2021 Candidate Statements

Click on the links below to read the statements from candidates for each office. The candidates were asked to address in their statements: (1) their experiences and qualifications relevant to the office for which they are standing; and (2) what they hope to contribute to SCS and achieve if elected. Candidates were also asked for links to online CVs or for CVs that the SCS office could upload to its website.

The full set of election materials will be available in late June and voting will open in early August. You can find a list of election candidates and the report of the Nominating Committee here.

President-Elect

Lesley Dean-Jones

Professor and Chair, Department of Classics, The University of Texas at Austin

I have been Chair of a large Ph.D. granting department for seven years. At the undergraduate level we offer B.A.s in both Classical Languages and Classical Studies (Ancient History or Archaeology track). At the graduate level we have tracks in Philology, Archaeology and Ancient Philosophy. I have been on a large number of administrative committees at both the college and university level. I was President of the Society for Ancient Medicine and Pharmacy from 2001-2006. For the APA/SCS I have been on the Committee for Professional Matters, the Program Committee and the Committee on Contingent Faculty.

My cv is available at https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/classics/faculty/lesleydj.

At my first on-campus interview in 1986, at the end of my job talk (which had been on the different theories about the role of menstruation in conception and pregnancy) the retiring professor whose line I had applied for posed the first question. “What,” he asked, “has this to do with Classics?” At the time I stumbled through an explanation that it suggested that not all the original audience of the Eumenides would have been convinced by Apollo’s claim. Now I would reply, “The sources are written in ancient Greek.” In the intervening thirty-five years the study of women, other non-elites and “messy blood studies” (as another scholar described my research, albeit affectionately) have become accepted lines of research within our discipline. I relate this anecdote because there is currently concern in some quarters that the spatio-temporal borders of Classics are set too narrowly. Having taken part in both a junior and a senior search over the last two years I can attest that these spatio-temporal borders have already been transgressed by many scholars. Our job, in the lovely image of my dear mentor Mike Jameson, is to welcome them with a nod and a smile and carry on playing our instruments as they take their seats and swell our orchestra. Those asking “What has this to do with Classics?” are going to be left in the dust. And I think this is the case however we configure our departments. Whether it is an area studies department such a my own or one that leans more particularly towards philology, whether ancient historians learn their skills in a History department and archaeologists in an Archaeology department, whether we form Ancient Mediterranean Studies departments or Pre-Modern departments, each of them has the potential to become a silo if we don’t reach outside of it ourselves and encourage others to do so.

So, I am fairly sanguine about the continued expansion of the parameters of our field, and that this material will find its way into dynamic new courses. But this will not address the problem of the dwindling numbers of Classics majors if potential students don’t know about us. It is not dissatisfaction with hidebound courses that cause students, non-traditional and otherwise, to reject Classics as a major. Often they aren’t aware that we’re there to be rejected. We must continue to promote outreach from our individual departments to local schools and interested groups, to support programs such as Aequora, and SCS initiatives such as “Ancient Worlds, Modern Communities”. But these interactions depend on community receptors such as schools, libraries, and bookshops who are already sympathetic allies. There are students, even in our own universities, who are not members in any such receptor and don’t find out about us till late in their college careers, if then. One way the SCS could address the problem would be to disseminate successful measures by Classics departments to attract and retain students from within their institutions. Outside our institutions, I wonder if, as well as “Meeting the Community Where They Are”, it would be possible to meet prospective majors where they are, i.e., on social media. Can we find the funding to make 30-second to one-minute videos advertising Classics as a course of study and target them to a pre-collegiate/collegiate audience?

To learn and teach about the ancient world is important at every level, but enrollment in our majors is the engine that will continue to make this possible. Increasing enrollments makes it less likely that Classics programs will be cut by universities. Increasing enrollment among students outside community receptors expands the “pipeline” that will increase the number of minority students who can take advantage of bridge programs, diversifying the professoriate and adding to the attractiveness of Classics. But at least equally important are those majors who leave with a B.A. they found enjoyable, fulfilling and useful, and whatever career they pursue, find their way to our blogs and presentations, support Latin programs in schools and don’t object if their children decide to study something other than a STEM field at college.

Matthew Roller

Professor of Classics, Johns Hopkins University

As Classicists we are blessed and cursed to be living in interesting times. A profession as intellectually vibrant and institutionally broad as ours is always in some degree of flux—flux that is healthy and stimulating, driven by the energy, excellence, and passion for the ancient Mediterranean world that characterizes our community. But current circumstances have created more tensions and uncertainties, and presented more alternative paths among which we as a Society and community must choose, than we have seen for many years. Among the more pressing issues, to my mind, are the following:

  • The indispensable and challenging work of diversity and inclusion, of making our field more welcoming and open to those who have long been underrepresented and whose voices have not been heard, has only begun. In the past year, the continued killings of Black people by police, the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, and profoundly troubling eruption of unabashed white supremacy into the mainstream of American society all demand that we redouble our collective efforts to build a more inclusive field, advocate for inclusivity and equity wherever and whenever we can, and forcefully reject efforts to twist classical antiquity into a weapon for racism. The SCS must also continue to scrutinize its own structures and processes, with an eye toward reforms that help to empower those who have historically been excluded from the Society’s governance.
  • The pandemic has disrupted the lives and hampered the work of teachers and researchers in all fields and at all levels, with particularly adverse impacts on those faced with limited funding and/or ticking clocks—notably (but not only) graduate students and early-career faculty. The aftershocks of this disruption will reverberate, and repairing the damage will be costly in time and money. While our institutions inevitably will take the lead on these remediations, the SCS can play a key role in pressing for equitable treatment and in providing various forms of assistance to impacted Classicists.
  • As we emerge (if we are emerging) from the pandemic and from our collective plunge into online and hybrid modes of teaching, learning, and meeting, what have we learned that we will want to take forward? The experiences of the past year will surely have durable impacts on research and teaching of all sorts, and raise many questions about how we will conduct conferences, collaborations, and even our signature January SCS meeting in the future. The importance of face-to-face sociability has never been clearer; yet considerations of access, equity, and cost also encourage us exploit digital channels further.
  • The SCS functions both as a learned society and as a professional association for Classicists. In the past decade and more, it has been expanding its footprint—providing greater support and resources for students at all levels, for colleagues on and off the tenure track, for colleagues who teach in secondary schools, and for independent scholars. It has also sought to become more public-facing and assume a greater advocacy role in the wake of the “Gatekeeper to Gateway” campaign. These shifts indicate, perhaps, less an evolution in mission than a more capacious understanding of where the boundaries and interests of our profession lie. However that may be, this important work must continue, and events of the past year may provide opportunities to step up the pace.
  • Threats to Classics departments and programs have emerged this year in several institutions, and more may be coming as institutions assess financial impacts from the pandemic and retrench. SCS has been advocating for our colleagues and field in such cases, and obviously must continue to do so. But the need is ever more pressing to advocate proactively within our institutions, and to develop strategies for such advocacy, so that our programs do not seem to present themselves as targets for cutting in the first place.
  • The employment market(s) for those who hold PhD degrees in Classics is becoming ever more fluid, presenting both challenges and opportunities. Academic and teaching pathways of various sorts have always been dominant and are likely to remain so. Yet there is, and has long been, a significant market for PhDs in the larger world: many rewarding, attractive, high-impact positions exist in which PhDs can use their training for the betterment of society. As we consider the nature and purpose of PhD education, finding ways to position Classics PhD students for success in multiple possible career paths is a matter with which we should all be pressingly concerned, and in which SCS can play a leadership role.

Background:

I have been an APA/SCS member since my graduate student years, and an enthusiastic annual meeting attendee for more than 25 years. The Society has long connected me to colleagues in the US and worldwide who share my passion and interests, and has provided invaluable support in circumstances where the support I needed was not available locally. Knowing first-hand how the Society can be a force for good in an individual Classicist’s life, I have been pleased to serve when called and to try to deliver these goods to others in turn. My prior service includes the old AIA/APA Joint Committee on Placement, the Board of Directors as an at-large member (during which I spearheaded the reform process by which the number of Goodwin Awards per year was raised from one to three), and chairing the short-lived Strategic Development Committee (which I successfully urged the Board of Directors to disband!), a role that came with an ex officio board position. These roles familiarized me with the range of the society’s activities, and yielded insight into its longer-term trajectory. I have also observed how the society has been roiled by some of the events of recent years, and witnessed steps it took to move forward in those situations.

Also relevant to our current challenges is that I served for five years (2015-2020) as the Vice Dean for Graduate Education in the School of Arts and Sciences at my home institution, Johns Hopkins University. In this role I dealt continually with matters of equity, diversity, and inclusion in our graduate programs and graduate admissions processes. I am particularly proud of having rolled out a holistic review process for PhD applicants across the School of Arts and Sciences in 2016-17, and of having allocated funds to provide supplemental support to underrepresented and economically disadvantaged graduate applicants and enrolled students. Also looming large for me were matters of professional development for PhD students, including much communication about varied career paths and mounting many workshops on the diverse fields for PhD employment. The final months of my term, in spring 2020, were entirely consumed with the emergency response to the COVID-19 crisis, leaving me all too aware of the manifold ways in which the pandemic has disrupted the lives and hampered the work of graduate students and early-career faculty—and of everyone, in fact, but these are the most vulnerable groups. Were I elected president (-elect) of the SCS, It would be my privilege and responsibility to participate in discussions of the matters sketched above, to help chart paths forward, and to put whatever knowledge and experience I’ve gained in previous roles to work for the larger community of Classicists.

CV: krieger.jhu.edu/classics/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2013/06/RollerCV-2020.pdf

Financial Trustee

Daniel Berman

Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies ; Professor of Greek & Roman Classics, Temple University

Experience and Qualifications

The “business side” of SCS cannot be disassociated from its mission to support its members and promote Classical Studies within and beyond colleges, universities, and secondary schools. My role as Vice Provost has given me significant and constant university-level exposure to finance and operations, and shown me the importance of strategic budgeting for activities such as research, teaching, and learning. I lead a portfolio of roughly 100 staff members, with budgetary responsibility over programs such as undergraduate research support, General Education, and Honors, among others. I am also involved in university-level strategic planning and interact with many on our campus concerning budgetary issues of all kinds. I find it satisfying to work to create opportunities and see them bloom into programs, support for students and faculty, or new avenues of research. Especially in an unsettled time, careful stewardship of an organization’s finances will dictate whether it survives, even thrives, or cannot sustain itself. The work is crucial. I would be honored to collaborate with colleagues to maintain SCS’s admirable levels of support for its members and outreach to the wider community.

The SCS is a healthy and supportive professional organization, but the opportunities it offers its members, and its effective outreach, will only continue to grow and develop with careful and informed stewardship of its finances. As Trustee I would go beyond passive stewardship and seek to combine careful oversight with a strong sense of our society’s mission and priorities. The Financial Trustees can work with the Board, Executive Director, and officers not only to maintain financial stability but to approach the evolving challenges of SCS’s membership, and the field of Classical Studies (such as pressing matters of equity and diversity, contingent faculty, and others) with creativity and understanding.

Online faculty profile, with link to CV:

https://liberalarts.temple.edu/academics/faculty/berman-daniel

Joseph Farrell

Professor of Classical Studies, University of Pennsylvania

The professional experience that would be most relevant to me as a financial trustee are the six years that I spent as Associate Dean in my university’s School of Arts and Sciences, with portfolios in Graduate Education (1998–2001) and Humanities (2003–2006). In both capacities I had significant budgetary responsibility and worked closely with financial professionals and other academic deans to develop and implement policies based on sound financial principles in a non-profit institution.

This election takes place during a quite favorable investment climate but one of unprecedented uncertainty for SCS where some of our most important financial activities are concerned. The annual meeting is the most visible of these, and under current circumstances also the riskiest. If I am elected, I think I can be helpful to fellow board members who have not had similar administrative experience when it comes to understanding and responding to this situation. More generally, I am strongly committed to the Society’s strategic priorities of Advocacy, Growth, and Inclusion. I believe that our members have responded extremely well to the challenging issues that our profession now faces, and I am eager to do what I can as a board member to help keep SCS moving in the right direction.

CV: https://www.classics.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/2021_cv_jfarrell.pdf

Vice President for Education

Dani Bostick

John Handley High School, Teacher & Lead Mentor

Education at all levels is a driver of public perceptions of Classics. As the field grapples with aspects of its problematic past and looks ahead to a more vibrant future, it is critical that we promote ethical representations and uses of Greco-Roman antiquity. This professional obligation starts in the classroom, but it does not end there. Education is a key component of our stewardship of our field, both in terms of the way we teach our own students and the message we send to the wider public about our discipline.

The future of our field hinges on education. As Education Vice President, I hope to lead in a way that generates a broad range of internal and public-facing work by facilitating dialogue and collaboration between classicists at all levels. My top priority is to unite students, educators, and other stakeholders at all levels around a common vision for the future of Classics. Ideally, at the end of my term, we will have established an organizational culture and infrastructure within the division to support the development of instructional materials, pedagogical resources, and standards that foster inclusive programs; promote ethical uses and representations of Classics (and challenging problematic ones, many of which have been documented in recent years); advance scholarship that expands notions of Classics; and, inspire critical engagement with Greco-Roman antiquity in the field, adjacent disciplines, and society.

I envision the Education Division providing leadership and resources to improve our field from the classroom on up. I will facilitate the creation of standards that relate to teaching topics that relate to oppression (enslavement, rape, etc.); guidance on problematic practices such as the tracking of students based on perceived ability at the pre-collegiate level, which often results in the exclusion of students from Latin programs (this kind leadership would have been helpful during the years that mock slave auctions were held as fundraisers on the pre-collegiate side of the field); resources educators at any stage of their career can use to improve and fine-tune their practice; a program that connects pre-collegiate teachers and professors for the purpose of exchanging ideas and strategies; an initiative that makes research accessible to K-12 learners so that all students (and educators) have access to a broad range of information and ideas on Greco-Roman antiquity; and, mutually beneficial relationships organizations whose missions are adjacent to that of SCS.

I have experience in the classroom-- and beyond-- that equips me to lead this division effectively. I am the Latin teacher and lead mentor at a diverse public school where the majority of students are eligible for free or reduced lunch. My program is open to all students and reflects the demographics of the student body, as I believe all programs should. I am a TED-Ed Innovative Educator, through which program I collaborate with teachers from around the world on larger efforts to amplify student voice and promote ideas in accessible, engaging ways. I am also a Voya Unsung Hero grant recipient, 2019-2020 teacher-advisor for the National Humanities Center, chairperson of my city’s Social Services commission, and a member of the SCS communications committee. I was a panel organizer and presenter at SCS 2020 (If Classics is For Everybody, Why Isn’t Everybody in My Classroom) and the respondent for the Greco-Roman Antiquity and White Supremacy panel at SCS 2021. I am the editor of Ad Aequiora, a blog that challenges assumptions and representations of Classics, and the founder/moderator of Social Justice in Secondary Latin, a Facebook group that provides resources and opportunities for dialogue about topics related to inclusive pedagogy and equity. My article on secondary Latin was published in the June 2020 issue of the American Journal of Philology and I have an upcoming chapter about the treatment of time in the Aeneid. I also write frequently for public-facing outlets.

CV

Teresa Ramsby

Professor of Classics, University of Massachusetts Amherst

It is a great honor to be nominated for the position of Vice President for Education, an office that presides over several important committees which support and empower educators at all levels within our discipline. Educational matters are the focus of much of the research and service in which I have engaged for many years. As director of the UMass Amherst MAT program in Latin and Classical Humanities since 2010, I have mentored, supported, and contributed to the preparation of Latin teachers. I have also sought to address the needs of K-12 educators, with special attention to providing clarity about educator preparation opportunities, and to providing resources for teachers who wish to expand their methods or find pedagogical support. I have published articles that aid those seeking pathways to teaching credentials, that highlight new and emerging methodologies and standards-based curricular planning, and that promote the application of differentiated instruction in the Latin classroom. I have facilitated discussions (at informal settings and at conferences) between K-12 and university educators who seek to find points of consistency and ways to navigate between emerging methods longstanding practices in Latin teaching. I participated in the re-formulation of the ACL Standards for Classical Language Learning (2015-2016), an important document for many who use standards-based curricula and assessments. As president of CANE (2020-2021), I undertook initiatives to increase funding support for historically underrepresented students within our discipline and to increase the number of events that highlight the need for social justice in classics. I have also held several positions on SCS committees, including the selection committee for the (now) Frank M. Snowden Jr. Undergraduate Scholarships and the committee on K-12 Education.

If elected as VP for Education, my history of engagement with educators will inform and influence my fulfillment of this role. I will find new ways to promote the ongoing work of the SCS Education Division and seek opportunities for growth and innovation that will benefit our teaching community. Specifically, I will empower the relevant committees to increase opportunities for educators at all levels to obtain information and resources, learn about emerging methods, and engage in important and necessary discussions about the substance and approaches of our discipline. As recent events have indicated, our discipline faces many challenges as educational administrators seek to place greater focus on areas of study deemed inclusive and relevant to their students. These are important goals, and our discipline has been criticized for diverging from these objectives of inclusivity and relevance, not without justification. If elected to this position, I will work with the committees of the Education Division to develop opportunities for engagement among educators that enable the sharing and discovery of proven pathways that will make our discipline more inclusive of a variety of perspectives and approaches, more attractive to a diverse populace, and more accessible to all students. Thank you for your consideration.

Link to CV for Teresa Ramsby

Directors

Yurie Hong (withdrawn)

Young Richard Kim

Associate Professor and Head, Department of Classics and Mediterranean Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago

https://clasmed.uic.edu/profiles/kim-young/

I am humbled and honored to stand for election to the SCS Board of Directors. The sum of my experiences over the course of my professional career has prepared me well to assume this significant responsibility and role in shared governance, and I would like to highlight a few that illustrate how I can contribute to work of the Board. First, I served as a department chair of a classics department at a small liberal arts college, which undertook a “prioritization” process that resulted in the elimination of our language major programs and the dismissal of a tenured colleague. I learned firsthand about the harsh realities of institutional priorities and the metrics used to justify them and their dissonance with idealistic missional and educational goals. Our field is in a very precarious position in higher education, and the SCS must be proactive in revitalizing and securing it.

Second, in my time as the director of educational programs at the Onassis Foundation USA, I designed and implemented a program that prioritized public outreach and engagement, the intersection of the arts and humanities, and social justice. We can rejuvenate our field by doing much more of the same. I was especially proud to work with the SCS and the Aquila Theatre to co-produce a staged reading of Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey, performed by Aquila’s Warrior Chorus, comprised of military veterans. This free event, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, exemplified the kind of work that engages the public, reaches new audiences, and demonstrates the potential of classics to have broader societal impact.

Third, I currently work in a public university that is a designated minority-serving institution, and I have the privilege of teaching Mediterranean antiquity to a diverse body of students. The strength of classics programs in public universities is a barometer for the long-term viability of our field, and the more we can educate and inspire students who might not otherwise study the ancient world, the greater our chances not only to survive but even thrive. Fourth, I have served on the governing boards of the North American Patristics Society and the Byzantine Studies Association of North America. Shared governance, transparency, and collaboration are essential to cultivating and executing a collective vision.

I am especially interested in building on the established Classics Advisory Service of the SCS. As we have witnessed and lamented as a community, closures of departments and programs are becoming all too frequent. If we have reached a point at which we are signing petitions and writing letters to administrators, I fear it is already too late. I believe it is necessary for the SCS to develop a more intentional and preemptive strategy, with stress tests and tailored solutions, recognizing that every institution is unique and will require different approaches. Local, public engagement and intersection with the arts and social justice are also essential to transforming our field, and I hope to serve the SCS to realize these goals.

Nandini Pandey

Associate Professor of Classics, University of Wisconsin-Madison (until December 2021), Johns Hopkins University (from January 2022)

This year, the SCS and its members have faced COVID and related shifts in the ways we work and teach, admissions and hiring freezes, program closures, an overdue reckoning with racism and other injustices in our field, and the predictable backlash. But, as I argued at this year’s annual meeting, these intersecting crises also present opportunities to rethink who we are, what we’re doing, and where we’re going as a discipline. I would love to help lead these efforts as a member of the SCS Board of Directors.

For most of my career, I’ve felt like an outsider. I’m a first-generation Indian-American who stumbled into Latin as an undergraduate. As I went on to study in the UK and US (Ph.D Berkeley 2011) and then to teach at small liberal arts colleges and a large public university, I’ve faced skepticism that someone “like me” could have anything worthwhile to say about classics. Now that I’m more established, I hope to leverage what resources I have – including, if elected, a position on the Board – to ease future scholars’ paths and promote a field that is more inclusive, relevant, and responsive to all its practitioners.

These priorities animate my teaching, mentorship, and research. They’ve inspired my turn toward public scholarship, from my column for Eidolon to my current book project on Roman diversity. They’ve also guided my service and leadership roles for the SCS (Pearson Fellowship committee member and chair), CAMWS (Nominating Committee), the Women’s Classical Caucus (Steering Committee), the Multiculturalism, Race & Ethnicity in Classics Consortium (Board of Directors), the Asian and Asian American Classical Caucus (Board of Directors), and other institutions and initiatives detailed on my CV. Recently, for instance, I assisted Suzanne Lye in initiating the SCS/WCC COVID-19 Relief microgrant fund supporting graduate students and contingent faculty, and Kris Seaman in setting up the SCS Erich Gruen Prize for graduate papers on ancient multiculturalism.

To all my roles, I bring a collaborative approach to problem-solving and an ability to think creatively within institutional parameters. I am especially excited about our digital era’s potential to empower people outside traditional centers of money and prestige and to build communities across disciplinary, institutional, and national boundaries. I am inspired by the initiative, sense of justice, and willingness to help others I see among my fellow scholars. As Director, I hope to connect people with possibilities, to listen to your ideas and brainstorm how to make them realities.

If elected, I will work to advance priorities developed in conversation with a broad swath of SCS members at various career stages, including members of historically underrepresented groups. (I very much welcome your continuing feedback and I plan to do a lot of listening over the coming years.) These priorities include:

  • Reducing barriers for entry into “classics” and related subjects, e.g., for first-generation college students and those with little prior language experience
  • Expanding our field’s geographical/temporal/methodological range and the types of scholarship and authority it validates
  • Connecting people who study global antiquities from a variety of disciplinary homes and perspectives, and learning from other fields that face similar challenges
  • Promoting anti-racist pedagogy and sponsoring improved resources, textbooks, and teacher training to support it
  • Improving curricular and program design to prepare students for the economic landscapes they’ll encounter after graduation
  • Building community among high school and college teachers, “applied” classicists, and the many among us who have found professional fulfillment beyond academia
  • Improving mentorship and professional development opportunities for younger scholars, e.g., through team advising as modelled by the AAACC; online seminars on subjects like publishing your first book and unpacking grad school’s ‘hidden curricula’; and opportunities to share work with wider support networks (as in a pilot program for underrepresented scholars being developed by Joel Christensen)
  • Rethinking hiring, tenure, and promotion criteria to better respond to current realities (e.g., rewarding public-facing scholarship, offsetting bias in teaching evaluations, and compensating the extra labor that often falls to women, minorities of all kinds, and caregivers)
  • Better supporting members of our community who experience financial precarity or identity-based harassment, shoulder the labor of diversity, or face abusive or hostile work environments

I recognize that some of these goals may seem optimistic amidst current conversations about “burning down the house.” But before we light a match, we owe it to the many individuals making their way to our door, often for the first time in history, to make that house bigger, more welcoming, and better prepared to meet the future.

Online CV: https://wisc.academia.edu/NandiniPandey/CurriculumVitae

Bronwen Wickkiser

Professor of Classics, Wabash College

I am committed to making Classics more inclusive, to taking Classics beyond the ivory tower, and to finding better ways to support Classics programs that are in danger of being cut.

I have chaired the Classics Department at Wabash College for the past four years, including through a department review and job searches. I’ve served on multiple committees for SCS, CAMWS, and ASCSA, and have mentored graduate students and junior faculty via WCC as well as at my institution. Wabash is a college with an all-male student body, which is not an obvious audience for Classics, yet Wabash Classics enrolls high numbers of students, including students of color. This happens through a lot of dedicated and creative work not only in the classroom but also on institutional committees (such as Admissions and Financial Aid, and Faculty Development, which I have chaired) and in front of administrators and donors, to recruit and retain both students and faculty.

My trajectory in academia has given me a range of experience that is useful in this moment of change and insecurity for the discipline of Classics: I have held tenure-stream positions at two liberal arts colleges and a research university, and I have faced a major disruption in my career when I was denied tenure unexpectedly. There will be more such disruptions in career paths as institutions rethink their investments and departments shrink. I bring to the Board a broad perspective and a commitment to finding new ways to support faculty and faculty-to-be, especially minority faculty, in increasingly challenging times. I believe that the future of Classics lies not in elite institutions but at public and private institutions with smaller endowments, where Classics programs have reinvented their curricula in innovative ways in the face of budget cuts and recruitment pressures. Classics can flourish, but we have work to do in making our discipline more clearly relevant, more inclusive, and more intentional about reaching beyond the academy.

Online faculty profile with link to curriculum vitae

Craig Williams

Professor of Classics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Ongoing debates about how we define and approach the object of our study and our discipline itself; conversations on racism, social justice, and decolonization; a growing interest in colonialism and indigeneity in the ancient Mediterranean world: differences of perspective and opinion will continue, but here on North American soil these conversations must take account of the ancient cultures indigenous to this continent and the millions of people who identify with them today, as well as of the role that Greco-Roman antiquity has historically played in colonizing processes. Educating ourselves is not only crucial for nurturing an environment respectful of Native students and scholars – while there are significant variations in awareness across the continent, more than once I have heard students speak of Native American peoples and cultures in the past tense – but can enrich our understanding of that fascinating, multifaceted antiquity on the other side of the Atlantic that we study and teach. I am grateful to have learned much from my personal and familial histories (I am of both European and Native descent) and from my research on generations of indigenous North American authors who have written of Greco-Roman antiquity; but, like all of us, I have more to learn. This perspective is one thing I would bring to the Board of Directors if elected. Another is a commitment to the growing consensus that we need to continue to find ways to respond to the diversity of career paths that our undergraduate and graduate students are taking, both in and out of academic institutions, along with a commitment to continuing our discussions of the functions, locations, and timing of the AIA/SCS annual meetings.

I have taught at two very different public universities (for many years in New York City in the largest urban university system in the U.S., and more recently at a large land-grant research university in the Midwest), and my service and administrative experience has included serving as chair of my department for seven years and one year as interim chair of another department, three years as my department’s Director of Graduate Studies, now as chair of its Diversity and Inclusion Committee, and as member of campus-wide Master Planning and Promotion and Tenure committees. Within the SCS, I am currently a member of the Publications and Research Committee, have previously served on its committees on the Status of Women and Minority Groups and on Diversity in the Profession, and was a member of the founding Steering Committee of the Mountaintop Coalition.

Link to CV: https://classics.illinois.edu/sites/default/files/cv/Williams%20CV%20May%202021.pdf

Nominating Committee

Ronnie Ancona

Professor of Classics, Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center

The job of the Nominating Committee is to find suitable candidates to stand for election for elected leadership roles in SCS. Casting a net as widely as possible is essential for the health and growth of SCS as we continue to make efforts to expand diversity in the organization’s leadership. Those who lead the organization will help to continue to define and redefine what SCS wants to be. My most recent relevant experience for the Nominating Committee is the work I have done as SCS Membership Committee Chair to reshape the SCS State Legates into a group increasingly representative of the profession and with specific terms. The same people cannot be expected to serve for too long – it creates burnout – nor should they be the “same” people. I looked to enhance the diversity of the Legates through more inclusion of BIPOC classicists, those teaching at the secondary level, alt-ac members, contingent faculty members, among others. Not everyone asked is willing – and that is fine – so it takes time to fill such positions, but looking beyond asking our friends, or those we went to grad school with, or those we publish with etc., is essential. I would bring the same priorities and effort to trying to find the best candidates to stand for elective office. My own career has been varied – I have taught middle school through PhD students – and have taught in the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, and in New York City, at both private and public institutions, large and small. I have valued all those professional classics experiences and I think they have given me a wide view of the profession. I have served in both elected and appointed SCS positions and thus can speak from personal experience to potential candidates about the challenges and rewards of such work. My SCS service includes: Vice President for Education (2010-14); Women’s Classical Caucus, Steering Committee (1993-97), Co-Chair (1994), Elections Officer (1997-2000); Committee on the Status of Women and of Minority Groups (1983-87); Coffin Fellowship Committee (2016-19), Chair (2018-19); Education Committee (2002-06); Membership Committee (2016-22), Chair, (2020-22). I also served on the joint SCS-ACL Task Force (2008-09) that developed the Standards for Latin Teacher Preparation (2010).

I hope to contribute hard work and a commitment to identifying and encouraging the widest range of potential candidates for SCS leadership. Although the Nominating Committee is specifically tasked with finding those willing to stand for elected office, unsuccessful candidate names are forwarded to those considering people for appointed positions. Thus, the Committee helps to identify a continuing pipeline of members eager to serve in a variety of contexts. If elected, I would look forward to helping in this process.

CV

Pramit Chaudhuri

Associate Professor of Classics, The University of Texas at Austin

As someone who has declined to stand for SCS office before, I am familiar with at least some of the challenges facing the Nominating Committee. Although these are difficult to overcome, especially with the additional burdens that often fall on members of minoritized groups, the basic task of the Nominating Committee is fairly stable: produce a slate of candidates representing a healthy cross-section of the field in terms of personnel and professional activity. To that end my relevant qualifications are of two kinds: first, experience working for institutions of different types (public/private, geographical location, student body); second, and perhaps more important, experience working in growth areas of Classics that engage other fields, in particular early modern studies and the digital humanities. In 2015, together with Dr Ariane Schwartz, I co-founded the Society for Early Modern Classical Reception, an affiliate group of the SCS that has now organised over five years of panels at the SCS and Renaissance Society of America. In 2014, together with a computational biologist, Dr Joseph Dexter, I co-founded the Quantitative Criticism Lab, a cross-disciplinary and multi-institutional research group specializing in mixed-methods studies of literature and language. Both initiatives have introduced me to a wide range of people working within or adjacent to Classics, who might expand the Nominating Committee’s pool of candidates. More generally, I hope to shape the slate by giving attention to nominees who bring new perspectives to our field.

Besides the issue of widening the pool of candidates, the main challenge for the Nominating Committee is securing acceptances from nominees. If elected, I hope to work with my colleagues to clarify the experience and time commitment appropriate for various offices and, therefore, their suitability for people at different stages of their careers or in different positions. Furthermore, since the consensus aim is to diversify the slate of nominees (as any perusal of past candidate statements will attest), I hope to identify ways of making the positions seem more feasible and productive for people understandably wary of volunteering time when faced with so many other demands.

https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/classics/faculty/pc8956

Joel Christensen

PhD NYU 2001, Senior Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs, Chair and Professor of Classical Studies, Brandeis University

Statement

The nominating committee offers an important opportunity to influence leadership of the SCS and ensure that is both more diverse and inclusive and that also acts in the best interest of our discipline’s futures. In particular, it is important that our professional organization’s leadership reflect the very different institutions and experiences our members inhabit, from public secondary schools to selective PhD programs. As a member of the nominating committee, it will be my goal to advocate for candidates from every kind of school and background, especially from public institutions, smaller liberal arts schools, and those representing the experience and interests off the tenure-track.

Experience and Qualifications

I have been an active member of the SCS and CAMWS for almost two decades and have collaborated with colleagues nationally and internationally. As a former high school Latin teacher, I have long emphasized partnering with our colleagues at the secondary level. My experience as a faculty member at public (UTSA) and private (Brandeis) instututions has helped me understand the different pedagogical and professional challenges SCS members face due to geography and institution. In addition, my recent experience as a Department Chair, Chair of the Faculty Senate, and as a new administrator for faculty affairs enriches my perspective on the challenges facing working classicists from multiple perspectives.

Link to CV: https://brandeis.academia.edu/JoelChristensen/CurriculumVitae

Akira Yatsuhashi (withdrawn)

Program Committee

Rosa Andújar

Deputy Director of Liberal Arts and Lecturer (i.e., Assistant Prof.) in Liberal Arts, King’s College London

A New Yorker based in the United Kingdom since mid-2011, I have been regularly attending SCS meetings since 2009 (though with a few breaks during the early stages of parenthood). My SCS experience includes the Communications Committee (2021), the Committee on Public Information and Media Relations (2016-2019), and the now defunct Committee on Classical Tradition and Reception (2016-2017). I also served as the Women’s Classical Committee UK liaison to the Women’s Classical Caucus during my tenure as Steering Committee member of the WCC UK (2015-2019). In 2019, I was elected to the Council of the (UK-based) Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies (a three-year term).

More directly relevant to the SCS Program Committee are the wide range of editorial and advisory roles which I have held. I have refereed more than twenty-five articles, book manuscripts, and proposals for various international journals and academic presses on a variety of topics related to my two main areas of research expertise, Ancient Greek Drama and Classical Reception Studies. I have also assessed postdoctoral fellowship applications for Oxford University and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). Since June 2020 I am Associate Editor for Greek Literature at the American Journal of Philology. Additionally, I sit on the editorial board of two Brazilian Classics journals, Nuntius Antiquus and PhaoS: Revista de Estudos Clássicos, as well as on the Advisory Board for the new Global Antiquities journal. With Justine McConnell, I am co-editor of the new Classics and the Postcolonial book series for Routledge, and serve on the Advisory Board for the Oxford Classical Reception Commentaries which are about to be launched at Oxford University Press. Finally, I am a member of the Advisory Board for the recently established scholarly society Hesperides: Classics in the Luso-Hispanic World. In these multiple roles, I have not only acquired a broad and deep sense of current concerns and trends in Classics, Classical Reception, and interdisciplinary approaches to Greco-Roman antiquity, but have also worked to ensure a more global and vibrant vision for our field.

I am deeply committed to diversity and inclusivity. As a member of the SCS Program Committee, I would endeavor to maintain the high quality of panels and events, while also continuing the necessary work of expanding access to our field. Part of this work, in my view, requires the addition of more sessions in an online and/or hybrid format, and ensuring that all panels and round tables have an inclusive cast of participants and perspectives. I am especially interested in facilitating more events which would demystify key aspects of the profession for graduate students and early career scholars while also tackling the increasing challenges of studying and teaching the Humanities in the 21st century.

Link to CV: https://www.rosaandujar.com/cv.html

Denise Demetriou

(Associate Professor of History, University of California – San Diego)

My goals, if elected to the Program Committee, are to promote inclusivity and diversity among those presenting at the annual conference and to broaden the range of what “Classical Studies” means. I am committed to ensuring representation from diverse participants on panels, ranging from junior to more senior colleagues, all genders, races, and ethnicities, and various professional statuses. In this way, the program would provide a platform for novel approaches, different perspectives, and innovative research that would include the study of the Greeks and Romans, as well as other Mediterranean populations and widen the horizons of our field. I am especially invested in trying to redefine our discipline, often perceived as being too traditional, elitist, and out of touch with multicultural societies. To this end, I would especially encourage the inclusion of papers or panels on curricular and pedagogical topics, papers from colleagues who teach and research Classics across the globe, as well as papers on current issues both within Classical Studies and in the public arena. Some of the groundwork for these changes should happen at the level of the Program Committee, especially in its selection of rigorous and creative papers, panels, poster sessions, and other formats for presenting ideas.

I have a strong record of service both at my institution and within professional societies. I have served on and chaired the SCS’s Committee on Ancient History, which annually proposed a panel as part of the Annual Meeting’s program on issues related to the teaching of ancient history at all educational levels. I also held the position of Secretary-Treasurer for the Association of Ancient Historians from 2015-2018, during which time the Association managed to increase diversity among its members and developed a mentorship program for junior faculty, in which I participate as a mentor. From 2016 to 2020, I directed the Center for Hellenic Studies at UC San Diego. During the four years of my directorship, we built partnerships with universities in China, Italy, Israel, and Greece and enhanced undergraduate students’ experiences through engagement in the Center’s research projects. I was also largely responsible for our programming, ranging from traditional talks to experimental film screenings and from pedagogy lectures to showcasing undergraduate research projects. This programing created a thriving intellectual environment for faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and the wider community of San Diego and beyond.

I hope to bring my commitment to inclusion and diversity and my experience in effective programming to the SCS and the Program Committee.

CV

Goodwin Committee

Rhiannon Ash

(Professor of Roman Historiography, Merton College, Oxford University)

What would I bring to the Goodwin committee? I hope that would be open-mindedness, good judgement, high standards, and an international perspective. My own research lies on the cusp between Latin literature and Roman history and has led me in different ways to venture into both areas (enabling me to bring some breadth to the committee). As well as having published two ‘Green and Yellow’ commentaries on books of Tacitus, I have also written a children’s book (Mystery History of the Roman Colosseum) and co-authored handbooks for students and those outside the professional field of Classics (including Fifty Key Classical Authors). Over my career, alongside my main job, I have served in positions in the field where judgment, fairness, and hard work are crucial to the role (e.g. formerly as editor of Classical Quarterly and currently as editor of Histos). I have also served on advisory boards to publishers such as Duckworth and Bristol Classical Press. Although I currently teach in Britain, I have been lucky enough to have had experience of different academic systems in the USA (both a small liberal arts college and an Ivy League institution with a large graduate programme), as well as in the UK, Canada, and mainland Europe.

I value clear and competent writing, and the ability to communicate accurately and elegantly. I also appreciate the exciting places where curiosity and a sense of adventure can take writers and readers. I understand the dedication and determination necessary to produce a really good book. I would welcome the chance as a member of the Goodwin Committee to celebrate the achievements of colleagues at different stages of their careers. Yet I am under no illusions about the difficulty of the decisions to be taken. Members of the Goodwin Committee must choose up to three publications of outstanding merit for the award of this prestigious prize. This is a big responsibility and a daunting task, but also an exciting opportunity. While there will certainly be many more excellent books out there than prizes available, this is still a chance to celebrate the breadth and diversity of our extraordinary field. Awarding Goodwin prizes is a way to acknowledge (at least some of) the cutting-edge work being carried out by talented people across the wide range of disciplines which constitute the vibrant and constantly changing field of Classics.

FURTHER INFORMATION:

Classics Faculty, Oxford University: Professor Rhiannon Ash | Faculty of Classics (ox.ac.uk)

Merton College, Oxford University: Professor Rhiannon Ash | Merton College, Oxford

Constanze Guthenke

Professor of Greek Literature, Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford

I am delighted to be nominated to serve on the Goodwin Award Committee of the SCS. I bring to the task tolerance and experience in different academic cultures, across disciplinary and national boundaries. I have been the main editor of the Classical Receptions Journal, a journal with a cross-disciplinary outlook and a reputation for mentoring early career scholars, as well as series editor, most recently of Greek Culture in the Roman World (Cambridge). I like to think I am not only a keen and wide-ranging but also an attentive and sympathetic reader, who equally appreciates intellectual ambition and integrity of detail. Of the many duties the academic job brings, I have most enjoyed the responsibilities — and joint venture — of sitting on selection committees for fellowships and awards, including reading others’ work, and learning from them.

I hope to bring to the Goodwin Award Committee intellectual curiosity and perspective to do justice to the wide range of materials, methods, and styles that have characterised the discipline of Classics and continues to do so, in a positive and critical way, at a time of heightened self-consciousness.

website: https://www.ccc.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-constanze-guthenke

Yopie Prins

(Irene Butter Collegiate Professor of English and Comparative Literature and faculty affiliate in Classical Studies, University of Michigan)

Experience

Drawing on my background in comparative literature and classical reception studies, I would be pleased and honored to participate in the Goodwin Award Committee. I have served in the past on the APA Committee on the Classical Tradition (2009-2012) and the MLA Discussion Group on Classical and Modern Literatures (2010-14), and I have experience judging for the Winkler Memorial Prize in Classical Studies, the MLA First Book Prize, and prizes awarded by the American Comparative Literature Association (the Rene Wellek Best Book Prize, the Harry Levin First Book Prize , and the Bernheimer Dissertation Prize). At the University of Michigan I am a founding member of “Contexts for Classics,” an interdepartmental consortium dedicated to interdisciplinary exploration of classical traditions in diverse cultural, critical, and creative contexts.

Contributions

In my teaching and my research, I enjoy reading broadly across disciplines, theoretical frameworks and historical periods (including gender studies, critical translation studies, comparative poetics and lyric theory, nineteenth-century poetry and prosody, music and performance studies). As a member of the Goodwin Award Committee, I would hope to contribute a broadly interdisciplinary perspective on new work that thinks critically and creatively about the diversification of classical studies, including current debates about its multiple histories and possible futures.

Links to CV

yopieprins.com

https://umich.academia.edu/YopiePrins 

Phiroze Vasunia

Professor of Greek, University College London

I was very glad to be asked, by the Nominating Committee, to put my name forward for the Goodwin Award Committee. Service on the Goodwin committee would give me the chance to read excellent scholarly books and discuss them with distinguished colleagues. Like many of my colleagues, I would bring some background that would be useful to the deliberations of the committee. I’ve been the general editor of a book series, Ancients & Moderns (published by Bloomsbury), and in that capacity I’ve read the books we’ve published and many other manuscripts: I have some experience in reviewing and evaluating books from an editor’s perspective. I frequently read manuscripts for presses, journals, and colleagues, and I’ve written a couple of monographs, edited many volumes, and contributed a translation to Penguin Classics.

It’s wonderful that for some years now the committee has been able to select three books (rather than just one) for the award. I’m tempted to say that I know a good book when I read one . . . I don’t hold a brief for any particular kind of book. The world of scholarship has no passports, and we should celebrate the best in humanistic learning wherever it comes from. I would be eager to learn about exciting new work in ancient studies and to promote first-rate scholarship across a wide range of areas.

Link to profile: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/classics/people/academic-staff/phiroze-vasunia

Committee on Professional Ethics

Deborah Beck

Associate Professor of Classics

Ethics and ethical reasoning are central to both my teaching and my service at UT. Since 2012, I have taught a section of Introduction to Mythology that satisfies a university distributional requirement in Ethics. According to annual exit surveys of my students, this class is one of the most successful Ethics courses at UT. The kind of ethics that I teach focuses on our responsibilities to others in connection with our various “roles,” such as teacher, colleague, student, mentor, friend, etc., and figuring out how best to respond when those roles inevitably come into conflict. As I see it, the goal of ethical reasoning is not to eliminate such conflicts and dilemmas – as long as people interact with other people, ethical dilemmas will arise – but to create a shared understanding of how to make sound ethical choices. In addition to my Ethics teaching, I have supervised the graduate instructors at UT since 2010, primarily those teaching their own section of Latin or Classical Civilization courses but also TAs working for a specific professor. For new teachers, ethical issues are often the most difficult and stressful part of their work, and so my mentoring often involves guidance and facilitation related to ethical challenges in the classroom.

I am eager to serve on the Professional Ethics committee in part because I would like to use my professional experience to craft responses to the major ethical failures that are referred to this committee. But ethics is not simply a matter of discrete problems for which a particular committee needs to take responsibility. My years of experience teaching and mentoring around Ethics has shown me that one of the most important ways to create an ethically engaged and aware community is to make ethics an ongoing topic of routine conversations. As a member of the Professional Ethics committee, I would look for ways to foster regular chats among members of our field about the day-to-day ethical challenges we encounter in our work as Classicists, and how those ethical challenges affect our lives. This might take the form of a brief item in the monthly SCS newsletter, or posts about ethics-related issues to the SCS blog. Regular conversations about ethics help us to be more self-aware about our routine ethical choices, and they also prepare us to respond effectively when major ethical challenges arise.

Web page with link to CV

Megan Drinkwater

(Professor and Chair of Classics, Agnes Scott College)

The perspectives I will bring to the Professional Ethics Committee are multiple and complementary, and have prepared me well to support the Professional Matters Division’s goal of “the promotion of equity in all aspects of the profession.” As a member of the committee I will be able to see the various grievances that may arise from a range of viewpoints and thus complement the work of the committee as a whole. I am now in my fifteenth year at a small liberal arts college in the Southeast that traditionally serves women; two-thirds of our students identify as people of color and one third are first-generation college students. I began my teaching and my service to the SCS, then the APA (as a graduate student liaison to the Women’s Classical Caucus), at a large private, well-funded, university in the Southeast where I taught first as a graduate student and then as contract faculty. My next position as a Visiting Assistant Professor at a similarly well-funded small liberal arts college in the South permitted me to consider the role, responsibilities, and treatment of contract faculty. The financial fortunes of my current institution have little in common with my previous employers’. Given this trajectory, I am well versed in the range of experiences educators in Greek, Roman, and Ancient Mediterranean Studies have, both as tenure-track and contingent faculty, in a part of the US that is traditionally not foregrounded in the landscape of higher education, or, often, of the SCS. My particular service at a smaller, vulnerable baccalaureate institution makes me especially sensitive to the critical need in our discipline to respond to the changing nature of higher education and its constituents.

This focus positions me especially well to serve the Professional Ethics Committee, as it is essential for members of the committee to consider the fragile position of our discipline as higher education seeks to align itself ever more with STEM fields at the cost of those that focus on humanistic inquiry. A key component to the survival of the field is our adherence to the highest standards of conduct in all aspects of our work. Another is to ensure that members of our profession are provided with equitable workplaces and retention procedures that help prevent them from becoming potential victims of curricular realignment processes. My service at my home institution on elected committees that govern the curriculum and our processes of retention, tenure, and promotion may provide important background to the work of the Professional Ethics Committee, as will my current position as President of our Faculty Executive Committee (faculty senate), with its significant interaction with college administration. It would be an honor to serve in this capacity, and to help ensure the future of our discipline through the adherence to the highest professional standards.

CV

Ian Fielding

Associate Professor of Classical Studies, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

The unprecedented pressures created by the COVID-19 pandemic have made the work of the Committee on Professional Ethics more important than ever. The developments of the last year and a half—including the intensification of austerity and casualization, restrictions on research activity, and the distinct hazards and challenges of both remote and in-person teaching—have significantly raised the stakes of the conflicts that this committee is charged to resolve. Academic workers of all kinds have faced serious difficulties during this time, but it is important to recognize that graduate students, contingent faculty, the untenured, and academics outside universities have been left even more exposed to exploitation. As someone who has just completed the tenure review process after ten years as a temporary lecturer, postdoctoral researcher, and assistant professor, I believe it is incumbent on tenured faculty to advocate for the protection of colleagues and students whose positions are more precarious. My nomination to stand for election to this committee represents an opportunity to work towards fairer and more secure workplaces for all members of our profession.

In my service to the University of Michigan over the last five years, I have focused on offsetting the additional burdens that often falls on members of minoritized groups to bring about changes that will make their own working conditions more supportive. As a member of my department’s Committee for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, which I chaired in my second year on the faculty, I sought to amplify the concerns of students and lecturers in discussions with senior colleagues. I am currently serving as Director of our Bridge MA in Classical Studies, which aims to open up pathways for students from backgrounds that are underrepresented in our field to advance to doctoral programs. As a recent immigrant to the US, engaging in these issues has required me to learn about the specific ways in which certain people are marginalized in our communities and institutions. I have also made efforts to visit high schools in Michigan to hear from teachers, advisors, and students themselves about barriers to higher education. If I am elected to the Committee on Professional Ethics, I will continue to look beyond my own horizons to sharpen my understanding of how I can be an effective comrade to those whose struggles will be more difficult over the next four years.

Faculty profile with CV

James Rives

Kenan Eminent Professor of Classics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Experience and Qualifications

I have a variety of experience relevant to the work of the Committee on Professional Ethics. As chair of my department at UNC-CH for eight years (2012-20), I was responsible for addressing a range of issues of the sort that come before this committee, and worked closely with relevant university policies and offices, including the Ombuds Office, the Office of Equal Opportunity and Compliance, and Human Resources. I have extensive experience with issues of appointment, promotion, and tenure in particular. In addition to serving on numerous search committees and review committees at my home institutions and as an external referee for promotion and tenure cases at other institutions, I was a member of the Arts and Sciences Advisory Committee for three years (2010-2013), which advises the Dean on all tenure and promotion cases in the College. I also served on the university-wide Faculty Hearings Committee for five years (2014-19, the last two as committee chair), which hears appeals of administrative decisions not to reappoint or promote tenure-stream faculty members or to dismiss tenured faculty members. In terms of research and publication, I have frequently refereed book proposals, book manuscripts, and article submissions for a range of presses and journals. I also have experience of the publication process from the inside, having served on the editorial committee of Phoenix for seven years, three as Associate Editor (1999-2002) and four as Book Review Editor (2002-2006), and as co-editor of two different monograph series, one at UNC Press (2011-2017) and another at Edinburgh University Press (beginning 2020). I thus have dealt with many aspects of our profession from a range of angles, and have extensive experience working with sensitive and confidential issues.

Contribution

Issues of professional ethics are always emotionally charged and keenly felt, and understandably so: they touch the core not only of our professional but also our personal identity. This has always been the case, and is truer now than ever, when issues of equity and inclusion in matters of race, gender, and sexuality are rightly at the forefront of national and international discourse. The Committee on Professional Ethics lacks both the resources and the legal standing to conduct independent investigations and issue binding resolutions for many of the issues that may arise for members of the SCS. What it can do, however, is offer advice and guidance on specific concerns, suggest potential resolutions to grievances, and propose general standards for professional conduct. If elected, I would work to do all these things to the best of my ability, drawing on the full range of my professional experience and my deep concern for equity.

Link to CV: https://classics.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/577/2020/09/Rives_CV_September2020.pdf