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Congratulations to all the newly elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The 252 new members include several who are classicists:
CLASS IV – Humanities and Arts
SECTION 1 – PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES
RELIGIOUS STUDIES
- Fritz Graf, The Ohio State University
- Teresa Morgan (IHM), University of Oxford
SECTION 3 – LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE STUDIES
- Ruth Scodel, University of Michigan
SECTION 5 – VISUAL ARTS
- Paul Zanker (IHM), German Archaeological Institute
CLASS V – Leadership, Policy, and Communications
SECTION 3 – EDUCATIONAL AND ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP
- Joy Connolly, American Council of Learned Societies
You can view the whole list of newly elected members here.
SCS congratulates the 2021-22 Rome Prize Winners in Ancient Studies, announced by the American Academy in Rome on April 23, 2021:
Sasha-Mae Eccleston
National Endowment for the Humanities/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Rome Prize
Kevin Ennis
Samuel H. Kress Foundation/Helen M. Woodruff-Archaeological Institute of America Rome Prize
Grace Funsten
Emeline Hill Richardson/Arthur Ross Rome Prize
John Izzo
Millicent Mercer Johnsen Rome Prize
Adriana Maria Vazquez
Andrew Heiskell/Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Rome Prize
You can view the full announcement and list of all Rome prize winners and Italian fellows here.
Image: "Roman Forum" by Benson Kua is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
The Ancient Worlds, Modern Communities initiative, launched by the SCS in 2019 as the Classics Everywhere initiative, supports projects that seek to engage broader publics — individuals, groups, and communities — in critical discussion of and creative expression related to the ancient Mediterranean, the global reception of Greek and Roman culture, and the history of teaching and scholarship in the field of classical studies. As part of this initiative, the SCS has funded 98 projects in 25 states and 10 countries, ranging from school programming to reading groups, prison programs, public talks and conferences, digital projects, and collaborations with artists in theater, opera, music, dance, and the visual arts.
April, 2021
Below is a list of the most recent NEH grantees and their Classically-themed projects. The NEH helps fund a number of SCS initiatives, and their support affects the field of Classics at a national and local level.
Grantees
- James Given (Yale Divinity School) - "The Letters of Ignatius of Antioch, between Forgery and Fiction"
- Maddalena Rumor (Case Western Reserve University) - "Dreckapotheke' in Ancient Mesopotamia and the Graeco-Roman World"
- Hallie Meredith (Washington State University) - "Fragmentary and Unfinished Art: Documenting Undocumented Late Roman Art and Process"
- Jennifer Bryan (Oberlin College) - "Chaucer's Ovidian Arts: Poetic Influence and Innovation at the Beginning of English Literature"
- Jacqueline Meier (University of North Florida) - "Animals of a Late Bronze Age Household at Mycenae, Greece"
- Peter Meineck (Aquila Theatre Company, Inc.) - "Warrior Chorus: American Democracy"
- Yelena Baraz (Society for Classical Studies) - "SCS/NEH Fellowship at the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae"
When I came back to the classroom in 2016, after an interlude career as a mental health counselor, I noticed systemic problems in the field of Classics that I had previously normalized. At the pre-collegiate level, Classics is not only elitist, but also exclusive in a way that has made it a racialized space. Mock slave auctions, for example, were held as fundraisers under the Junior Classical League brand as late as 2019 and still have not been formally banned. Instructional materials present slavery with the same rhetoric as Lost Cause white supremacists. At the JCL convention this year, the piece for the boys’ dramatic oration was a selection from Ars Amatoria, and the theme for the “couples costume” contest regularly involved rapist-victim dyads.
The Classics Program of Hunter College (CUNY) announces the rescheduled conference on Theognis and the Theognidea. The conference will now be virtual. It will run from April 28th (Wednesday) through April 30th (Friday) from 12-3:30 PM. (NB, the first day starts at 11:45AM and the last day runs to 4PM.) The conference is open and free. Registration is required.
Howard University is the only HBCU in the United States with a Classics Department, which has been a part of the institution since its inception in 1867. SCS has recently received the following news from the Department:
"Howard University has decided to close the Department of Classics as part of its prioritization efforts and is currently negotiating with the faculty of Classics and with other units in the College as to how they might best reposition and repurpose our programs and personnel. These discussions have been cordial, and the faculty remains hopeful that the department can be kept intact at some level, with its faculty and programs still in place."
As a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin this spring, working on a book on Roman diversity, I've been wondering how German classicists are experiencing current debates about diversifying our field. To find out, I spoke with Dr. Katharina Wesselmann, a professor in the Northern German city of Kiel who has also taught high school and university in Basel, Switzerland. The fact that she specializes in “didactics” — the teaching of ancient Greek and Latin — is one mark of the differences between our two national classics traditions. In Germany, Latin and Greek are regularly offered at the advanced secondary schools known as Gymnasiums. So more Germans than Americans are familiar with the classical languages, and those who pursue university degrees in classics can find employment teaching high school.
In Dialogue: Trans Studies and Classics works to bring some of the insights and lived experiences found in transgender studies into conversation with the Classics, in the hope that bringing these into dialogue with each other will enrich our pedagogy, deepen our understanding of what gender as an identity category even means, and help critique the various ways gender has been used as an instrument of power throughout history, while also creating a more inclusive and supportive environment for our students. If you’d like to contribute to this column or have ideas that could add to this conversation, email Ky Merkley.
Dr. Michael Goyette (he/him/his) is Instructor of Classics and Ancient Studies at Eckerd College. His teaching and research focus on ancient medicine, ancient science, gender, ancient drama, pedagogy, and reception. The question of embodiment unites these various interests. Being at a teaching college with a high number of STEM majors, he is always looking for ways to illuminate the intersections between the sciences and humanities.
This transcript has been lightly edited.
The Ancient Worlds, Modern Communities initiative, launched by the SCS in 2019 as the Classics Everywhere initiativeby the SCS in 2019 as the Classics Everywhere initiative, supports projects that seek to engage broader publics — individuals, groups, and communities — in critical discussion of and creative expression related to the ancient Mediterranean, the global reception of Greek and Roman culture, and the history of teaching and scholarship in the field of classical studies. As part of this initiative, the SCS has funded 98 projects, ranging from school programming to reading groups, prison programs, public talks and conferences, digital projects, and collaborations with artists in theater, opera, music, dance, and the visual arts. Awardees are selected by the SCS Committee on Classics in the Community. The initiative welcomes applications from all over the world. To date, it has funded projects in 25 states and 10 countries, including Canada, UK, Italy, Greece, Belgium, Ghana, Puerto Rico, Argentina, and most recently, India.
