Outreach -- Fall 2012

Outreach Prize

I am delighted to report that five strong nominations for the 2012 SCS Outreach Prize have been received. This prize recognizes outstanding projects or events by an SCS member or members that make an aspect of classical antiquity available and attractive to an audience other than classics scholars or students in their courses.

Outreach Events at the SCS annual meeting in Seattle, Washington, January 3-6, 2013

The Outreach Division will sponsor five events at the meeting.

Two events are open to the public:

• With support from the Lambda Classical Caucus, Charles Rowan Beye will read from his new memoir My Husband and My Wives: a Gay Man’s Odyssey Thursday January 3 at 8 p.m.
• Euripides’ play Alcestis will be staged on Friday January 4 at 7 p.m.

Three Outreach committees will sponsor panels at the meeting:

• The Committee on Classical Tradition and Receptions offers a panel on Islamic and Arabic Receptions of Classical Literature on Friday January 4 from 8:30-11 a.m.
• The Committee on Ancient and Modern Performance has organized a panel on Bodies in Motion: Contemporary Approaches to Choral Performance in Greek Drama on Friday January 4 from 1:30 to 4.
• The Outreach Comittee panel on Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World will take place on Saturday January 5 from 1:30-4 p.m.

For more details, including the location of events, go to the SCS website and click on Annual Meeting. Members of the Outreach committees are eager to hear your comments and questions; they are listed in the SCS's list of Officers, Directors, and Committees.

Current Outreach Programs

Here are some of our Division’s current activities:

• Amphora®, a publication aimed at a broad audience. Ellen Bauerle and Wells Hansen, the new editors of the journal, have put together (with the help of the Editorial Board) the Summer 2012 issue, the first under their editorship, and it is splendid. The subjects, approaches, and styles are varied and exciting, likely to appeal to a wide audience—it includes traditional philological and historical studies, two accounts of teaching via web-based role-playing games, poetry, translations, descriptions of entertaining or enlightening summer beach reading, and book reviews; read it here. The editors are adeptly figuring out the balance between print and online publication; please be sure to read their comments on p. 23. Ellen (bauerle97@gmail.com) and Wells (wells.hansen@gmail.com) welcome comments on the journal and ideas for future articles.
• Speakers’ Bureau. The Division has put together a list of lively, enthusiastic scholars working in different areas of Classical Studies who are ready, willing, and able to speak to interested groups. Scholars and topics are listed here.
• Performance, Anyone? The Committee on Ancient and Modern Performance has created two rosters: a roster of classicists with backgrounds in musical performance and the history of music, the other a roster of classicists with backgrounds in theatrical performance and classical performance reception. The colleagues on these lists are willing to share their expertise with individuals working on or interested in music or performances involving Greek or Roman scripts, classical figures or themes.
• For Reference. A bibliography of books about classics -- including ancient history, literature, and other major subfields of classical studies — recommended for public libraries is available here. Prepared by The Forum for Classics, Libraries, and Scholarly Communication, an affiliated group of the SCS (web site: http://library.nyu.edu/fclsc/), the bibliography is an attempt to reach out to public librarians, especially to those with responsibilities for materials selection.

Other Events of Interest

New York University has set in motion a plan to establish a digital performance library of ancient Greek and Roman drama. Such a library, which will complement the work of European archives such as the Archive of Performance of Greek and Roman Drama at Oxford, will advance performance studies of this drama in North America. I am very pleased to be serving on the organizing committee, which held its first meeting on December 1 at NYU.

The Dionysiac. This listserv announces upcoming North American performances of ancient Mediterranean drama. If you are interested in receiving emails about such performances, please write to Hallie.Marshall@ubc.ca.

Outreach Activities at SCS Meeting 2014. The Committee on Classical Tradition and Reception has issued its Call for Papers for a panel on the topic of Classics and the Great War organized by David Scourfield; for details see the call for papers. CAMP is discussing possible panel topics and will soon issue a Call for Papers and a Call for Directors for the 2014 performance.

Outreach Division Mission Statement. I have been working on developing a definition of and discussion about the work and goals of our Division, and some progress has been made. I welcome all members’ suggestions and comments: mkgamel@ucsc.edu.

Respectfully submitted,