of the program in all its formats. In my opinion, panels that show internal coherence need to be expanded, because they foster enriching conversations among scholars at all levels. Panels on the job market and on alternative careers need to be offered again. We must continue to support the members of our society who are at risk and give them ample opportunities to show their work. Members of the Program Committee have the responsibility to identify interesting, challenging papers that may not fit in a traditional program.

I feel that I can bring to the Program Committee a desire to explore different areas of research, an interest in material culture, and a willingness to go beyond Greece and Rome to areas in the margins of the ancient world. I began my career as a papyrologist and continue to be one (participating every year, when possible in an on-going archaeological excavation in the south of Egypt), but have become interested in other fields. From literacy and education in Egypt, I turned to rhetoric in Syria, and to questions on paganism in the fourth century CE. My last book consisted of translations of orations of the sophist Libanius, a subject which is a testament to my belief that it is the duty of a scholar to open up to researchers difficult and lesser-known texts. I am very willing to serve SCS to the best of my ability, and believe that my expertise in interdisciplinary aspects of classical studies will be of especial use to the program, and to the profession.

http://classics.as.nyu.edu/attach/19892 

Radcliffe Edmonds

Professor of Greek, Department of Greek, Latin, & Classical Studies, Bryn Mawr College

Radcliffe Edmonds’s Response: Coming from the small, liberal arts environment of Bryn Mawr, I understand the vital necessity to avoid staying secluded in our little cloisters, be they of the institution, of the department, or even of the special sub-field. Running the Classics Colloquium series at the college for the past few years has shown me how stimulating it can be to have exposure to a variety of ideas and disciplines – and to the people with those ideas and from those differing disciplines. The Program at the SCS provides the opportunity for scholars across the continent (and beyond) to see what is going on across the field of Classics as a whole, to find the new trends in their specialties and to discover new areas of connection and interest. The panels enable scholars to meet face to face and to engage in discussions and debates that otherwise have to take place in slow motion through publications. The Program Committee has the task of facilitating those conversations, bringing together the best proposals and putting them into dialogue with one another.

Brief CV:

Education: BA, Yale University, 1992; PhD, University of Chicago, 1999.

Academic Positions: Bryn Mawr College, Visiting Assistant Professor to Professor, 2000-present; Creighton University, Visiting Assistant Professor, 1999-2000.

Special Awards and Honors: Center for Hellenic Studies Fellowship, 2007-2008; Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship, 2004-2005.

Five Representative Publications: Myths of the Underworld Journey: Plato, Aristophanes, and the ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets, Cambridge University Press, 2004; “Extra-ordinary People: Mystai and Magoi, Magicians and Orphics in the Derveni Papyrus,” Classical Philology 103 (2008), pp. 16-39; Redefining Ancient Orphism: A Study in Greek Religion, Cambridge University Press, 2013; “Imagining the Afterlife in Greek Religion” in Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion, eds. Eidinow, Esther & Julia Kindt, Oxford University Press (2015), pp. 551-563; “Putting him on a pedestal: (Re)collection and the use of images in Plato’s Phaedrus,” in Plato & the Power of Images, ed. Edmonds, Radcliffe & Pierre Destrée, (forthcoming Brill).

SCS Service and Committees: none

Luca Grillo

Associate Professor of Classics and William R. Kenan Scholar, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

SCS Service and Offices: Outreach Committee 2011-14.

If Aristotle has it right that “human beings thirst for knowledge by nature,” no one should feel apologetic for advancing research in any field; and yet, if you have knowledge, you must invite others to light their candles by it, to paraphrase Margaret Fuller. In other words, I refuse to buy into a widespread dichotomy which opposes “pure research” to “pedagogy and/or outreach:” it promotes snobbery on one side and resentment on the other, precisely at a time when “if we do not hang together we will hang separately” (Benjamin Franklin, and I promise this is my last quotation). The SCS annual meeting should reflect our collective effort to pursue both paths: it should certainly continue to be a beacon for promoting fine research and exchanging its results, but it should also multiply efforts to light more and more candles. In particular, the ever-changing and multidisciplinary directions of scholarship should continue to shape the program, enabled by the increasing flexibility in the format of presentation (individual papers, thematic panels with or without pre-circulating papers, etc.); but simultaneously, we should invest more in supporting and rewarding communication with the outside, wider world.

For instance, sessions on recent digital humanities projects provide both inspiration for new endeavors and information about what is available for teaching and research. To help respond to various challenges that we are facing, I would also like to foster presentations, panels and discussion on pedagogy, outreach and career paths outside of academia. The numbers of enrolments, majors and applications can be discouraging, but many of us have been seriously thinking about our teaching, restructuring graduate and undergraduate programs, reshaping old courses and creating new ones: I would like to see the SCS annual meeting as a forum to discuss pedagogy and outreach, both in theory and in practice, in order to share strategies and information about successful methods and ideas (like Aequora, http://www.paideiainstitute.org/programs/aequora-latin-enrichment-progr…). Similarly, the annual meeting can provide a place to share plans and stories about effective ways to use a PhD in Classical Studies toward a non-academic career, especially when tenure track positions keep shrinking while high school programs in classics are closing for lack of teachers.

Brief CV:

Education. B.A. 1994 Literature and Philosophy, concentration in Greek, Catholic University, Milan, Italy; 2003 MAs Classical and Near Eastern Studies, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 2005 MAs Classics, Princeton University; 2008 PhD Classics, Princeton University.

Employment. 1995-98 Istituto Sacro Cuore (High School) Milan, Italy: Latin, Italian, Ancient History and Geography. 1998-2003 Lourdes High School, Rochester MN: Latin and Church History. 2006-07 Schwartz Fellow, American Numismatic Society, NY. 2008-13 Amherst College, Assistant Professor of Classics. 2011-12 Mitarbeiter, Göttingen, Seminar für Klassische Philologie. 2013-present Assistant and Associate (since 2016) Professor, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Summer 2014-present “Caesar in Gaul,” co-taught with Christopher Krebs for Paideia.

Special Awards and Honors. 1994, CUSL Prize for Best Humanities Thesis of the Year, Milan; 2006-07 Teaching Award, Princeton University; 2011 Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Honorable Mention for Anti-Racism Commitment.

Five Representative Publications. 2011 “Scribam ipse de me: The Personality of the Narrator in Caesar’s Bellum Civile,” AJP 132: 243-71; 2012 (paperback 2015) The Art of Caesar’s Bellum Civile, Cambridge; 2015 Cicero’s De Provinciis Consularibus Oratio. Introduction, Text and Commentary, Oxford; 2015 “Reading Cicero’s Letters as a Collection: The Case of ad Familiares 1,” CQ, 65.2; 2016 “Caesarian Intertextualities, Cotta and Sabinus in BG 5.26-37,” CJ, 111.3

https://unc.academia.edu/LucaGrillo
http://classics.unc.edu/people-3/faculty/luca-grillo/
http://www.paideiainstitute.org/caesar_in_gaul

Adam Kemezis

Associate Professor
University of Alberta

To me, the key challenge for the program committee is to recognize the diversity of our attendees, and the wide disciplinary and geographical range of Classical Studies. We can then create a framework in which those different kinds of scholars can come together to display their own work and experience the work others do. As such, my objective on the committee would be to do whatever provides the most and best opportunities for our members as presenters, audience members and professionals – opportunities they couldn't get without attending in person. Selecting quality papers is certainly critical, but so is placing them in panels where they will be found by and attract the people who will get the most out of them. I'm excited to find new ways of doing this through non-traditional formats or themes that cut across our usual disciplinary lines, and I'm just as excited when high-quality abstracts lend themselves to a traditional author/genre panel. It's crucial also to keep in mind that the program is made up of people as well as papers. The SCS has come up with a fair abstract-selection process that's effective at leveling the field between senior and junior scholars while still maintaining high levels of quality. It works well for people at the various stages of the standard North American research stream and it's an important part of professional development. We need to be careful, however, that the process does not become too narrowly tailored to that career stream and to the particular kinds of papers and abstracts it generates. We need an approach to abstract selection that, while preserving anonymity, will allow us to include the excellent work done by the full range of our colleagues, whether as researchers in other disciplines and academic systems, or as teaching-focused faculty, or as independent scholars. A more varied set of backgrounds and approaches will bring in a more diverse set of presenters and a program that fully represents who we are and what we do.

As a political and cultural historian of Rome who teaches Latin and publishes mostly on Greek-language literary texts from the imperial period, my work gives me a wide perspective on scholarly approaches within our discipline. My organizing experience includes putting together and publishing an interdisciplinary conference at my home university on "Urban Dreams and Realities" at which classical archaeologists, historians and literary scholars appeared alongside scholars of ancient Iran, India, the Islamic Near East and the Hebrew Bible. I have co-organized two APA/SCS panels, one author-based and one thematic. In the latter, Jewish and early Christian writings in Greek were read alongside traditional Imperial Greek literature for their perspectives on Roman politics. I am currently one of the co-organizers of a scholarly network for the study of Cassius Dio, which has put on three conferences or workshops in Europe in the last two years. As graduate director of a large program that includes more modern historians and archaeologists than ancient historians or philologists, I gained valuable perspective both from the methodological variety of those disciplines and from the different sets of problems and potential solutions faced by their graduate students and recent PhDs. This would be my first service post with the SCS, but I serve on the Nominating Committee of the Classical Association of Canada.

CV available at: https://www.ualberta.ca/arts/about/people-collection/adam-kemezis

Timothy Moore

John and Penelope Biggs Distinguished Professor of Classics, Washington University in St. Louis.

The great challenge to the program committee is to respond effectively and equitably to the embarrassment of riches that come in the form of abstracts and panel proposals from SCS members each year. As a member of the program committee I would seek to maintain a healthy variety of papers, combining the technical with the more abstract and the traditional with the avant-garde, and seeing that all areas of our field are represented. I am especially interested in encouraging papers that address the challenges facing younger scholars. I would like the program committee to continue to experiment with new formats for panels while holding on to the current formats that have worked well.

I have had experience choosing papers for and organizing several conferences and panels in various areas of Classical Studies. I have published in a wide range of different areas and have worked closely on some of the practical issues facing the profession that I hope can be addressed at future SCS meetings.

Online cv: https://pages.wustl.edu/tjmoore/cv-0

Committee on Professional Ethics

Andrew Feldherr

Professor of Classics, Princeton University

The recent contractions of the job market have magnified the importance of this committee in several ways. First, there are simply many fewer second chances on the path to a successful career, and that makes it all the more imperative for every decision and procedure that could affect that success to be conducted fairly and with full attention to its ethical dimensions. At the same time the steeper this path becomes the more of a sense of polarization it creates within our field. Those struggling to establish themselves might feel that our organization belongs to the successful, even the lucky, and the persistent setbacks that deserving and dedicated young classicists almost inevitably encounter at some point in their professional lives take a huge toll on their sense of their own worth and potential. Thus beyond its impact on individual cases, the scrupulous and energetic functioning of this committee, in offering guidance on best practices and a forum for bringing disputes before the profession, affirms the value we place in all our colleagues, whatever their position, and their right to be treated with dignity as well as equity. I also very strongly agree with the comments of previous years’ candidates that as search processes change we must think actively about the potential challenges Skype interviews, for example, or the increasing length of the job season raise to maintaining principles of fairness in hiring.

I have had experience of many working environments, from the large state university where I was a graduate student, to a college focusing on undergraduates, to an institution that must balance the demands of undergraduates, graduates, and research. In my current job at Princeton, I have served as director of graduate studies, helping to advise and prepare students to enter the profession, as well as chair. In the latter role, I have been involved in personnel decisions including new hires at all ranks as well as promotions. I also know what it is like to be turned down for re-appointment and to see the seasons of searching for jobs multiply. Such recollections have always given me a strong motivation to treat all my colleagues with consideration and fairness.

CV: http://www.princeton.edu/classics/people/display_person.xml?netid=feldh…

Jennifer Larson

Professor of Classics
Kent State University

Why I am standing: Election to an office or committee membership in SCS is an honor as well as a way to serve the profession. Although a longtime member of SCS, I am new to elected service, and this seems an appropriate place to begin. The Committee on Professional Ethics is also a good match for my interests and experience, as detailed below.

My qualifications: I have been active for 15 years in the leadership of the Kent State chapter of the American Association of University Professors, which is a collective bargaining chapter. In my roles as Grievance Officer and Chapter President, I have dealt extensively with matters of due process and procedural fairness for faculty members who are facing sanctions of various types, including ethical violations. As a negotiator, I helped develop contract language in this area, and I have also served on Kent State’s Faculty Senate Professional Standards Committee.

Link to my CV on academia.edu: https://kentstate.academia.edu/JenniferLarson/CurriculumVitae

David Schenker

Associate Professor and Chair of Classical Studies, University of Missouri

I am standing for election to the Committee on Professional Ethics because I was asked to do that by a colleague I respect. He thought I could make a contribution to this important group, and that was enough for me. My hope is that I will have absolutely nothing to do on this committee – not because of laziness, but in the hope (if not the expectation) that we are all good people who make the best possible decisions for the betterment of all. If things don’t turn out that way, I hope I can help steer them in that direction.

I have been a department chair for nine of the past 18 years. In that role, I have encountered and responded to some of the kinds of issues that might come before this committee. I hope I have learned something useful from those experiences.

CV: https://classics.missouri.edu/people/schenker 

William (Greg) Thalmann

Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature
University of Southern California

The Committee on Professional Ethics is a new committee, which has been spun off from the Committee on Professional Matters in the recent reorganization of SCS governance. Its charge is to consider “grievances and complaints pertinent to the SCS Statement on Professional Ethics with a view toward providing informal and formal resolution of specific disputes within the Society and outside it, according to policies and procedures established by the Board of Directors.” The SCS Statement on Professional Ethics is very good and comprehensive, and we all—each of us individually and collectively as members of a profession—have a stake in seeing that it is upheld and its integrity maintained, and that is why I am interested in serving on the committee. I think that particularly now, when the public discourse in the United States is so lax about the values that underlie the Statement of Ethics and that are the bedrock principles of our research and teaching, it is important that high intellectual and ethical standards be insisted on. I think most of us agree on their importance and work hard to translate them into our practice, but on occasion grievances and complaints do arise; and then the work of this committee is important. Dealing with complaints requires tact as well as firmness: sensitivity to the rights of all concerned, and a sense of when matters can be resolved informally and when more formal steps should be recommended.

My prior experience relevant to service on the Committee on Professional Ethics includes:

  • Member SCS (then APA) Committee on the Status of Women and Minority Groups, 2010-2013; Chair, 2012-2013.
  • Chair multiple times of both the Department of Classics and the Department of Comparative Literature, USC, for a total of twelve years; currently serving as chair of the Classics Department.
  • President, Academic Senate, University of Southern California, and member of Executive Board for three years.
  • Chair and then member, Academic Senate Faculty Handbook Committee.
  • Chair, Academic Senate Committee on Faculty Environment.
  • Member for multiple two-year terms, Dornsife College Faculty Council at USC (secretary twice). During one of these terms I helped put in final form a College policy on non-tenure-track faculty that ensures them some predictability through a system of rolling contracts and provides for promotion through the professorial ranks.

Faculty profile: https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1003758

Nominating Committee

Lillian Doherty

Professor and Chair, Department of Classics
University of Maryland, College Park

My goal, if elected to serve on the Nominating Committee, would be to help identify an excellent and diverse field of candidates for SCS office. In my view this diversity should include not just gender and ethnic identity but (to the extent possible) age, subfield, geographic location, and type of institution. It is important to the health of the Society that a very broad representation of its membership participate in its governance.

I have been an active member of the APA/SCS for over 30 years and am personally acquainted with many of its members. Having served on the Education Committee and Professional Matters Committee, and for many years as coordinator of the mentoring initiative of the Women’s Classical Caucus, I feel I am well qualified to contribute to the deliberations of the Nominating Committee.

For biographical information, please see my professional website at
http://classics.umd.edu/users/ldoherty.

Jackie Elliott

Associate Professor, Department of Classics, University of Colorado Boulder

The task of the Nominating Committee as I see it is defined by the need to ensure broad spectrum representation from the ablest quarters across the field. The vitality of the SCS depends upon its ability to harness the energy, benefit from the perspectives, and hear the voices of as various and as committed a group of Classicists as possible. Individuals at different career stages and of diverse professional histories, genders, fields of specialization, types of institution, geographical regions, cultural backgrounds and areas of commitment are all needed to support communication and collaboration at their best across the professional field.

I have to date not had the opportunity to serve the SCS but would be glad to do so in any capacity. I have been active in the service of Classics at Boulder, including most recently as chair, as well as in the larger Classics community in Colorado; so too in Boulder’s College of Arts & Sciences. I hope that the modes of efficiency, fair-mindedness and engagement that I have developed by those means over the past decade, and my perspective as a member of a large public institution, with experience also of both liberal arts and private and elite institutions, would allow me to be a useful member of the committee.

More information about my professional trajectory is available here.

Lee Pearcy

Research Associate
Department of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies
Bryn Mawr College

Many important and exciting developments in classical studies now happen outside the traditional college and university departments in which most SCS members still make their lives and livings. Private initiatives like the Paideia Institute, university-affiliated research and outreach projects like ISAW or Aquila Theater Company, and schools of all kinds may be lively centers of classical practice and innovation. I spent three-quarters of my career as a middle- and high-school teacher of Latin and Greek, and as a member of the nominations committee I will be open to bringing voices from beyond colleges and universities into our society’s conversation.

  • SCS (APA) service: Committee on Professional Matters, 2013-2015; Vice-President for Education, 2006-2010; Education Committee, 1999-2002; Committee on Computer Activities, 1981-83.
  • Relevant publications: The Grammar of Our Civility: Classical Education in America (2005); (with S. Little et al.) Standards for Latin Teacher Training and Certification (2010).
  • Teaching: The Englewood School for Boys 1969–1971, St. Olaf College 1973–1977, The University of Texas at Austin 1977–1985, The Episcopal Academy 1985–2013 (department chair and Director of Curriculum; retired 2013).

C.V. at https://brynmawr.academia.edu/LeePearcy.

Ralph Rosen

Vartan Gregorian Professor of the Humanities
Professor of Classical Studies
University of Pennsylvania

Over the past three decades, the discipline of Classical Studies has reaffirmed its intellectual vigor in new and creative ways. As I see it, the SCS can and should play an important role in articulating the current disciplinary contours of Classics, and promoting its significance within the broader humanities. The Nominating Committee serves a particularly important function in this enterprise, with its ability to tap a diverse, broadly representative pool of colleagues for SCS service who are committed not only to the notion of Classics as an academic discipline, but as a vital part of public culture as well.

I have been professional Classicist for more than 35 years, and have served in a variety of teaching and administrative roles, including department chair and Graduate Dean of Arts and Sciences at my University. Over the years I have become familiar with many programs around the world and have cultivated professional (and personal) connections with many colleagues in a wide variety of academic institutions. If the baseline for the success of a Nominating Committee is a good foundation of diverse contacts and a clear understanding of the SCS’s commitment to inclusion and openness, I believe that in in these areas I would have much to contribute.

CV and other biographical information may be accessed at this link:

https://www.classics.upenn.edu/people/ralph-m-rosen

Goodwin Award Committee

Peter Bing

Professor of Classics, University of Toronto; Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of the Classics Emeritus, Emory University

Most classicists, myself included, tend to read fairly narrowly within their field of expertise. While my own focus, the learned poetry of the Hellenistic era, may invite broader reading than some specialties (since we try to trace what the voracious readers of this period read themselves), nonetheless the task of the Goodwin Award Committee is even broader: it demands that we explore important new scholarship across the whole spectrum of our discipline – a daunting prospect if also a pleasurable one. Being nominated for this committee offers the chance to encounter innovative work representing the full diversity of perspectives and methodologies current in our lively discipline. Particularly now, when Humanities are under attack, it would be a special privilege to be chosen for this task and to help bring recognition to the very best work in our field.

My qualifications for serving on the Goodwin Award Committee grow first of all out of the variety of my scholarly interests and publications. I have authored two books on Hellenistic poetry, The Well-Read Muse and The Scroll & The Marble, edited (with Jon Bruss) the Brill’s Companion to Hellenistic Epigram, was area-editor for Greek Literature in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, published two volumes of literary translations, Games of Venus: An Anthology of Greek and Roman Erotic Verse from Sappho to Ovid (with Rip Cohen) and Aristaenetus: Erotic Letters (with Regina Höschele), and finally translated two books by Walter Burkert, Homo Necans and Savage Energies. Moreover, I have served the APA/SCS in a variety of ways, on its committee on machine-readable texts, its nominating committee, and its board of directors.

Please visit my homepage on the University of Toronto’s website: http://classics.utoronto.ca/people/faculty/peter-bing/

Carolyn Dewald

Professor Emerita in Classics and History, Bard College

In studying ancient Greek historiography, itself an area study within the larger area study that is Classics, I have relied on methodologies and information gleaned from historians, archaeologists, text critics, literary scholars, philosophers, and others whose research casts a new light on what the first generations of Greek historians were about. More generally, some of the most exciting work in Classics in the last generation has come out of the integration of discoveries in the areas of ancient art, archaeology, cultural studies, gender studies, etc. and also out of new ways of looking at ancient literature in 'the cultural turn' of the last forty years. I would be privileged to be part of the Goodwin Awards Committee that examines the books submitted this year, in order to honor and highlight outstanding excellence and originality in our field.

For over forty years I've taught a fairly wide variety of Classics courses, both undergraduate and graduate, in which it seemed important to integrate new information and new ways of looking at the field, but also to expose students to some of the best scholarship in Classics, especially in Greek and Roman history and historiography, ancient sex and gender, ancient Greek religion, a variety of Greek and Latin language courses and courses in translation -- and (in my final year of teaching) a course I'd always wanted to teach, Ancient History from 3500 BCE-430 CE, with a web-based 'moodle' component, where I could put outstanding articles and book chapters on the web for students to read. One of the great pleasures of teaching is to be able to revisit material I thought I knew, but in reading contemporary scholarship to have my expectations exploded, and new ideas and ways of looking at the ancient world emerge. I have also served as an editorial consultant for a number of academic presses and journals in Classics. The books honored yearly by the Goodwin Award have for me often been part of the process of becoming educated about what is best in current scholarship, and I would consider election to the committee to be a chance to pay something back to the SCS for what I have received for many years.

Link to a departmental website with a brief biography and bibliography:

http://classicalstudies.bard.edu/faculty/

Jeffrey Henderson

William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of Greek Language and Literature, Boston University

I have enjoyed my various official roles in the SCS over the years but consider the Goodwin Award Committee special: as a recipient myself I know how much this kind of recognition means. There is also hope for self-improvement: as one who seldom finishes a stack of summer must-reads, I wouldn’t mind being obliged!

I enjoy reading across our discipline and would hope that my long experience as a referee, reviewer, and editor has enhanced my judgment.

Faculty profile and CV: https://www.bu.edu/classics/faculty-profiles/jeffrey-henderson/

Timothy Whitmarsh

A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, University of Cambridge.

I am standing for election as a member of the C. J. Goodwin Award of Merit Committee. I am a passionate believer in maintaining and rewarding the highest standards of research quality and integrity, in valuing scholars at all stages of their careers, in equality of opportunity to all, and in celebrating academic achievement in all of its diverse forms. I would seek to take these principles into my committee work.

I would welcome the opportunity to put my own experience to use in the service of the SCS and the broader classical community. I have written 9 books (3 of which have been translated into other languages) and over 70 articles and chapters. As a recipient of the Goodwin Order of Merit myself, I know first-hand what a personal and professional fillip it can give individual scholars, who often write without anticipation of any direct endorsement of their efforts. I am also experienced at collaborating with and supporting other writers, whether through edited or co-edited volumes (6 of them to date), co-edited book series (currently 3) and editorial boards (currently 2). Having worked with numerous research projects and networks, I am confident that I can cooperate productively and creatively with other committee members.

Website: http://www.classics.cam.ac.uk/directory/professor-tim-whitmarsh