… at the bottom of the third column on page 79 of the May 21, 2012, edition:
DEPT. OF HIGHER EDUCATION
From the Transactions of the American Philological Association
Valerius's allusive gestures thus problematize Venus's argument by drawing attention to the intertextual connection between Georgics 2.140 and Aeneid 7.281, texts that have very different things to say about the existence of fire-breathing animals in Italy.
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The Department of Latin Literature at the University of Basel, Switzerland, is pleased to invite applications for the second round of the Basel Fellowships in Latin Literature. The Visiting Fellowship programme offers an opportunity for early career researchers as well as established scholars to pursue their research in the framework of a fully funded visit of up to three months at the Department Altertumswissenschaften of the University of Basel. During their stay Visiting Fellows are entitled to make full use of the excellent resources of the University Library as well as the departmental library, Bibliothek Altertumswissenschaften, one of the world’s leading research libraries for the study of Ancient Mediterranean Civilizations and the Classics.
The National Humanities Alliance has been researching the field of undergraduate humanities recruitment for more than a year now, identifying compelling initiatives, effective strategies, and leaders in the field. The pandemic, severely strained budgets, and the national reckoning with racial injustice are changing the context in which colleges and universities grapple with strategies for recruiting students to the humanities. NHA has invited deans and humanities center directors to talk with them about how this new context affects their efforts to promote the value of studying the humanities to undergraduates.
The View from the Dean's Office
Tuesday, July 28th, 1:00 pm, EDT
Deans from a range of institutions will share the recruitment strategies they’ve honed and how they intersect with the current moment.
Panelists:
Jeffrey Cohen, Dean of Humanities, Arizona State University
Lena Hill, Dean of the College, Washington and Lee University
Debra Moddelmog, Dean, College of Liberal Arts, University of Nevada, Reno
Moderator: Scott Muir, Project Director, Study the Humanities, National Humanities Alliance
Identity in Vergil: Ancient Representations, Global Receptions
Symposium Cumanum 2021
June 23-26, Villa Vergiliana, Cuma
Co-Directors: Tedd A. Wimperis (Elon University) and David J. Wright (Fordham University)
Vergil’s poetry has long offered fertile ground for scholars engaging questions of race, ethnicity, and national identity, owing especially to the momentous social changes to which his works respond (Syed 2005; Reed 2007; Fletcher 2014; Giusti 2018; Barchiesi forthcoming). The complexities of identity reflected in his corpus have afforded rich insights into the poems themselves and the era’s political milieu; beyond their Roman context, across the centuries his poetry has been co-opted in both racist and nationalist rhetoric, and, at the same time, inspired dynamic multicultural receptions among its many audiences, from Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech to Gwendolyn Brooks’ The Anniad (e.g. Thomas 2001; Laird 2010; Ronnick 2010; Torlone 2014; Pogorzelski 2016).
The new Classics Everywhere initiative, launched by the SCS in 2019, supports projects that seek to engage communities worldwide with the study of Greek and Roman antiquity in new and meaningful ways. As part of this initiative the SCS has been funding a variety of projects ranging from reading groups comparing ancient to modern leadership practices to collaborations with artists in theater, music, and dance. This post centers on two performances of ancient plays that were canceled when the pandemic put a halt to them last March.
"The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) announced today that it will redirect the funding focus of the ACLS Fellowship Program to support early career, non-tenured scholars exclusively."
You can read more about the program here.
Fighting racism, or any wicked, wrongheaded, or simply false idea, demands persuasion, person to person. All non-violent activism and efforts at social change depend on rhetoric. It is fashionable now to believe that persuasion—the political kind, anyway—is something of a mirage, that much of our thinking is “motivated,” driven primarily not by argument and evidence but by self-interest, tribal loyalties, enduring personality traits, and demographic facts. Identity comes first; the rationalizations that make us feel that we are correct in our prejudices hobble along after. This is the argument of Ezra Klein, for example, based on many psychological and political science studies, in Why We’re Polarized (2020). The role of rhetoric in this model is not to persuade, but rather to activate and weaponize identities and their powerful latent drives. Politics in this view is best understood not as reasoned civic dialogue but as a high-stakes all-in partisan combat. Persuasion exists, but as a dog tied to the cart of identity group competition—so say the studies.
Faculty, their administrations, and non-profit organizations, including SCS, around the country are engaging in the necessary work of addressing racism within their institutions. In recognition of this work and in support of it, the Executive Committee of SCS is reiterating the board statement of June 3, 2020:
In light of the present administration’s brazen disregard for facts and the public good, you’ve got to admire past leaders’ nonpartisan concern to preserve knowledge for the future.
The SCS Board has joined many other scholarly societies in endorsing this letter imploring the federal government to "reinstate the temporary visa exemptions for international students and faculty members while we are in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, including at least the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 semesters."
You can read more at the link above.
If you want to take action, please consult the National Humanities Alliance's action alert on the issue here.
Call for Papers
February 27th, 2021
University of Florida (Gainesville, FL)
Fourth University of Florida Classics Graduate Student Symposium
Myths and Societies: A Cross-Cultural and Intertemporal Approach
