We're pleased to announce this year's winners of the following SCS Awards:
Congratulations to these exemplary Classicists for all their excellent work!
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(Photo: "library" by Viva Vivanista, licensed under CC BY 2.0)
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The Classical Association of Ghana
University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana
Theme: Global Classics and Africa: Past, Present, and Future
The late 1950s and early 1960s ushered in a period when many African countries were gaining political independence. Immediately, there was an agenda to unite African nations, and a policy of Africanization began to gain ground. In the area of education, this Africanization process was vigorously pursued. In Ghana the Institute of African Studies was established, and an Encyclopaedia Africana project, originally conceived by W. E. B. DuBois, was revived. In Nigeria, new universities were established to counter the colonial-based education that was present at the University of Ibadan, and in some East African countries there were fears that foreign university teachers would not be able to further the Africanization of university education.
The Ancient Novel and Material Culture
The ancient novels are populated not just by people but also by objects. While individual studies, particularly on ekphrasis, have examined some of the uses of physical objects in ancient novels (Bartsch 1989; Holzmeister 2014) or the depiction of scenes from ancient novels on objects (e.g. Bruneau 1965), there have been few systematic examinations of the presence, function, and interpretations of material objects in and about ancient prose fiction more broadly. Notable exceptions include Magdeleine Clo’s 2014 thesis, Les objets dans le roman grec, and the 2016 Rethymnon International Conference on the Ancient Novel on “Material Culture and the Ancient Novel” (Oct. 14-15), both of which have demonstrated the potential of examining objects within ancient novels as tools of characterization, plot devices, and symbols, but the topic has thus far received little attention in the United States.
We therefore invite submissions on the ancient novel and material culture. Papers may examine any of the ancient novels or other works of ancient prose fiction, including Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Byzantine. We are especially interested in applications of new theoretical perspectives, examinations of social interaction and cultural exchange in one or more novels or cultures, and/or collaborations between different subdisciplines such as philology and archaeology.
Honor and Shame in Classical Antiquity
Keynote Speaker: Margaret Graver, Dartmouth College
Virtue, Cicero argues, seeks no other reward for its labors and dangers beyond that of praise and glory. From the earliest days of the ancient Mediterranean, the pursuit of honor and avoidance of shame have shaped societies’ value systems. Achilles wages war according to a strict honor code, while Hesiod’s personified goddess, Shame, is the last to depart the earth as a rebuke of humanity’s wickedness. Far from belonging to the static code of an aristocratic warrior class, as was once understood, honor and shame are increasingly seen as part of a complex and polyvalent ethical system. They manifest themselves not only in the heroic self-assertion of ancient epic but also in a variety of other arenas, such as, for example, philosophical treatises, gender relations and sexual mores, the lives of enslaved peoples, Athenian law and politics, the performance of Roman state identity, and religious belief. Thus they are pervasive throughout literature, thought, and society in the ancient world.
High school Latin programs (along with Classics programs at the college or university level) are in perpetual peril, and keeping any program alive contributes to the ongoing effort to keep our field afloat and relevant, while also continuing to provide students with all of the benefits that we know that Latin offers. Monmouth College’s Classics Department spearheaded a successful, broad-based effort to resist the proposed elimination of the thriving Latin program at Monmouth-Roseville (IL) High School (MRHS) in Spring 2019.
This reflection is meant as a case study for understanding and then addressing the issue of threatened Latin programs across the country. I will lay out the factors and steps that led to the initial decision to drop the program, those that we discovered were critical in the eventual success of the resistance effort, and roles that a college or university Classics programs can play to retain their comrade programs, which cultivate many eventual Classics students and majors.
Background on the situation at Monmouth-Roseville
Sailing with the Gods: Religion and Maritime Mobility in the Ancient World
Sponsored by: The Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions
Location: Grand Hotel Excelsior, Floriana, Malta
Dates: June 17-21, 2020
Ritual practices dedicated to maritime success appear across a wide span of human cultural history, from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, Southeast Asia across the Pacific to the west coast of the Americas. Culturally-constructed seafaring rituals could be seen as spiritual or superstitious, and respond to the combination of risk and profit endemic in even short voyages by water. Maritime religion infuses all water-borne contact across cultural boundaries; the crafts of those who build rafts, canoes, and sailing vessels; navigational skills which may reach back to ancestors who have faded into cultural legend; and myriad mnemonic and naming strategies extending to littoral markers and celestial patterns. Mythic and ritual responses are accordingly complex, ranging from apotropaia to the divine authorization of civic structures, shipboard shrines and functional epithets which could link divinities, heroes and nearly-deified rulers to the control of the waves and winds.
Please find a list of award and fellowship deadlines for this Fall:
ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World (from now on: Orbis) is an interactive scholarly web application that provides a simulation model of travel and transport cost in the Roman Empire around 200 CE. Walter Scheidel and his team at Stanford University designed and launched the site in 2011–12, and the project saw a significant upgrade in 2014 (the old version is still available). The project is currently concluded.
The aim of Orbis is to allow investigation of the concrete conditions of travel in the ancient world, with a particular focus on the 3rd-century Roman route and transportation network. Orbis is a response to the long-standing scholarly debate about visual representations and study of “spatial practice” in the premodern world: traditional mapping approaches fail to convey the complexity of the variables involved in travel practices and provide a flat view of phenomena that are strongly connected with space and movement, such as trade, economic control, and imperialism. Orbis was conceived to respond to the specific question of how travel and transport constraints affected the expansion of the Roman Empire.
The Braggart Soldier
The Shackouls Honors College at Mississippi State University presents a performance of the Braggart Soldier, a Roman comedy by Plautus.
The play, directed by Dr. Donna L. Clevinger, will be performed at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, September 24th and Wednesday, September 25th, 2019 in Griffis Hall Courtyard, Zacharias Village. Both performances will go up rain or shine and be free to the public.
This production is part of the Honors College Classical Week 2019. For additional information, call 662-325-2522.
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(Photo: "Empty Theatre (almost)" by Kevin Jaako, licensed under CC BY 2.0)
