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The AIA and SCS have made the difficult decision to switch our upcoming 2022 Annual Meeting to a virtual only event. We had high hopes to once again have an in-person component to our meeting, but the rapid rise in Covid cases due to the Delta and Omicron variants have made that impossible to do safely. While we are eager to see everyone in-person again, the overall health and safety of our attendees, staff, and hotel and meeting personnel take precedence.
Since we were already planning to hold our meeting in a hybrid format the transition to a virtual only meeting will not be difficult. We are using the same platform as last year and all sessions will be available through the virtual meeting platform. Details on how to access it will be emailed out to all attendees next Monday (January 3).
If you had been planning to attend in person, please contact the Hilton to cancel your reservation. We will be reaching out to all in-person registrants following the meeting regarding refunds for the difference in registration rates.
We hope everyone is staying safe and healthy and look forward to seeing you online during our virtual meeting.
SCS is pleased to announce the following winners of the 2021 excellence in teaching awards. Please join us in congratulating the winners!
Excellence in Teaching at the K-12 Level
Jessie Craft (Reagan High School, WSFCS school district)
Mathew Olkovikas (Pinkerton Academy)
Margaret Somerville (Friends' Central School)
Excellence in Teaching at the College and University Level
Deborah Beck (University of Texas at Austin)
Richard Ellis (University of California, Los Angeles)
Wilfred Major (Louisiana State University)
Brett Rogers (University of Puget Sound)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that humor ages poorly. Jokes tend to be topical, and to be based on the social expectations of a particular group at a particular moment. The deterioration of humor over time is often a matter of changing contexts as well as changing tastes: ideas that once made a coherent joke cease to fit together.
Call for Papers
‘Exemplary Representation(s) of the Past:
New Readings of Valerius Maximus’ Facta et dicta memorabilia’
The last thirty years have seen an increase in interest in Valerius Maximus and his Facta et dicta memorabilia. Willing to consider Valerius’ collection of historical exempla as a piece of literature in its own right, scholars have started to scrutinise its moral, social, and intellectual significance at the time of the early Roman Empire and beyond.
Since issues pertaining to social media continue to arise, the Society for Classical Studies wishes as a supplement to its earlier statement to caution its members and the members of its various affiliated organizations that they should take great care before making allegations on matters of fact about members of the scholarly community or repeating such assertions in their own media posts. Strong criticism is protected by academic freedom, but falsehood is not. Repeating false information or false rumors, or encouraging false inferences about another person, or about scientific or other factual matters, could hurt the public image and long-term health of our Society and our discipline, and could cause harm—both reputational harm and legal liability—to the original poster and to others. The SCS Statement of Professional Ethics prohibits harassment and intimidation, which can take place on social media, and the Committee on Professional Ethics may review complaints about such harassment.
Our sixth interview in the Contingent Faculty Series is a virtual conversation between Dr. Joshua Nudell and Dr. Aven McMaster.
Joshua Nudell: There is no easy way into this conversation, but, until recently, you were tenured at a university that went through bankruptcy and now you are a contingent faculty member. Without dwelling on the events at Laurentian, how has this transition informed your view of contingency in particular and academia in general?
Aven McMaster: Don’t worry, I’m used to talking about all this! In fact, it’s a reminder of how entwined we tend to be with our jobs.
Before all this happened, I’d already been grappling with the problems of contingency, since my partner has been a sessional lecturer (Canadian term for “adjunct”) for years now. But obviously it has made this issue even more personal. Losing the only job I’ve trained for, after 15 years of full-time employment, certainly has made me doubt a lot of what I thought was stable or certain in this world.
The American School of Classical Studies at Athens is pleased to announce its summer seminars for 2022:
Thanatopsis: Greek Funerary Customs Through the Ages (June 6-24, 2022), led by Professor Daniel B. Levine
and
The Northern Aegean: Macedon and Thrace (June 30 - July 18, 2022), led by Professors Amalia Avramidou and Denise Demetriou
For more details see https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/programs/summerseminars
Travel and see ancient sites in the Mediterranean and Europe in 2022!
The Vergilian Society is offering exciting tours of ancient sites in Sicily, Naples, Malta, Portugal and Romania.
The Vergilian Society is also offering stimulating Latin workshops for teachers that include opportunities to visit a variety of ancient sites to reinforce their teachings of the ancient world.
For a description and details of the tours and workshops, visit https://www.vergiliansociety.org/2020-vergilian-society-study-tours-and-workshops/
Over $100,000 in scholarship money available: https://www.vergiliansociety.org/tours/scholarships/
Basler Homer-Kommentar [zur Ilias] (BK) / Homer’s Iliad. The Basel Commentary (BKE)
Project promoter: Swiss National Science Foundation in support of scientific research (SNSF), Berne.
Place of work: University of Basel, Department of Ancient Civilizations, professorial chair for Greek Philology, Petersgraben 51, CH-4051 Basel.
The Multi-Sensory Experience of Mystery Cults
in the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean:
Making Sense of the Emotions of the Ancient Worshippers
Universität Erfurt, 6-8 May 2022
Call for Papers (Online Conference):
