Follow SCS News for information about the SCS and all things classical.
Upon a recommendation by the Society for Classical Studies, FIEC has approved a statement on the format of abstracts and keywords for the submission of articles
FIEC STATEMENT
L’Année Philologique is the main database for publications in Classical studies. In the interest of all scholars, authors and researchers, it seems important to define some basic requirements that will make it easier for the local branches of L’Année Philologique to analyze the entries. The following is a recommendation made to all associations of Classical studies affiliated to FIEC. Associations are kindly asked to circulate this statement among their members. In view of the ever-growing number of articles and chapters in collective volumes processed for registration by L’Année Philologique, and in order to reduce the amount of work required of the various branches of L’Année Philologique, it is recommended that journal and volume editors regard it as a best practice of the efficient analysis of the data that each article or chapter be accompanied by a brief abstract and a list of keywords. To ensure the utility of abstracts and keywords for the efficient analysis of data for L’Année Philologique, please take note of the following guidelines:
The new Classics Everywhere initiative, launched by the SCS in 2019, supports projects that seek to engage communities all over the US and Canada with the worlds of Greek and Roman antiquity in new and meaningful ways. As part of this initiative the SCS has been funding a variety of projects ranging from children’s programs to teaching Latin in a prison. In this post we focus on two programs that bring the study of Greek and Roman antiquity to two traditionally underserved communities: incarcerated students in a correctional facility and the racially, ethnically, and economically diverse community in Winnipeg, Canada.
There is a pressing need to make Classics more open and inclusive, and to diversify the voices dominating the study of Greek and Roman antiquity. A growing number of classicists are rethinking the field's often unspoken assumptions, exploring the ways in which contemporary scholarship may be affirming or challenging existing social structures, and reaching out to more diverse audiences, to encourage new responses and perspectives.
Classical Studies in the 21st Century: More Relevant Than Ever
The AIA-SCS joint ad hoc committee on the future of classics and archaeology met earlier this year to discuss pressures common to both fields. The group agreed to create a document that can be used to remind college and university administrators of what we do and our relevance. The joint statement entitled “Classical Studies in the 21st Century: More Relevant Than Ever,” is below and also available as a PDF download. Department chairs and other departmental members are welcome to use it as talking points with decision-makers at your institutions, be they chairs, deans, provosts, chancellors and some other administrator, as a reminder of the continuing and important benefits of our fields. You may use the entire statement or customize it to meet the specific needs of your department and profile of your institution. We realize that there are many successful advocacy strategies, and we hope this brief statement will join them. If you have already successfully advocated to preserve or expand your department, let us know what worked.
FIEC resolution towards supporting the registration of Ancient Greek and Latin in the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage
(approved by the FIEC General Assembly of Delegates, London July 4th, 2019)
The International Federation of Associations of Classical Studies (FIEC) supports the registration of Ancient Greek and Latin in the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Those two languages have had a deep impact on the Mediterranean area (in a wide sense) over several millenia; this impact is still to be felt very strongly today, not only in that area, but also in the world at large.
Ancient Greek was the main language spoken and written in Archaic and Classical Greece, as well as in the whole Eastern Mediterranean from the Hellenistic period till the end of the Byzantine period. In contact with other languages (notably Semitic languages and Latin), it has gradually evolved without changing its basic structure, to become Modern Greek. Latin started in the Italic peninsula and, as Roman power extended over the centuries, has spread to most areas of present-day Europe, where it evolved to produce the Romance languages. Through the process of colonization, Latin has also spread to other parts of the world, notably the Americas.
ToposText is a set of tools that projects the geographic elements of ancient texts onto a mapping of the ancient world. Users can follow a classical reference from place-to-text, or from text-to-place. Zooming in on Thebes and clicking on “Cadmeia,” for example, takes us to 63 text entries, such as the Bios Ellados of Heracleides Criticus; clicking on Bios Ellados takes us to 36 map locations through 78 text references. The text is displayed in public-domain English translation (default) with a link to the original ancient Greek (in this case, at Bibliotheca Augustana). The places are located through a Google Map interface.
Sixth Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Heritage of Western Greece
with special emphasis on
ἀρετή aretē: virtue, excellence, goodness
and a pre-conference seminar on Gorgias of Leontini
plus a post-conference tour of Greek cities in Calabria
The cultural and intellectual legacy of Western Greece—the coastal areas of Southern Italy and Sicily settled by Hellenes in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE—is sometimes overlooked in academia. Yet evidence suggests that poets, playwrights, philosophers, and other maverick intellectuals found fertile ground here for the growth of their ideas and the harvesting of their work. The goal of the Fonte Aretusa organization is to revive the distinctive spirit of Western Greece by exploring it from a variety of disciplinary perspectives including art history, archaeology, classics, drama, epigraphy, history, literature, mythology, philosophy and religion.
Penn-Leiden Colloquium on Ancient Values XI: Valuing Labor in Greco-Roman Antiquity
Call for Papers
The Penn-Leiden Colloquia on Ancient Values were established as a biennial venue in which scholars could investigate the diverse aspects of Greek and Roman values. Each colloquium focuses on a single theme, which participants explore from various perspectives and disciplines. Since the first colloquium in Leiden (in 2000), a wide range of topics has been explored, including manliness, free speech, the spatial organization of value, badness, ‘others’, aesthetic value, the past, landscapes, competition and the night. All conferences (full list below) have resulted in edited volumes published by Brill Publishers.
The topic of the 11th colloquium, to be held in Leiden June 11-13, 2020, is:
Valuing Labor in Antiquity.
Classics is a field immersed in the digital age. This isn’t news for anyone who teaches undergraduate language courses and has seen their students pull out their smartphones to access any number of dictionary apps that can find the first principle part of the verb εὕρηκα faster than you can find the epsilon-section in your Middle Liddell. But the field of Classics has done more than simply provide quick and easy applications to digital databases.
