Yale Department o Classics
Summer 2019
Greetings from the Chair:
I have been reflecting how much I enjoy this annual
opportunity to review the activities o the department over
the past year in the quiet o early Summer. The helter-skelter
o the academic year does not allow much time to sit around
admiring each other’s achievements or the steady, unsung
work that goes into teaching, mentorship, and collegiality,
but the ruits o this work are everywhere apparent.
Uppermost in my mind are the successes o this year’s
graduating class, whose achievements we celebrated at a
Commencement reception on May 20
th
. Ten Senior Classics
majors graduated this May: Christopher Bracken, Daniel
Flesch, Sam Lee, Flora Lipsky, Katie Liptak, Daphne
Martin, Caderyn Owen Jones, Katie Shy, Lucy Western,
and Connor Wood. We will miss the unstoppable creativity,
laughter, and serious brilliance that they brought to their
studies. Their immediate careers post-Yale are as maniold
as their talents, including High School teaching, a Light
Fellowship in China, a Mellon Fellowship at Cambridge
University, Journalism, and Law School.
On the graduate side, congratulations are due to
Drs. Rachel Love, Cynthia “Cara” Polsley, and Jennifer
Weintritt, who received their Ph.D. degrees this May.
Rachel Love begins a tenure-track Assistant Proessorship
in Latin Literature at Harvard this summer, Cara Polsley is
already co-ounder and co-director o Cordical, a company
specializing in problem-solving through technological
innovations, and Jennier Weintritt has been appointed
to a tenure-track Assistant Proessorship in Classics at
Northwestern University. Noreen Sit plans to submit her
dissertation later this summer or a December graduation
and has secured an exciting position at the Thaden School
in Arkansas where she will simultaneously be designing and
teaching the Latin curriculum. We say a ond arewell to a
graduate class who have made a tremendous contribution
to the flourishing o the department: in addition to their
notable scholarship and lauded teaching, Jennier Weintritt,
Rachel Love, and Noreen Sit all served in the elected role o
Graduate Liaison and provided wise counsel and poised, kind
leadership. At the national level, Cara Polsley has provided
resourceul leadership in oering advocacy, support, and
advice or Spinal Cord Injury Survivors. As Yale prepares
to commemorate the 150
th
anniversary o women at Yale, it
gave the department no small amount o satisaction to have
a distinguished, all-women class o graduating Ph.D.s. As
this newsletter was about to go into production, we learned
o Dr. Kyle Khellaf’s (Ph.D. ’18) success in being appointed
to a tenure-track Assistant Proessorship in Comparative
Literature at the University o Caliornia, Riverside.
Our continuing graduate students did us proud with
an imaginatively conceived and meticulously organized
Philology Day on April 11
th
-12
th
on the theme o “The
Counsel o Bookworms: Constructions o the Book in
Imperial Greek Writing.” This two-day event involved
presentations in the Beinecke rom Dexter Brown, Kyle
Conrau-Lewis, Erynn Kim, Joe Morgan, and Sylva
Kroeber, ollowed by a lively colloquium with papers
rom Proessors Karen Ni Mheallaigh, Pauline LeVen,
AnneMarie Luijendijk, and Rafaella Cribiore. This year’s
Philology Day was organized by Chris Londa, Joe Morgan,
Treasa Bell, and Rachel Love.
In late August we will welcome a new class o graduate
students to the department: Ziming Liu, who has a B.A.
rom Victoria University o Wellington, Jennier Moss who
has a B.A. and Masters rom the University o Michigan,
and Thomas Munro, who has a B.A. rom the University
o Oxord, will be joining the doctoral program in Classical
Philology. Amia Davis, who has a B.A. rom the University
o Michigan, and Eleanor Martin, who has a B.A. rom
Oxord University, will be joining the combined program in
Ancient History. Max DuBo, who has a B.A. rom Rutgers
University, will be joining the combined program in Ancient
Philosophy via Classics, and Sadie McCloud, who has a B.A.
rom Wheaton, will be joining the combined program in
Ancient Philosophy via Philosophy.
Meanwhile, Faculty have not been resting on our ivy
laurels. You can read about everyone’s activities over the past
year in the “Faculty News” section (pages 3-6). I mention
some particularly notable achievements here. In October, we
learned o Joe Manning’s success, as Principal Investigator, in
winning a major National Science Foundation Grant worth
$1,301,722 or the research project “Volcanism, Hydrology
and Social Conflict: Lessons rom Hellenistic and Roman-Era
Egypt and Mesopotamia.” On page 10 you can see pictures
continued on page 2
Classics majors Lina Kapp (’20) and Samir Al-Ali (’21) field questions
rom the audience beore the start o Novice Finals
2
Newsletter published annually by the Department of Classics
Website: www.yale.edu/classics
Facebook: Yaleclassics
Please send comments and news via email to:
CREDITS
Editing and general text: Emily Greenwood with contributions
from Grace Blaxill, Michael Kearney, and Chris Kraus
Design: Elaine Piraino-Holevoet/PIROET
Main Photography: Kirk Freudenburg with
individual photographs contributed by other members
of the Classics department
Support: Linda Dickey-Saucier
With thanks to the Yale Alumni Association
Greetings from the Chair continued from page 1
o Joe Morgan, Meghan Poplacean, and
Nazim Serbest taking part a field trip to
the Desert Research Institute in Reno,
Nevada in October 2018, as part o Joe
Manning’s graduate seminar on “Climate,
Environment, and Ancient History.” In
April, Joe was also awarded a Guggenheim
Fellowship and a John Paul Getty Award
or his research in Palaeoclimatology. Also
in April, Brad Inwood was elected to the
American Academy o Arts and Sciences,
in recognition o his contributions to
scholarship and his ar-reaching influence
in the field o Ancient Philosophy. Milette
Gaifman’s intellectual leadership in the
field o Ancient Art was recognized by her
appointment, in January, as co-editor in
chie o the The Art Bulletin — the flagship
journal o the discipline o Art History.
Pauline LeVen ends her term as
Director o Undergraduate Studies this
summer, having put heart, soul, deep
learning, and inspiring mentorship into this
role. Our undergraduates have flourished
under Pro. LeVen’s guidance and she has helped them to realize
their intellectual potential, not least through the tradition o
the Senior Thesis Salon, which has become a mainstay o the
Senior Thesis experience in Classics. Pro. LeVen is pictured
with this year’s senior thesis writers, ollowing a very successul
capstone thesis presentation event in the Beinecke library,
organized by Dr. François Gerardin (also pictured). Ater
working with us this past year as a Lecturer in Ancient History,
teaching classes and supervising undergraduate research with
the thoughtulness and erudition or which he is well known,
Dr. Gerardin leaves to take up a Postdoctoral Fellowship in
Germany. It is characteristic o Dr. Gerardin’s scholarship and
dedication to teaching that he organized a special session in
the Beinecke in which he spoke about papyri and early editions
rom the Beinecke’s collection relating to the topics on which
students had written their senior theses.
This year saw the sixth Anne Amory Parry and Adam Parry
Lecture, delivered by Proessor Emily Wilson (’01 Ph.D.), about
which Grace Blaxill has contributed a eature (see page 16).
To date, the lecture series has been generously sponsored by
gis rom Proessor Gilbert Lawall (Ph.D. ’61), and James M.
Morris (Ph.D. ’68). The department is grateul to Chris Kraus
and David Quint or masterminding and organizing the annual
Anne Amory Parry and Adam Parry Lecture since its inception in
2013. Irene Peirano Garrison and Ayesha Ramachandran have
kindly agreed to take over as organizers o the lecture series and
to continue the proud tradition. In an exciting development, the
department is currently in touch with Adam Parry’s daughter,
Catherine P. Marcial, about the possibility o acquiring Adam
Parry’s unpublished papers and scholarly correspondence or
Yale’s Manuscripts and Archives (MSSA).
I finish my term as Chair at the end o June, whereupon
Chris Kraus will step in as Acting Chair or 2019-20, having
previously chaired the department to great strengths or
six years between 2005-2008, and 2009-2012. As we look
orward to another year, I could think o no better uture-
oriented cover image than the photograph o two o our
current undergraduate Majors, Lina Kapp (’20) and Samir
Al-Ali (’21), preparing to put teams through their paces at our
annual Yale Certamen tournament — an initiative run entirely
by Yale undergraduates. The Yale Certamen is now in its tenth
year (i.e. nine tournaments have been held). Michael Kearney
has contributed a special eature on this year’s Certamen
tournament on pages 8-9. In signing o, it remains to
thank Linda Dickey-Saucier, Jasmine Williams, and Diana
Plascencia or the crucial work that they do in helping to run
the department.
With bountiul wishes or the summer,
Emily Greenwood
Professor Pauline LeVen and Dr. François Gerardin with this year’s Senior Thesis writers in the
Beinecke Library
3
Faculty News —
Egbert Bakker traveled, as usual, to Europe in the summer o
2018. In Leiden he lectured on “proto-philosophical” dialogue
in the symposium and in Athens on the Odyssey. When he
should have been working on his Odyssey commentary he lost
time marveling at the original re-use o Homeric language
in Nonnus’s Posthomerica. An article on Hesiod (“Hesiod in
Perormance”) came out in The Oxord Handbook o Hesiod. And
he was happy to receive the news that The Epic Journey in Greek
and Roman Literature (the latest installment in the Yale Classical
Studies series) was published this May, edited by our own Ph.D.-
graduates Jessica Blum and Tom Biggs; his contribution is “In
and Out o the Golden Age: A Hesiodic Reading o the Odyssey.”
In the spring semester he started the daunting task o providing
a continuation o Victor Bers’s legendary “Syntax and Stylistics”
course. The new course combines Greek syntax and composition
with historical linguistics and text grammar. At the time o this
writing he is in Paris to present a paper on the metrical structure
o Pindar’s Epinicia.
Kirk Freudenburg stayed close to home this past year, lowering
his nose to grindstone in order to finish his commentary
on Horace Sermones book 2. He is happy to report that the
commentary itsel is finished, and he is now in the process o
trimming it, writing introductions or each poem, and or the
volume itsel, as well as editing, checking reerences, and so
on. For the most part this has kept him rom writing other
things, but he has one review orthcoming rom JRS, and he is
working on an article on Nero’s court (or Arqueología e Historia)
and another on the Banquet o Dido in Aeneid 1. Next all he
looks orward to teaching an Ecocultures o Antiquity seminar,
then rolling out the course or undergraduate consumption in
the spring. In anticipation o those courses he is trying out a
ew new things in his garden this summer, seeding logs with
mushroom spores, and perecting his sour dough bread (all
very good or the gut microbiome).
In all 2018, More than 200 undergraduate students enrolled
in the course Milette Gaifman developed, Art and Myth in Greek
Antiquity, making it one o the largest Humanities courses
taught in Yale College that semester, and the largest course in
the history o the department in the last three decades. The class
generated enthusiasm across campus and drew the attention o
President Salovey in his Notes rom Woodbridge Hall o January
14, 2019. In November 2018, Milette was appointed Co-
editor in Chie o the The Art Bulletin, the flagship journal o
art history globally, together with Lillian Tseng (ISAW, NYU).
Notably, the last scholar o classical Greek art to serve as the
journal’s editor was David M. Robinson, who occupied the
position in the years 1919-1921. Previous editors o The Art
Bulletin have included Yale distinguished proessors such as
George Kubler, Creighton Gilbert, and Walter Cahn. She will
serve in this position or three years, rom 2019 to 2021. This
summer, Milette will return to Athens or a detailed study o
the Lysikrates Monument, which serves as the central case o
study o her book, Classification and the History o Greek Art and
Architecture (orthcoming with Chicago University Press). The
book will be an expanded version o the Louise Smith Bross
Lectures that she delivered in May o 2018 (the Bross Lectures
are given every three years by a distinguished scholar o early
modern, medieval or ancient art).
Emily Greenwood is looking orward to a precious year o
sabbatical leave starting in July. This past year she enjoyed
teaching an undergraduate class on Gender and Citizenship in
Athenian Law, a graduate seminar on the Theory and Practice o
Classical Translation, and the second semester o the Graduate
continued on page 4
Farewell to Dr. Ann Ellis Hanson
This year, we say goodbye to our
esteemed colleague and riend Dr.
Ann Ellis Hanson, who has been a
Senior Research Scholar and Lecturer
in the Department o Classics or over
twenty years (Ann’s affiliation with
Yale dates back much urther than
this). Many readers o this newsletter
will know Dr. Hanson’s reputation as a world-renowned
papyrologist and scholar o ancient medicine, whose field-
building scholarship was recognized with the award o a
MacArthur Fellowship in 1992. She has published over 80
papyrological editions and studies, reviews, and articles, as
well as co-editing or many years the Monograph series o
The Bulletin o the American Society o Papyrologists (BASP)
and serving as a Senior Editor o the Duke Databank o
Documentary Papyri (DDbDP). Throughout her time at
Yale, Dr. Hanson has given colleagues, visiting scholars, and
students the benefit o her expertise in the interpretation
and editing o ancient Greek documentary, medical, and
literary papyri, helping others to navigate the papyri in
Yale’s Beinecke library and shepherding many o these
papyri into publication. She has trained successive classes
o graduate students at Yale in papyrology (including
showing them the ropes at the International Congress
o Papyrology), while many undergraduates and graduate
students have studied Ancient Medicine with Dr. Hanson,
both with and without papyri. Dr. Hanson has always been
the best kind o academic mentor: tireless, simultaneously
exacting and generous, and perspicacious in her advice and
encouragement. At Yale, Dr. Hanson’s expertise in ancient
medicine and, ancient Greek and Roman gynecology in
particular, also led to an affiliation with the Program in
the History o Science and Medicine. Ann’s presence in the
department will be sorely missed, not least being able to
count on her peerless acumen in seminars. We thank her or
being such a good riend to the department all these years.
4
Faculty News continued from page 3
Photo by Harriet Fertik
Emily Greenwood with Patrice Rankine (Ph.D. ’98), Sarah Derbew (Ph.D.
’18), and Edith Hall at the University o New Hampshire in April 2019
survey in Greek literature. At the turn o the year, she published
two chapters in edited volumes: “Adapting Homer Via Pope,”
in Cy Twombly: Fiy Days at Iliam, and “Multimodal Twenty-
First Century Bards: rom Live Perormance to Audiobook in
the Homeric Adaptations o Simon Armitage and Alice Oswald,”
in Epic Perormances rom the Middle Ages into the Twenty-First
Century. Over the course o the year, Emily has enjoyed visiting
several other Classics departments to deliver lectures and to
compare notes with colleagues ar and wide about the current
state o the field. This past year took her to Columbia University,
the 2018 CAAS annual meeting in Philadelphia where she
delivered the Clack lecture, Stanord or the Lorenz Eitner
lecture, Los Angeles or a keynote lecture at the UCLA graduate
conerence on “Failure and Flaws in Classical Antiquity,” UT
Austin or a lecture in the “Narrative and Social Justice” series
at the Humanities Institute, McGill University or two talks, to
the University o New Hampshire or a panel on Classics, Class,
and Race; and, to round out the academic year, a keynote lecture
at the Association o Ancient Historians Annual Conerence at
Emory University in April. For one o these lectures, she did
not have to travel at all — a Wake Forest University Classics
department Proculloquium (!) talk via video-conerence. At
UCLA, it was a delight to catch up with Bryant Kirkland (Ph.D.
’16), and at UT Austin with Pramit Chaudhuri (Ph.D. ’08) and
Ayelet Haimson Lushkov (Ph.D. ’09), as well as Chris van den
Berg (Ph.D. ’06), who happened to be passing through.
Verity Harte has just completed her second year as Chair o
the Philosophy department. Writing time can be elusive, but
she made headway on two contributions to edited volumes:
a contribution on Plato’s Philebus or the second edition o
the Cambridge Companion to Plato and a contribution on Platonic
realism or a Festschri volume. In March she was the keynote
speaker at the 42nd Annual Workshop in Ancient Philosophy,
held in San Antonio, Texas. In June, she traveled to London to
give the annual Sainsbury Lecture at King’s College London
Philosophy department. Back in New Haven, she joins her Yale
colleagues, David Charles and Brad Inwood, local and visiting
graduate students and nine visiting scholars in a week o June
devoted to reading and discussing Aristotle’s De Memoria,
the third leg in their five-year project devoted to works rom
Aristotle’s Parva Naturalia.
It was a quiet year or Brad I
nwood, with ewer trips abroad
to lecture than last year. The most exciting was to St. John’s,
Newoundland in October to deliver the James Bradley
Memorial Lecture at Memorial University. It was a real pleasure
to visit a university which, like Yale, has a strong tradition o
cooperation between Classics and Philosophy. Less delightul,
but invigorating, was the weather – first snow in mid-October
is so ar not a Yale tradition! At home, it was a year o firsts.
Brad was delighted to be inaugurated into teaching Yale’s
Directed Studies program – a new and rewarding kind o
pedagogy with outstanding students (some o them uture
Classics majors). He also took up departmental duties as
Director o Graduate Studies, in addition to other university
service, and has benefitted rom the collegial setting o the
Whitney Humanities Centre as a ellow or the year. Various
research projects advanced at a steady pace.
Ater another productive field season at Gabii, Andrew
Johnston spent this academic year on research leave, working
primarily on his next book project, which tells the story o the
Roman ear o kingship rom the middle Republic through
Late Antiquity. A ew articles and chapters appeared in
print on various topics: Cassius Dio’s rewriting o Caesar’s
ethnography o the north, Republican urbanism at Gabii, and
the wanderings o Odysseus in the imperial Greek imagination.
He gave invited talks at the Royal Netherlands Institute in
Rome and at the University o Missouri, and presented two
papers at the annual meeting o the AIA in San Diego and
one at the annual meeting o CAMWS in Lincoln. His first
book, The Sons o Remus: Identity in Roman Gaul and Spain,
received the 2019 First Book Award rom CAMWS. He looks
orward to returning to teaching in the all, and to taking up
the reins as Director o Undergraduate Studies.
In the last decade, Diana E. E. Kleiner has discovered what
it means to be a 24/7 teaching machine to students in nearly
every country in the world
via Coursera and Open Yale
Courses. She describes it as
exhilarating and renewing,
an ideal way to expand
one’s global network and
to open many new eyes
to the wonders o the
architecture o ancient and
modern Rome. Nonetheless,
teaching students in Yale
College and the Graduate
School remain her first love
and she enthusiastically
provides those heading to
Rome with extra travel and
gelato recommendations.
A major ocus o DEEK’s
most recent trips to Rome
is to seek out and conquer
continued on page 5
Andrew Johnston giving Diana Kleiner a
tour o excavations at Gabii
5
Faculty News continued from page 4
every Roman site in Italy she has never been to. Topping the
2018 list was Gabii, where Directors Nicola Terrenato and Yale’s
Andrew Johnston provided an unorgettable tour o the Gabii
Project. Seeing Yale students in the trenches was thrilling as
was finding out that Andrew (pictured with Diana) rocks a sun-
protective hat as well as his colleague does. A week in Pompeii
and Herculaneum, each site enlivened by newly excavated and
restored public buildings, baths, and houses, and by such un
activities as the usual stroll along Pompeii’s stepping stones,
topped o the 2018 Italy itinerary. DEEK continues to work on
multiple projects, including books on the city o Rome, online
education, and two exceptional Roman women rom the age
o Augustus. She has recently prioritized a new project with
Yale University Press that will modernize her iconic Roman
Sculpture book by incorporating a new set o color images rom
her personal collection, some o which she will re-photograph
in Rome in July 2019. In addition, DEEK has reengaged at Yale
with the kind o university issues that she ocused on in the
eight years she was Deputy Provost, chairing Yale’s Committee
on Art in Public Spaces (CAPS) and serving on the Creative Arts
Advisory Committee (CAAC), among others.
Chris Kraus has continued working on a series o studies o
Livy’s narrative technique (the 1990s called; they want their
scholarship back!), three o which she delivered this spring as
invited lectures, in Padova (a Lectura Livi in April), Martina
Franca (a conerence in honor o John Marincola’s retirement),
and in Amherst (a conerence in honor o Elizabeth Keitel’s
retirement); a ourth is scheduled or July, in Dresden. In June,
she will teach Classical Mythologies in the first summer session,
beore heading to Germany and Oxord, where she will give a
co-authored paper on commentaries, with Hindy Najman, at the
2019 British Association or Jewish Studies. A trip to Sydney
in July 2018 to speak at a conerence on Autocracy in Tragedy
was a real treat, a chance to see Jelle Stoop (Ph.D. ’13) as well
as to explore magical and otherworldly landscapes. Finally, a
conerence in honor o Christopher Stray at Corpus Christi
College in October 2018 saw the second outing or a paper
in progress on 19
th
century commentaries on Caesar’s Gallic
Wars. 2018-19 was the first o a two-year stint as President
o the Elizabethan Club (alas, not involving any shopping or
books). The highlight o the year was certainly continuing to
work with our tremendous graduate students, who go rom
strength to strength, serving on the dissertation committees o
Rachel Lilley Love, Treasa Bell, Zachary Smith (RLST), Emily
Hurt, Noreen Sit, Meghan Freeman, and Zachary Wolens.
The 2018/19 academic year ound Jessica Lamont on leave,
with a glorious all NEH Fellowship at the American School o
Classical Studies at Athens, and a Morse Faculty Fellowship in
the spring. She continued work on her first book project, and
published some smaller articles on ancient Greek magic and
curse tablets; talks were given over the past year in Athens,
Sparta, Princeton, Yale, and Swarthmore. Jessica enjoyed leading
a Yale Educational Travel tour o Athens and Attica with a group
o inspiring Yale alumni and riends this past May (see page 11).
She is currently preparing or a season o excavation in northern
Greece on the Molyvoti,
Thrace Archaeological
Project (MTAP); she will
take along two Yalies
this summer, Nazim
Serbest and Daphne Martin,
and help train them as
Trench Supervisors. Stryme
is an exciting ancient Greek
emporion (trading port),
a site o cross-cultural
exchange and convergence
rom Thasos, Thrace, Maroneia, Athens, and beyond. Stay
tuned or pictures and anecdotes!
Noel Lenski enjoyed a year o teaching leave while he
benefitted rom an ACLS Collaborative Research Grant to
work on his translation o the Visigothic Law Code. He
completed the translation, which now awaits commentary by
his collaborator Dámian Fernández. He is especially happy that
the acts o the conerence he hosted at Yale in March 2017
have just appeared as The Fith Century: Age o Transormation.
Proceedings o the 12th Biennial Shiting Frontiers in Late
Jessica Lamont lecturing at the American
School o Classical Studies in Athens
Antiquity Conerence (Bari: Edipuglia 2019), a volume he co-
edited with Jan Willem Drijvers o the University o Groningen.
This year also saw the publication o “The Date o the Ticinum
Medallion” in Numismatica e Antichità Classiche, and an article
in the Spanish popular press journal Desperta Ferro on the
Battle o Adrianople. Leave ofered time or the completion
o several other articles on Visigothic slavery, late Roman
education, and Ambrose
o Milan, as well as travel
to lecture or conerence
in Binghamton, New
York (Columbia), Austin,
Ghent, Munich, Bonn,
Peterborough (ON),
Tallahassee, and Utrecht.
He is looking orward
to a quieter summer –
Colorado, o course
– and to returning to
the classroom next
year when he will be
developing a new course on “Global Leadership, 600 BCE –
600 CE” with graduate student Kevin Feeney through Yale’s
Associates in Teaching Program.
Pauline LeVen has spent 2018-2019 redefining the meaning
o “completing a book manuscript.” Her project has morphed
into a monograph now entitled Music and Metamorphosis in
Greco-Roman Thought, which examines narratives o human
transormation into non-human musical critters and the
aesthetic and ontological questions these stories bring up. She
will hersel turn into a dierent person on June 30
th
, 2019
when she completes her third year as DUS and leaves the job
in the most able hands o Andrew Johnston. Her attention
Noel Lenski, thinker, on the walls o Messene
continued on page 6
6
Faculty News continued from page 5
will then turn ully to the other volume she has been working
on: the first volume o the six-part Cultural History o Western
Music published by Bloomsbury that she is co-editing with Sean
Gurd. The project involved participating in a Radclie Institute
or Advanced Studies seminar, which confirmed how exciting
an opportunity the volume represents, in setting classicists
in dialogue with musicologists. Mark your calendars or the
announced publication date o December 2021!
2018-2019 was a banner year or Joe Manning. Joe writes, “It
started out with a short course trip to Iceland and Greenland
or the Yale Archaia group, which I led with Anders Winroth
rom History and his wie Johanna. The theme was climate and
history, broadly conceived, and Iceland and Greenland are the
perect setting or this study, with environment and climatic
change all around you. We studied everything rom lake
sediment core proxy records to the Icelandic sagas. While we
were in Iceland I received the great news that the US National
Science Foundation unded our proposal to examine volcanic
impacts on the Nile watershed. This 4-year project (we need
20!) ocuses on a specific region, as we must, but the work has
implications or global premodern history. We’ve hired several
graduate students as well as Yale college students and we’re
making great progress. Ancient History had a great graduate
admissions season early in 2019, and graduates o the program
are doing well. Our most recent graduate, Andy Hogan,
received his Ph.D. in spring and is currently a Postdoctoral
Scholar at the Center or Tebtunis Papyri at UC Berkeley. This
spring I received the surprising news that I won Guggenheim
ellowship or next year. I was also named a Getty Fellow or
spring 2020 so I’ll be able to work on ancient visual culture as
part o my book project on climate change and history. All in
all, a busy but productive year.”
Irene Peirano Garrison taught Directed Studies literature
in the all and co-taught, with Michal Beth Dinkler (YDS),
a graduate seminar on rhetorical approaches to the ancient
world. The course culminated in a workshop jointly organized
with colleagues in Oxord, or which she also delivered the
key-note address, entitled “Beyond Emulation.” In the spring,
she taught the Invention o the Classics and Roman Civil Wars.
This year, she maintained a very active research and lecturing
schedule presenting new work on Jerome and Servius at a
panel on commentary at the Association or Jewish Studies
in Boston, a new paper on Ovid’s Heroides and other orms
o responsive continuation at a conerence on orgery at Rice,
and new material rom her next book on the history o the
authentic at “Philological Reflections,” a workshop on philology
held at Princeton. Jointly with Hindy Najman, she presented
a paper on pseudepigraphy as interpretative construct at
the University o Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a longer
version o which will appear later this year in The Study o
the Pseudepigrapha: Fity Years o the Pseudepigrapha at the SBL,
M. Henze and L. I. Lied (eds.). Her book on rhetoric and
Roman poetry, Persuasion, Rhetoric and Roman Poetry, is in press
and expected out later this year with Cambridge University
Press. The highlight o her year was her husband Aaron’s
graduation rom Yale College in May, under the auspices o
the Eli Whitney Program.
Barbara Shailor writes,
“This was an excellent
year or graduate students
working on research
projects that incorporate
medieval and Renaissance
manuscripts, as well as early
printed texts, preserved in
the Beinecke Rare Book
and Manuscript Library.
In her recently completed
dissertation, Rachel Love
ocused on the plethora
o Florus incunables and
heavily annotated 16th-
century editions at the
Beinecke. Scott Davis
in the Religious Studies
Department included in
his dissertation a detailed
analysis o Beinecke MS 951— a Latin manuscript o the Vitae
Patrum that was written at the 15th-century Charterhouse
at Buxheim. And Kyle Conrau-Lewis continues studying the
post-classical tradition o Valerius Maximus; in particular, Kyle
is considering the role o the work o Valerius in monastic
and preaching cultures o the 14th and 15th centuries. These
manuscripts vary in appearance rom exceedingly ugly to quite
lovely (see Beinecke Marston MS 37, . 5r above). Kyle also
presented a paper, as did Kristen Herdman o Medieval Studies,
at a panel I organized or the Research Group on Manuscript
Evidence at Princeton on the peregrinations o manuscripts,
their origins and provenance history. And Carson Koepke, also
in Medieval Studies, received a short-term ellowship rom the
Bibliographical Society o America to work on the revival o
Tironian notes in 9th- and 10th-century codices. The Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library is an important teaching
venue at Yale and a treasure trove o primary source materials or
all students interested in classical texts and their transmission
and re-purposing through the centuries.
Joseph Solodow writes: “Right aer classes ended this spring,
I visited Spain or two weeks. A capsule itinerary: Barcelona—
modernist architecture; Granada—the Alhambra; Madrid—
paintings, and then more paintings. In the course o the year I
gave talks at the Legionaries o Christ College o the Humanities
and at Columbia. I published two book reviews; the books were
about Virgil and Livy. I put the final touches to a short article
on Aeneid VIII—only to learn rom the reeree or a journal
that I’d been anticipated by another scholar! Stung by this
disappointment (not to say embarrassment), I threw mysel
into another article, on a neglected Latin idiom, and resumed
work on a literary commentary on Livy XXI.”
Beinecke Marston MS 37, . 5r: Valerius
Maximus, with the Commentary o
Dionysius de Burgo Sancti Sepulchri
7
Graduate Student News
Kyle Conrau-Lewis used his ellowship year or adventure.
Beginning with a manuscript course at the Árni Magnússon
institute or Icelandic Studies, Kyle then travelled to France,
Austria, the Czech Republic and finally Italy, surveying
numerous manuscripts o Valerius Maximus at various state
libraries and monasteries. Much o this research will appear
in two edited volumes, looking at Valerius Maximus and his
reception in medieval sermons and indexes. Returning to
the USA or the SCS, he was switly of again or a winter
course on paratexts and early modern book culture at the
Israeli Institute or Advanced Studies. To top of the year,
his article on erotic metaphors or literary commentary was
accepted or publication in Mnemosyne. He looks orward
to assisting Barbara Shailor at the Rare Book School and to
editing his dissertation.
Christopher Londa passed translation examinations in
Greek and Latin and oral examinations in our special fields:
“Ancient Libraries,” “Latin Textual Practices,” “Greek Epigram
Collections,” and “Classical Receptions in Nineteenth Century
American Literature by Selected New England Writers.” In
the department’s Works-In-Progress Colloquium, he shared
an extract rom his prospectus with the title “Paraliterary
Labor and the Social Conditions o Authorship: A Chapter
Study o Marcus Tullius Tiro.” [Chris deended his prospectus
successully at the end o May.] He also presented a paper
entitled “Taking or Making Exempla in the Rhetorica ad
Herennium and Cicero’s De Inventione,” first in Yale’s Greco-
Roman Lunch series and then across the pond at the Oxord-
Yale Postgraduate Workshop on Exemplarity (Oriel College,
Oxord). A highlight o the year was the 2019 rendition o
Philology Day “The Counsel o Book-Worms: Literary and
Physical Constructions o the Book in Imperial Greek Writing,”
which he co-organized along with Treasa Bell, Rachel Love, and
Joe Morgan. Chris additionally got his first taste o teaching in
the department as Lab Instructor or Greek 110 in the all and
Instructor o Record or Latin 120 in the spring.
Joe Morgan began a busy third year with a trip to St. Louis,
attending the American Society o Papyrologists’ Summer
Institute at Washington University, where he worked on two
late-5
th
-century papyri rom Oxyrhynchus. He travelled with
the Archaia Summer Travel Seminar to Iceland and Greenland,
where he and several other graduate students and aculty
members explored the intersections o climate science and
cultural memory. Continuing his dive into paleoclimatology,
Joe travelled with other students in Joe Manning’s graduate
seminar to the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada,
to participate in the collection o data rom a Greenlandic
ice core (see Joe suited and booted on page 10). Joe assists
in the collection o historical data rom papyrological sources
as a component o the NSF-sponsored project “Volcanism,
Hydrology, and Social Conflict” spearheaded by Joe Manning.
He plans to continue work this summer on several unpublished
Ptolemaic papyri in the collection o the Center or the Tebtunis
Papyri at UC Berkeley. He is currently composing a prospectus
or his dissertation project, which will explore the role o
Ptolemaic officials in the orchestration o agricultural surveys
vital to the cultivation cycle in the Nile Valley and will seek to
answer how these officials used their privileged access to and
authority over survey operations in the urtherance o private
interests. He will present a paper at the SCS in Washington,
DC, on patterns in the speed o epistolary communication in
3
rd
century Ptolemaic archives.
Noreen Sit is finishing up her time at Yale and preparing
to move to Northwest Arkansas, where she will be teaching
and designing the Latin curriculum at Thaden School, a
new independent school in Bentonville. She and her partner,
an engineer, look orward to starting their new jobs and
exploring the Ozarks with their little dog. This summer,
Noreen is attending the Rusticatio Omnibus, a week-long Latin
immersion program held in West Virginia. This past April,
Noreen traveled to Nebraska to present “Starring Messalina
as Maenad,” which won the CAMWS Presidential Award or
Outstanding Graduate Student Paper. She presented an earlier
version o this paper, which comes rom the third chapter o
her dissertation, at Greco-Roman Lunch in November. Noreen
plans to submit her dissertation, on “Escorted Movement in
Ancient Rome,” in October.
Jennifer Weintritt had a ull and productive year o bringing
her projects at Yale to a close. She finished her dissertation,
“Troy Story: the Greek Epic Cycle in Latin Epic,” advised by
Proessor Irene Peirano Garrison. In August, she went to
Iceland and Greenland with Archaia’s Summer Study Tour or
an intensive introduction to Scandinavian history and culture.
She was thrilled to incorporate some Icelandic literature into
an interdisciplinary course, “What Makes a Classic? Global
Case Studies in Classicism,” which she taught at NYU this
spring. At Yale, she taught an intermediate Latin class with a
digital humanities component, which was developed over the
course o her involvement with the Center or Language Study.
She is moving to Chicago this summer to take up a position as
an assistant proessor o Classics at Northwestern University
in the all.
Jennier Weintritt standing in a fissure created by the volcano Hekla in Iceland
8
Yale Certamen 2018
The center o the Yale classical world is Phelps Hall—except
on one Saturday each November. Then one must go to the
classrooms o William L. Harkness or Linsly-Chittenden.
These larger buildings are needed to accommodate the scores
o high school students who attend the annual Yale Certamen.
Certamen—meaning “competition” or “struggle”—is a quiz-
bowl competition which tests knowledge o Latin grammar
and literature, Roman history, and Greek mythology. This year,
more than 200 high school students rom 14 states—including
Florida, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Wisconsin—participated
in the ninth such tournament at Yale.
The tournament serves a twoold purpose: to encourage
secondary school students to engage with the Classics and
to introduce students to Yale. This year’s event began with
an address by Proessor Milette Gaiman, who spoke on the
Parthenon and the “Birth o Athena” amphora rom the Yale
University Art Gallery. The talk was accessible to the younger
students yet engaging or those more advanced.
Students participate in teams rom their schools, with
three levels o competition: “Novice” or students with one year
o Latin experience, “Intermediate” or those with two, and
“Advanced” or upper-level students. Question writers tailor the
diculty o each level’s questions to the curricular experience
o its competitors. Here is an example o a question used in the
“Advanced” level this year:
“The Peripatetic Cratippus and the plāgōsus Orbilius
both taught what Latin poet, whose involvement at
the Battle o Philippi is mentioned in the third o his
our books o Odes?
ANSWER: HORACE / Q. HORATIUS FLACCUS”
As in quiz-bowl,
competitors may “buzz in”
early: For example, while
many students might know
the answer to the oregoing
question by the end o the
sentence (with the reerence
to Odes), only the more-
accomplished students could
provide the answer by the end
o the independent clause, at
the word poet. A team whose
member gets a “toss-up”
question such as this then is
given two “bonus” questions
with related subject matter.
All participants play three
preliminary rounds, aer
which the highest-scoring
teams clash in a semifinal and
final round in order to crown
the champions. This year,
Boston Latin School (Boston,
Mass.) won the Novice and
Proessor Milette Gaiman lectures on the Parthenon at the opening meeting
From le: Hunter College High School, Boston Latin School, and Phillips Exeter Academy compete in Novice Finals,
which were held in WLH’s Sudler Hall
continued on page 9
9
Yale Certamen continued from page 8
Yale roommates Joseph Kearney (center; ’86 B.A.) and Matthew Haiken
(’86 B.A.) speak to P
atrick Walsh, a student rom Milwaukee, Wisc.
All volunteers receive a T-
shirt emblazoned with the Yale Certamen
motto, lux et veritas et victoria.
Advanced levels, while BASIS DC (Washington, D.C.) won the
Intermediate level. The Advanced finals were held in WLH’s
Sudler Recital Hall, a large auditorium, which was overflowing
with people in a tense i riendly atmosphere.
It is a great privilege or Yale Certamen, led by
undergraduate volunteers, to be permitted to carry the banner
o the Classics Department in this efort. More details about
the tournament—including videos o this year’s final rounds—
are available at www.yalecertamen.org. Questions about the
event or ofers to volunteer may be directed to Michael Kearney
Michael Kearney
Exemplarity Workshop in Oxford, March 10-11, 2019
In March, Proessor Irene Peirano Garrison, along with
Proessor Michal Beth Dinkler rom Yale Divinity School,
brought seven graduate students rom various Yale
departments to an interdisciplinary workshop on Exemplarity
held at Oriel College, Oxord. The workshop gave students
rom Yale the opportunity to share their work with students
and aculty rom both the Classics and the Theology and
Religion aculties at Oxord. Yale Classics was represented by
Talia Boylan, Christopher Londa, and Rachel Love.
The workshop on exemplarity was the culmination o twin
seminars conducted during the Fall semester at Yale and the
Hilary 2019 term at Oxord. The seminar at Yale, “Rhetorics
o the Ancient World,” was led by Pros. Peirano Garrison and
Dinkler and oered students an opportunity to engage rom
a comparative perspective with cultures o rhetoric across the
ancient world. In the final weeks o the semester, the seminar
discussion ocused narrowly on exemplary discourse and its
oundational role in Greco-Roman, Early Christian, and Jewish
rhetorical systems. Papers submitted or the course were then
revised under the supervision o Pros. Peirano Garrison and
Dinkler and presented to the audience in Oxord.
The event was an outstanding success: the papers given by
students rom Yale and Oxord were diverse, stimulating, and
accessible to an interdisciplinary audience; students and aculty
rom both institutions had the opportunity to listen to and
think with new colleagues and riends; and or many graduate
students, it was their first opportunity to present their research
internationally. Talia Boylan delivered a paper that investigated
the scope o Herodotus’ exemplarity across the commentaries
o Eustathius. Chris Londa used the examples o Cicero’s De
Inventione and the Rhetorica ad Herennium to delineate competing
models o rhetorical expertise in1st-century Rome. Rachel Love
reimagined the military handbooks o Frontinus and Vegetius
as mediations on the relationship between exemplarity and
reading. Last but not least, Pro. Peirano Garrison delivered a
keynote address that served as a capstone or both the workshop
and seminar, which challenged the audience to expand beyond
traditional modes o reading exempla and to imagine a more
creative world o interaction between example and reader than
merely antagonistic emulation.
The workshop was made possible by the generous support
o Yale Classics, Archaia, Yale Divinity School, the Center or
the Studies o the Bible in the Humanities, the Oxord Classics
Faculty, and TORCH.
Rachel Love at the Exemplarity conerence
10
Le to right: Nazim Serbest at the controls! Diana Kleiner cutting a dash in Pompeii. Joe Morgan and Megan Poplacean at the Desert Research Institute in Reno
Let:
Kirk Freudenburg congratulating Mizel Stevens on winning the prize or first-year Greek translation Center: Cara Polsley celebrating with Linda
Dickey-Saucier at Commencement Right: Irene Peirano Garrison celebrating with new Ph.D.s Jennier Weintritt and Rachel Love
Le: Egbert B
akker with prizewinners Sam Lee, Katie Shy, and Daphne Martin
Center: Sam Katz cleaning up in the Sophomore Greek and Latin translation exams
Right: Emily Greenwood and Katie Liptak at Commencement
11
Assorted Scenes from the Department’s Year
Above: François Gerardin showing students papyri in the Beinecke that relate to the topics o
their Senior theses Right: Kirk Freudenburg and honorary degree recipient Mary Beard at
Commencement Below: Jessica Lamont accompanying a YAA Tour o Greece in May
12
List of Departmental Events, September 2018-May 2019
Sept. 13 Teresa Morgan (Oxord) “Preaching Cathedrals
and Temples o Christ: Faith in Church in the
Fourth Century CE” (Yale Divinity School lecture)
Sept. 14 Mick Hunter (Yale) “Harmonizing Heaven and
Earth: Ancient Chinese Bells” (AS)
Sept. 19 Gianpiero Rosati (SNS, Pisa) “Pauca meo Stellae
…Genres and Poetic Models in Statius’ Silvae
1.2” (DL)
Sept. 24 Carol Snow (Yale, YUAG) “Recent Conservation
o Late Roman Mosaics in the Museum and the
Field: Gerasa and Sardis” (GRL)
Oct. 8 François Gerardin (Yale) “The Cityscape o New
Poleis in Egypt and West Asia in the Second
Century B.C.” (GRL)
Oct. 10 Seth Schein (UC Davis) “Generic Expectations
and the Interpretation o Attic Tragedy: Some
Preliminary Questions and Cognitive
Considerations” (DL)
Oct. 11 Seth Schein (UC Davis) Work in progress
workshop on a Commentary on Iliad 1 (DL)
Oct. 12 Verity Platt (Cornell) “Bodies, Bases and Borders:
Framing the Divine in Greco-Roman Antiquity”
(AS)
Oct. 15 Daphne Martin, Soa Gunnarsdottir, George
Gemelas, and Theodore Pedas (Yale) “Reviving
Sparta’s Cultural Heritage: The ‘Embracing Our
Monuments in Sparta’ Initiative” (WIP)
Oct. 22 Savannah DiMarco (Yale) “The Wisdom o the
Elephants: What We See in Aelian’s Mirror” (GRL)
Oct. 22 Liam Ahern (Yale) “Chasing Theognis:
Codicological Adventures in Post-War Europe”
(WIP)
Oct. 22 Udit Bery (Yale) “Intrinsic Causes and the
Role o Intelligence in the Philebus” (WGAP)
Oct. 29 Nebo Todorovic (Yale) “Ajaxes between Sarajevo
and the Hague: Working Through Fourth Walls”
(GRL)
Nov. 1 Kathryn Tempest (University o Roehampton)
“Fake Letters: Authors and Agendas in the
Ancient World” (DL
Nov. 2 Karl Taube (UC Riverside) “Atop Flower
Mountain: Flowers, Music and Paradise in
Mesoamerica and the American Southwest” (AS)
Nov. 2 Ricardo Salles (UNAM) “Stoic and Pythagorean
Theories o Everlasting Recurrence” (WGAP)
Nov. 5 Pratima Gopalakrishnan (Religious Studies),
“‘Work or Me but I Will Not Feed You’:
Obligations in the Ancient Household Economy”
(GRL)
Nov. 5 Zachary Wolens (Yale) “Seneca’s Metamorphoses”
(WIP)
Nov. 8 Cyprian Broodbank (Cambridge University) “Is
There a ‘Pre’ to Mediterranean History?” (Annual
Rostovze Lecture)
Nov. 9 Cyprian Broodbank (Cambridge University)
“Presentation o Current Work at Kythera”
(Rostovtze Colloquium)
Nov. 10 Yale-Brown Colloquium on Proessional
Development (papers rom Rachel Love (Yale),
Sam Caldis (Brown), and Erika Valdivieso
(Brown))
Nov. 12 Treasa Bell (Yale) “Pygmalion, Pandora, and the
‘Workshop o Filthy Creation’” (WIP)
Nov. 16 Alain Schnapp (Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne)
“Antiquarianism and Style rom Renaissance to
Enlightenment: Caylus and Winckelmann”
(Dept. Coll.)
Nov. 26 Noreen Sit (Yale) “Messalina as Maenad” (GRL)
Nov. 30 Chris van den Berg (Amherst College) “Caesar’s
Venus and Cicero’s Minerva” (Dept. Coll.)
Dec. 3 Zachary Smith (Yale) “Fictive Orality and Early
Christian Exegesis” (GRL)
Dec. 3 Jonathan Fine (Yale) “O Pots and Pleasures:
Beauty and Taste in the Hippias Major” (WGAP)
Dec. 4 Mireille Lee (Vanderbilt University) “Reflections
on Ancient Greek Mirrors” (AIA)
Dec. 7 James McHugh (University o Southern
Caliornia) “The Changing, Timeless World o
Drugs and Alcohol in Indian Religions” (AS)
Dec. 10 Markus Haner (LMU Munich) “Gods, Ghosts
and Other Co-Authors: A Few Thoughts on
Collaborative Facades in Early Greek and
Classical Texts” (WIP)
Dec. 12 Tim Clarke (Berkeley) “The Trouble with
Separation” (WGAP)
Jan. 18 Jessica Lamont (Yale) “Problems in Style and
Genre” (Dept. Coll.)
Jan. 25 Bissera Pentcheva (Stanord University)
“Ephemeral Liveliness: Gold, Chant and the
Eucharistic Rite” (AS)
SERIES KEY
AIA —Archaeological Institute o America sponsored lectures
(organized by Jessica Lamont and Carolyn Laerrière)
AS —Ancient Societies Workshop (Archaia Core Workshop);
the theme or 2018-19 was “Sensory Experiences in Ancient
and Premodern Ritual” (organized by Carolyn Laerrière)
Dept. Coll. — Annual departmental colloquium; the theme or
2018-19 was “Historiographies o Style” (organized by Milette
Gaiman and Irene Peirano Garrison)
DL —Occasional departmental lectures
GRL —Greco-Roman Lunch (organized by Emily Helm, Joe
Morgan, and CJ Rice)
WGAP —Working Group in Ancient Philosophy (organized by
Daniel Ferguson, Jake Rohde, and Lea Schroeder)
WIP —Works in Progress colloquium
13
Jan. 28 Joe Solodow (Yale) “Horace and Ben Jonson
Invite…Comparison” (GRL)
Feb. 11 Chris Londa (Yale) “Making or Taking Exempla
in the Rhetorica ad Herennium and Cicero’s
De Inventione” (GRL)
Feb. 15 Ed Kamens and Riley Soles (Yale) “Seeing, Scene,
the Seen and the Unseen” (AS)
Feb. 18 Jeanne Neumann (Davidson College) “Est
enim dicilis curarum rerum alienarum: Terence
and his Contemporary Adulescentes” (WIP)
Feb. 20 Alessandro Barchiesi (NYU) “Statius’ Achilleid:
Fragment, Design, Ideology” (Graduate Elected
Speaker)
Feb. 22 Marie-Claire Beaulieu (Tus University and the
Perseids Project) “Treebanking or Teaching and
Research” (DL)
Feb. 26 Alison Futrell (University o Arizona) “Barge o
Heaven: Cleopatra the Goddess” (AIA)
Feb. 28 Fernande Hölscher (University o Constance)
“Athens and the Peisistratids aer 510 BC:
Tradition Memory – Damnatio Memoriae” (DL)
March 1 Tonio Hölscher (University o Heidelberg)
“Styles in Greek and Roman Visual Art:
Technique, Décor, and Social Habitus” (Dept. Coll.)
March 1 Lea Schroeder (Yale) “Prolēpseis in
Epictetus’ Discourses” (WGAP)
March 4 C.J. Rice (Yale) “‘Whatever the Master Orders
is Not Shameul’: Objectiying the Boy-Slave in
the Roman Domestic Sphere” (GRL)
March 8 Kim Haines-Eitzen (Cornell) “Acoustic Territories
in the Judean Desert’s Wadi Qilt” (AS)
March 25 Kyle Conrau-Lewis (Yale) “The Declamatory
Case Against Exemplarity and Rhetoric Research”
(GRL)
March 27 Emily Wilson (UPenn) “Translating the Classics
Again: How And Why” – Annual Adam and
Anne Amory Parry Lecture
March 28 John Marincola (Florida State) “Writing
Contemporary History in the Ancient World”
(annual joint YDS, JDST, Classics lecture)
March 28 André Laks (Universidad Panamericana and
Princeton) “Liberty Under the Law: The Case o
Plato’s Laws” (DL)
March 29 André Laks (Universidad Panamericana and
Princeton) “Parmenides and the Limits o
Grammar” (WGAP)
April 1 Chris Londa (Yale) “Paraliterary Labor and the
Social Conditions o Authorship – Marcus
Tullius Cicero”; Treasa Bell (Yale) “The Many-
Mouth Moti in Classical Epic” (WIP)
April 3 Edith Hall (KCL) “How Ancient Wisdom Can
Change Your Lie” (Yale Well Series)
April 5 Jim Porter (Berkeley) “The Trouble with Style”
(Dept. Coll.)
April 8 Dexter Brown (Yale) “Interpreting the
Superfluous: The Homeric Scholia and Philo o
Alexandria” (GRL)
April 9 Senior Essay Symposium
April 11 Philology Day: “An Aernoon Among the
Papyri,” a materials workshop at the Beinecke
Rare Book & Manuscript Library eaturing
presentations by Yale aculty and graduate
students: Ann Hanson, Dexter Brown, Kyle
Conrau-Lewis, Erynn Kim, Sylva Kroeber,
and Joe Morgan
April 12 Philology Day continued: Karen ní Mheallaigh
(University o Exeter) “Imagining the Book:
Textilism and the Animated Age”; Pauline
LeVen (Yale) “Critters, Matter, Metamorphosis
in Imperial Thought”; AnneMarie Luijendijk
(Princeton) “Cedro Flavus or Cacata Carta?:
Physical and Literary Treatments o Books
Beyond Reading”; Raaella Cribiore (NYU)
“Winged Words: Were Stenographers
Trustworthy?”
15 April Joe Morgan (Yale) “A Market in Misinormation?
Networks o Knowledge and Power in the
Ptolemaic Administration”; Cara Polsley (Yale)
“Homer’s Final Alternative World:
Odyssey 24.529-530 and the Non-Nostos o
Odysseus” (WIP)
April 17 Meredith Saran (Trinity College) “Teaching
Vergil’s Imperium and Otherness through
American Film and Television” (WIP)
April 19 Mary Weismantel (Northwestern University)
“Playing with Things: the Moche Sex Pots” (AS)
Juan Piñeros Glasscock (Yale) “The Unity in
Aristotle’s Account o Perception” (WGAP)
April 29 Sara Misgen (Yale) “Characterizing Apostles:
Narrative Agency in the Apocalypse o Peter &
the Apocalypse o Paul” (GRL)
May 3 Christie Thomas (Dartmouth) “Inquiry rom
Names at Cratylus 435d.” (WGAP)
May 3-4 Workshop on “Relie: Greek / Roman /
Late Antique,” co-organized by the New
Antiquity Group, with the help o Susan
Matheson at the YUAG. Speakers: Verity Platt
(Cornell), Francesco de Angelis (Columbia),
Patch Crowley (Chicago), Nate Jones
(Washington University, St. Louis), Nikolaus
Dietrich (Heidelberg), Seth Estrin (Chicago),
Caspar Meyer (Bard Graduate Center).
Gallery sessions led by Carolyn Laerrière (Yale),
Nicola Barham (Michigan).
Keep the news coming!
Anyone with news is invited to write
to linda.dickey-[email protected]
14
Alumni News
Chris van den Berg (Ph.D. ’06) reports,
“I received a ellowship to be at the
American Academy in Rome (a “Rome
Prize”) in 2019-2020 as well as an ACLS
Burkhardt Residential Fellowship or
Tenured Scholars (Princeton University,
2020-2021). Both ellowships are
to work on my third book, Critical
Matter, a broad study o Greco-Roman
literary criticism and its relationship to
material and visual cultures. Also, I can
report that, along with Ayelet Haimson
Lushkov and Pramit Chaudhuri, I
attended a great talk in Austin, TX in
March by Proessor Emily Greenwood.”
Elizabeth Carls (’89) writes, “I continue
to enjoy being a Federal agency attorney
in the Department o the Interior’s Oce
o the Solicitor, where I have worked
since 2004. I graduated rom Yale in
1989, with a B.A. in Classics, Latin
Literature. I subsequently earned an
M.A. in philosophy at Boston College
(studying primarily Plato, Aristotle,
Kant and Heidegger), then a J.D. at
Boston College Law School. All o
these studies have been excellent
preparation in my primary task as an
attorney-advisor, which is helping my
clients make and express distinctions.
My husband, Louis, is a wildland
fire ecologist or the Bureau o Land
Management in the Department o the
Interior. My two children, Ursula (13)
and William (10), are each very active
and inventive, and enjoy the usual kid
activities. Ursula thinks she might like
to study Latin in high school, rather
than Spanish. Her public middle school
does not ofer Latin, much to my dismay.
I am prompted to write in because I just
returned rom the Yale Slavic Chorus
50th reunion in New Haven, and am
pleased to report that, with me, there
were no ewer than three Classics
Majors in the room! Claire Saint-Amour
(’21), and Kaitlin Kan (’22) are current
“Slavs.” It was also lovely to walk under
Phelps Tower in the sunshine!”
Jonathan Desnick (’14) went back or
more o the Classics in 2017-18, to
read or an Mst. in Ancient Philosophy
at Teddy Hall, Oxord, where he also
read Ancient Greek or three hours a
week! He is now finishing his second
year o medical school at Mount Sinai in
New York.
Weatherly Ralph Emans (’97) writes,
“My husband Matt and I welcomed baby
Henry Wickes Emans on March 2. He
is abulous (i.e., knows he’s the third
kid). Meanwhile, our older daughter
Marian, 6, is already obsessed with Greek
myths. William, 4, preers his Roman
warrior ship.”
Rebecca Gandy (’13) writes, “We
welcomed a new baby boy on 25
th
February 2019, bearing the appropriately
Latinate name o Felix — we hope he
benefits rom all the connotations o
its meaning. His godather is Spencer
Klavan (’14), who is currently pursuing
a doctorate in Classics at Oxord, so the
baby has no hope o escaping a classical
indoctrination!”
Vered Lev Kenaan (Ph.D. ’95) is
Proessor o Classics and Comparative
Literature at the University o Haia.
From 2012 to 2016 she served as the
chair o Hebrew
and Comparative
Literature Depart-
ment. She is the
chie editor o a
book series Myth
in the Humanities,
published by
Haia University
Press and Pardes
Publishing House,
and is also editor o the journal Dappim:
Research in Literature. Her new
book, The Ancient Unconscious: Psycho-
analysis and the Classical Text will be
published by Oxord University Press, in
July 2019.
Bryant Kirkland (Ph.D. ’16) continues to
enjoy lie in Los Angeles and at UCLA, a
happiness due in no small part to the act
that his commute (mostly by bike) avoids
LA gridlock, and to the act that he has yet
to experience a major earthquake. He has
an article orthcoming on Plutarch.
Michèle Lowrie (’84) writes, “This year,
I’ve been on sabbatical with an NEH grant
to finish up my book, Security, A Roman
Metaphor. I spent August and September
at the Center or Advanced Studies, LMU
Munich, working with Barbara Vinken
on our book, Civil War and the Collapse
o the Social Bond: The Roman Tradition at
the Heart o the Modern, as well as Winter
term at the Institute o Advanced Study
in Durham, England, as part o Amy
Russell’s working group, “Who are ‘We
the People’?””
Andrew Michaelson (’90) headed to
Yale in 1986, hell-bent on becoming a
Latin teacher. Andrew writes, “Although
my C-plus in Latin 307a reshmen year
put the kibosh on those dreams, I hung
in there long enough or a Classical Civ.
major and promptly became a planner
or the New Haven Department o Police
continued on page 15
Graduate Classics Alumni in Memoriam
Mary K. Duquette, ’51 M.A., died
on March 16, 2019 in Jafrey, NH,
where she had resided since 1963.
Mary enjoyed motorcycle rides,
playing gol, collecting antique
lamps, birdwatching, needlework
and knitting, ollowing baseball and
ootball, and singing and listening to
music. She was an active member o
the United Church o Jarey or over
50 years.
Edward Jay Ferraro, ’69 B.A., ’74 M.A.,
died on January 1, 2019.
We have received notice o the death
o Richard W. Hooper, ’68 B.A.,
’75 Ph.D. Latterly Dr. Hooper taught
History at Southern Connecticut
State University.
Mary Carr Soles, ’76 Ph.D, died on
January 4, 2018. For 28 years she
served as Curator o Ancient Art at
the North Carolina Museum o Art
in Raleigh. During her career she
transormed the museum’s minor
collection o ancient art into one o
national significance.
15
Alumni News continued from page 14
Service. I stayed in police work as a
planner, a consultant, and an officer in
Portland, ME. I ound the world o
policing oreign, ethically complex, and
oten antiquated, and I thought oten
o my senior essay on Catullus and
medieval poetry. Catullus’ language
and its subsequent imitations were an
interpretative conundrum, not unlike
some o the interpretative challenges o
rontline policing. So although the Yale
Classics Department didn’t produce a
great classicist in me, it did provide the
ideal mental gymnastics to prepare or
police work. Unortunately, my career
was cut short in 1998 when I was
diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, but I
thought that the department would like
to know that the education in Classics
that I received at Yale had at least a tiny
impact on the police proession and on
the habitability o two cities.”
Sarah Norvell (’15) has finished the first
year o a Ph.D. in Classics in the Program
in the Ancient World at Princeton and
will be working as a trench supervisor
this summer at the Molyvoti Thrace
Archaeological Project, where she will
be joined by some members o the Yale
Classics department. She has enjoyed
seeing some amiliar aces rom Yale in
her first year at Princeton.
Warren S. Smith (Ph.D. ’68) My
articles on St. Paul and Classical Culture
appeared in Ancient Narrative 15 (2019).
I am currently working on a paper on the
religious symbolism o the donkey in
Christian and Muslim culture.
Kathryn Blenkinsop Hill (’91) writes,
“Still teaching math to high-schoolers, but
had some un in February with the school
Latin teacher…We did an hour-long
seminar with a whole group o students
(mostly Latin students) who wanted to
know more about ancient Greek, a subject
not oered at our school. I brought
along my old Liddell and Scott, and we
had tons o un doing a quick overview
o the alphabet and introductory words.
It had definitely been a long time, but I
enjoyed mysel. It elt good to dust o
the cobwebs a little!”
Don Squires (’75) writes, “In May
2018 I had the privilege o attending
the symposium held in Phelps Hall to
honor Victor Bers on his retirement.
Victor was my avorite proessor at Yale,
and I will always cherish the memories
o his classes. Also, in March o this
year I presented a talk at the American
Numismatic Society in New York
entitled ‘Reading Byzantine Coins,’ as
part o the Society’s ongoing Money
Talks series.”
W. Royal Stokes (’65 Ph.D.), now
eighty-nine and the recipient o the 2014
Lietime Achievement Award o the Jazz
Journalists Association, is at work in
Elkins, West Virginia, on a memoir. As
or recollections o his time in Phelps
Hall working on his doctorate, one o
the more memorable is o Bernard Knox
(1914-2010) advising his Sophocles
seminar, in January 1961, to read the
New York Times on the morrow. We did
and learned that Harvard had stolen
him rom Yale to become, in the all,
the first Lietime Director o its newly
created Center or Hellenic Studies
in Washington, D.C. Although long
absent rom the academic scene, Royal
has kept up his Greek and Latin and is
currently rereading two o his avorites,
The Odyssey and Propertius. The Essential
W. Royal Stokes Jazz, Blues & Beyond
Reader (Hannah Books) saw publication
in the spring. Drawn rom his extensive
archives and including some previously
unpublished materials, it provides a
generous sampling o Royal’s journalism
rom his years as the Washington Post’s
jazz critic and across his our decades as
a contributor to JazzTimes, DownBeat,
and online orums. Rounding out the
volume are an autobiographical essay on
his proessorial decade—the 1960s at
our universities—and the transcript o
his 2010 two-hour presentation at the
University o the District o Columbia
about his jazz lie. More than eighty
photographs enhance the collection.
Royal’s five books on jazz and blues and
his trilogy o novels Backwards Over are
available rom Amazon.
Sonya Taafe’s (’08 M.A.) fith book and
second collection o short fiction, Forget
the Sleepless Shores was published in
August 2018 by
Lethe Press and
was a finalist in
the LGBTQ SF/F/
Horror category
o the 31
st
annual Lambda
Literary Awards.
This August
Sonya will be a
Guest o Honor
at NecronomiCon Providence 2019:
http://necronomicon-providence.com/
guests-o-honor/
Livia Tenzer (’83), continues to edit
museum and art publications in New
York. In 2018-19 she was in New Haven
requently, editing the catalogue William
Hunter and the Anatomy o the Modern
Museum or the Yale Center or British
Art (exhibition Feb. 14 - May 20, 2019).
Latin and Greek were involved, as Hunter
was not only a man o science but also
a collector o early editions o classical
texts. Drop her a line at ltenzer@gmail.
com to hear more about this and other
editing projects.
This summer, Natasha Thondavadi
(’14) is graduating rom Harvard
Business School with an M.B.A. and is
returning to her previous role in Chicago
as a Consultant at the Boston Consulting
Group. She is also getting married to a
ellow Yalie (Harry Larson ’14) and in
true humanities ashion, spending lots
o time looking at romantic wedding
poetry, reading all the epithalamia in the
canon.
W. Royal Stokes (seated) with amily in Elkins, West
Virginia, Christmas 2018
Photo by Amy Banowetz Stokes
Yale University
Department o Classics
P.O. Box 208266
New Haven, CT 06520-8266
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Nonprofit Org.
U.S. Postage
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New Haven, CT
Permit No. 526
Parry Lecture – Emily Wilson
Trying to get into the
room where Emily Wilson
was due to speak was
complicated. As any
o the attendees o her
2019 Adam and Ann
Parry Lecture on “Why
Translation Matters” can
tell you, the journey rom
the lobby o Bingham Hall
consisted o long, crowded
rides in the elevator
with everyone rom first-
year undergraduates, to
proessors, to interested
members o the public, all
making their way to the Bingham Library where all the seats
were already occupied. Eventually, we all ound places on
floors and tables, some even standing in the hallway.
A ormer Yale graduate student (Classics and Comparative
Literature Ph.D. ’01), Wilson has become a towering public
figure in the field o Classics, reflected in the staggering
applause which she received ater Chris Kraus’s introduction.
Wilson started of her talk with a dramatic reading o a scene
rom book 19 o her translation o Homer’s Odyssey, making a
point about preserving the dramatic nature o Homer’s voice.
This reading—eaturing Pro. Wilson perorm Odysseus and
Penelope’s characters, in the voices in which she imagined
them as a translator—elicited both laughter and insight.
In all seriousness, Wilson’s resh and distinctive translation
reflects her deep engagement with the text, and in her talk,
she guided a rapt audience through the diferent choices she
made as scholar-translator. Broadly, Wilson first discussed her
approach to translating the Odyssey and then modern issues in
the field o translation. Her commitment to the perormative
aspect o Homer led her to the choice o iambic pentameter
to structure the poem. She deends this choice not as true,
o course, to the dactylic hexameter o Homeric epic, but as
the most elicitous equivalent in English meter. Indeed, a
recurring theme in her talk was balancing modern English with
the importance o staying close to Homer and, by extension,
trying to ignore the mediation o past translators. The Odyssey
has been translated more times than rosy-fingered dawn rises
in Homeric epic, so why translate it again? To answer this,
Wilson told the audience that she reread book nine o the
Odyssey in Greek and a dozen diferent English translations
and asked hersel: did they do what she would? Having read
her final publication, we have our answer.
Another critical and overlooked Homeric characteristic
that Wilson wanted to save in her translation is Homer’s
polyvocality. Wilson ound that, in rereading the text in
preparation or her translation, Homer enriches his work
with layers o psychological depth as well as the diferent
voices o a wide array o characters. It can be all too easy to
flatten the Odyssey into a story solely about the journey o
the titular character, minimizing every other figure into a oil
meant only to reflect him: Calypso becomes a nymphomaniac,
Polyphemus a monster, and the slave-girls whom he brutally
murders merely maids.
Wilson concluded her talk with a sneak peek o her
upcoming translation o the Iliad and some impassioned
shop talk about the problematic invisibility o the translator
or academic careers and tenure prospects (ew departments
recognize translations as original, seminal interpretative
intellectual works). Wilson argued that, or women scholar-
translators, these structural challenges are compounded by
the tendency to gender the translation o certain classical
genres as male. There then ollowed a lively Q&A session.
This lecture was not the first time in recent history that Yale
invited Wilson to campus to speak about her work as scholar-
translator. Judging by the level o engagement at this lecture
and the applause which greeted her talk, more invitations will
soon ollow.
Grace Blaxill
