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Solmsen Fellowships
The Institute for Research in the Humanities of the University of Wisconsin-Madison will offer five Solmsen Fellowships for 2019-2020 to be awarded to scholars from outside UW-Madison. Through a generous bequest from Friedrich and Lieselotte Solmsen, the Solmsen Fellowships sponsor scholars working in the humanities on European history, literature, philosophy, politics, religion, art and culture in the classical, medieval, and/or early modern periods before 1700. Projects on the relationship of pre-1700 Europe to other parts of the world are also welcome. The Solmsen Fellowship does not typically support editions or translations.
Solmsen Fellows are expected to be in residence throughout the academic year (except for short research trips, lectures, conferences, etc.) and may extend their residency through the following summer on a non-stipendary basis. However, the fellowship may not be deferred for any reason. The award provides a stipend of $55,000, office space, support services, and access to all university facilities.
The current boom of works and media about the Ancient World aimed at a general audience is a product of some converging circumstances: the rethinking of meaning and value of the Classics among scholars, in need of justifying our very own existence in contemporary academia; a market-driven demand for either recalling Western tradition and exempla from the ancients – on the conservative side, or questioning the multiple facets of elite privilege – on a progressive approach; and ultimately as a consequence of the “explosion of information” in the hyper-connected XXI century. In this last regard, narratives from non-scholars ranging from fairly accurate Wikipedia articles to “fake news” tweets are now competing with classicists for space and authority.
SCS Digital Project Reviews
Since October 2016, the SCS Communications Committee has been responsible for the editing and publication of a number of Digital Project Reviews on the front page of the SCS website. These have appeared alongside SCS blog postings. As of October 1, 2018, the editing and review of Digital Project Reviews will be handled by a special editorial board, working under the aegis of the Publications and Research division of SCS. This will enable the Communications Committee to focus on blog posts of broad interest, while the new editorial board will be responsible for reviews of digital projects, tools, and resources in the field of Classics. Should you wish to submit a Digital Project Review or suggest a project to be reviewed, please see the SCS guidelines here. Digital Project Reviews will continue to be published on the front page of the SCS website.
The members of the Digital Project Reviews Editorial Board are:
- Scott Arcenas
- Chris Francese (chair)
- Ivy Livingston
- Matthew Loar
- Donald Mastronarde (ex officio)
SEX, GENDER, AND SCIENCE IN ANCIENT GREECE
Sex and gender are problematic concepts in contemporary scholarship, and we should expect them to be even more so when speaking of ancient Greece. Even the concept of science is problematic, though less so than sex and gender. ‘Sex’, used in the biological sense, is derived from French and Latin and does not appear before the 14th century CE. ‘Gender’ is also derived from French and appears first in the 14th century CE in the grammatical sense. ‘Science’ is, of course, a transliteration of a Latin expression, and when we speak of ancient science we refer to an enterprise that differs markedly from our contemporary practices.
The following members were elected in the ballot held this Summer. They take office in January 2019, except for the two new members of the Nominating Committee who take office immediately. Thank you to all SCS members who agreed to stand for election this year.
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President-Elect |
Sheila Murnaghan |
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Junior Financial Trustee |
Laura McClure |
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Vice President for Program |
Cynthia Damon |
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Board of Directors |
Anthony Corbeil Robin Mitchel-Boysak |
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Goodwin Award Committee |
David Konstan Jim Porter |
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Nominating Committee |
Laurel Fulkerson Celia Schultz |
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Program Committee |
Johanna Hanink |
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Committee on Professional Ethics |
Kathleen Coleman |
Papyri.info is a resource for the study of documentary papyri with two parts. The first, the Papyrological Navigator (PN), whose development began in 2006, aims to integrate and allow simultaneous querying of five existing papyrological databases. The focus thus far is on Greek and Latin texts, with selective inclusion of Coptic. A later development, the Papyrological Editor (PE), launched in 2010, offers the facility for users to contribute directly, in the form of corrections to entered data, new data entry, in particular new text editions, and even “born digital” editions of their own, all reviewed by an editorial board.
Mary Beard – “The Classical Body: The Naked and the Nude”
Largo di Porta San Pancrazio, Rome
The American Academy in Rome opens its 2018–19 season of programs with a lecture by Mary Beard, a renowned scholar of antiquity and professor of classics at Newnham College, University of Cambridge. Beard will explore the idea of the human body in classical sculpture: female and male, normative and conservative, subversive and transgressive. Her lecture will aim to pull apart the image of the body in classical sculpture as a dead weight on our imagination, and to follow the edgy awkwardness that the work of the Greeks and Romans bravely faced.
Beard is the 2018–19 Lucy Shoe Meritt Resident in Classical Studies and Archaeology at the American Academy in Rome. This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts & Humanities: The Body.
Lynne C. Lancaster just began her three-year appointment as the Andrew W. Mellon Professor-in-Charge of the Humanities at the American Academy in Rome. She is a Professor in the Department of Classics and World Religions at Ohio University. I recently interviewed Professor Lancaster to discuss her research and her goals for her time in Rome.
C: Can you briefly tell me about your own research, both past and current?
"Thresholds"
During the last century, liminality as a concept became a matter of interest to many fields: from Psychology to Anthropology, from Philosophy to Cultural and Literary Studies. Yet, the condition this word describes predates the term itself: one can, for instance, consider the classical binomial katabasis/ anabasis to fathom the historical roots of the reality the term encompasses.
As stated by Mircea Eliade, in The Sacred and the Profane, the liminal space is a paradoxical place that connects the space it severs: under the sign of ritual though, the liminal not only allows passage, but almost demands it. As far as etymology is concerned, the term derives from the Latin word limen, which shares the same root as the latin word limes: limit, margin, border. On the one hand, limen constitutes the threshold of a building or a room; on the other hand, its relation to the act of passage is clearly antithetical to that of the limes, whose role is to assure the impermeability between spaces. If the orthographic similarity hints at a common thread – a rock or a piece of wood that is placed crosswise in order to signal the end/beginning of a place – the minor spelling difference reveals deep functional and ontological differences.
MISSION
The Career Enhancement Fellowship Program seeks to increase the presence of minority junior faculty members and other faculty members committed to eradicating racial disparities in core fields in the arts and humanities. The Fellowship, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, supports the Mellon Foundation's mission to strengthen, promote, and, where necessary, defend the contributions of the humanities and the arts to human flourishing and to the well-being of diverse and democratic societies.
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
The Fellowship, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, provides each Fellow with a six-month or one-year sabbatical grant; a research, travel, or publication stipend; and participation in an annual conference/retreat. A total of 30 Fellowships are awarded each year.
