"A university professorship which has been dormant for more than a decade is to be revived after a £2.4m bequest from the last person to hold the post. Professor Douglas Maurice MacDowell held Glasgow University's Chair of Greek between 1971 and 2001. After his death in 2010, aged 78, Prof MacDowell's will stated his portfolio of stocks and shares be used to re-establish the position. The new Chair of Greek is expected to be in place for September this year." Read more at the BBC online.
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(Submitted by Mark Possanza)
The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML)
Heckman Stipends, made possible by the A.A. Heckman Endowed Fund, are awarded semi-annually. Up to 10 stipends in amounts up to $2,000 are available each year. Funds may be applied toward travel to and from Collegeville, housing and meals at Saint John’s University, and costs related to duplication of HMML’s microfilm or digital resources (up to $250). The Stipend may be supplemented by other sources of funding but may not be held simultaneously with another HMML Stipend or Fellowship. Holders of the Stipend must wait at least two years before applying again.
The program is specifically intended to help scholars who have not yet established themselves professionally and whose research cannot progress satisfactorily without consulting materials to be found in the collections of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library.
Applications:
Applications must be submitted by March 15 for residencies between July and December of the same year, or by October 15 for residencies between January and June of the following year.
Applicants are asked to provide:
Call for Abstracts: The 2020 meeting of the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies in Athens, Greece (June 10-14, 2020), held in conjunction with the American College of Greece.
The International Society for Neoplatonic Studies (ISNS) invites submissions of abstracts for the 2020 meeting in Athens, Greece (June 10-14, 2020).This year’s panels embrace a wide range of themes and topics in the Platonic tradition, spanning from antiquity to the modern period.
People may present in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, or Greek. Speakers presenting in a language other than English are encouraged to give printed copies of their papers.
All abstracts are due by February 24, 2020. Please submit abstracts (a maximum of one page) directly to the panel organizers’ emails, as listed on the official call for abstracts: https://www.isns.us/2020PanelsforAthensConference.pdf. Those presenting must be ISNS members before the meeting.
The ISNS also will be offering travel grants for students and early career scholars to attend this year’s meeting. More information about these awards can be found here: https://preview.tinyurl.com/ISNSTravelGrant.
For more information please visit the ISNS website: https://www.isns.us/.
Judith Peller Hallett is Professor of Classics and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Emerita at the University of Maryland, College Park. Judy was born in Chicago, grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and earned her B.A. in Latin from Wellesley College in 1966. She received her M.A. in 1967 and her Ph.D. in Classical Philology in 1971, both from Harvard University. Her research focuses on women, the family, and sexuality in ancient Greece and Rome, particularly in Latin literature. She is also an expert on Classical education and reception in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her publications include Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society: Women and the Elite Family (1984) and a special edition of the journal The Classical World, entitled “Six North American Women Classicists,” with William M. Calder III (1996-1997). A lifelong feminist, she has edited or contributed to numerous collections that focus on women in the ancient world and in the discipline of Classics, such as Roman Sexualities (1997), the Blackwell Companion to Women in the Ancient World (2012), and Women Classical Scholars: Unsealing the Fountain from the Renaissance to Jacqueline de Romilly (2016).
CC: How did you come to Classics?
Greek vases, with their distinctive red and black, are one of the most recognizable faces of ancient Greece. Their decorative scenes of deities, myth, and everyday life offer a beautiful and informative window into classical culture. With the Panoply Vase Animation Project we’re encouraging people to enjoy and learn about ancient vases and society by placing the artifacts center-stage in short, lively animations made from the vase-scenes themselves. The animations keep as close as possible to the original artwork, using the existing figures and decoration and drawing on existing iconography. But the figures can now move, and the animations explore the possibilities within the vase scenes: runners can sprint past, dice are thrown, and those poised to strike can use their weapons. The tone of the animations varies. The Cheat is a light-hearted romp; Hoplites! Greeks at War will send shivers down your spine.
We invite individual and group proposals on all aspects of the classical world and classical reception, and on new strategies and resources for improved teaching. Especially welcome are presentations that aim at maximum audience participation and integrate the concerns of K-12 and college faculty, that consider ways of communicating about ancient Greece and Rome beyond our discipline and profession, and that reflect on the past, present, and future of classical studies in the CAAS region.
Hybrid Epicenters: Peripheral Adaptation in Flavian Literature
With a response by Antony Augoustakis
Adaptation and change in Imperial Rome tend to aggregate on the margins and at the edges of things, in extremis as it were. In Flavian literature, various dynamic changes have been observed, in the textual space as well as in the socio-political background under which this literature is being produced. One example is the sudden transition between books 11 and 12 in Statius’ Thebaid wherein the fraternas acies of the first 11 books gives way to (attempted) reconciliation. Or from a geographical stance, one example is Scipio Africanus’ rapid rise to power as he pushes Rome’s military might to her future imperial edges in Spain and North Africa in books 16 and 17 of the Punica; from a sociocultural angle, the complex dynamics in the Silvae between Campania and Rome causes difficulties in recognizing which location is central and which peripheral in Statius’ conceptualization of the geography of Roman power in Italy.
The following was approved by the SCS board of directors on February 7, 2020.
The Society for Classical Studies joins the Society of Architectural Historians in opposing the proposed Executive Order “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again.” As students and scholars of the ancient Greco-Roman world and its ongoing cultural impact, we recognize that classical antiquity provided some of the many traditions that have shaped this nation, and we appreciate the examples of neo-classical architecture, both public and private, to be found throughout the United States. But we firmly believe that the architectural style of public buildings should not be dictated in advance, but rather freely and deliberately chosen in view of all relevant considerations, and we reject the supposition that a style derived from classical models is necessarily better suited than any other to express the history, values, and aspirations of the American people.
Please see the letter below from the Society of Architectural Historians and a number of other scholarly societies, including SCS.
February 10, 2020
The President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20500
Re: Opposition to proposed Executive Order “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again”
Dear Mr. President,
The deadline to apply for Classics Everywhere is February 14, 2020.
Applications can be submitted through the above link by filling out the application form linked half way down the page.
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