We are very happy to announce that (the newly minted) Dr. Claire Catenaccio will be joining the Department of Classical Studies at Duke University as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2017! Claire, who specializes in ancient drama and performance, recently defended her dissertation, entitled "Monody and Dramatic Technique in Late Euripides." Claire has played an active role in the Classics department community, directing several of our annual Greek and Latin plays, including Seneca's Thyestes, Euripides' Alcestis, and an adaptation of Book 9 of Homer's Iliad. While we will miss her presence at Columbia, we wish her all the best in her new position at Duke!
Charles McNamara (PhD 2016) - 2016-2017 SCS/NEH Fellow at the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae
Dr. Charles McNamara, one of our recent graduates, has been working as a SCS/NEH Fellow at the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in Munich, Germany over the course of the past year. Charley's work at the TLL has included writing articles on the words nervosus, remisceo, remollio, remoror, remunerator, ren, and renideo. We can't wait to read Charley's entries!
PSL-Columbia Exchange
On May 5-6, a number of Columbia faculty and graduate students flew to Paris to participate in a collaboration with PSL (Paris Sciences et Lettres). The 2-day conference focused on "How to read: objects, images, texts" and put scholars from a number of fields (Classics, Art History & Archaeology, East Asian Studies, and History) in dialogue with one another. The Classics Department is looking forward to welcoming our PSL colleagues when they come to Columbia in September for a parallel event. For a program of the May event, please visit this webpage.
Back row (left to right): Joseph Howley (Classics, Columbia), Michael Economou (History, Columbia), Bilal Annan (EPHE), Pierre-Philippe Corriger (EPHE), François Queyrel (EPHE), Stéphane Verger (EPHE/ENS), David Lurie (EALAC, Columbia), Marcus Folch (Classics, Columbia), Mary-Evelyn Farrior (Classical Studies, Columbia), Morgan Belzic (EPHE)
Front row (left to right): Elizabeth Heintges (Classics, Columbia), Martin Szewczyk (EPHE), John Ma (Classics, Columbia), Francesco de Angelis (Art History & Archaeology, Columbia)
(from left to right): Li Feng (EALAC, Columbia), Joseph Howley (Classics, Columbia), Stéphane Verger (EPHE/ENS), François Queyrel (EPHE), David Lurie (EALAC, Columbia), Marcus Folch (Classics, Columbia), Ludovic Laugier (Musée du Louvre), Michael Economou (History, Columbia), Francesco De Angelis (Art History & Archaeology, Columbia), John Ma (Classics, Columbia), Andreas Stauder (EPHE), Mary-Evelyn Farrior (Classical Studies, Columbia), Olivier Venture (EPHE), Elizabeth Heintges (Classics, Columbia), Jules Buffet (EPHE), Martin Szewczyk (EPHE), Morgan Belzic (EPHE), Florence Monier (CNRS/ENS), Pierre-Philippe Corriger (EPHE).
Book Launch for Karen Van Dyck's "Austerity Measures: The New Greek Poetry"
Since the crisis hit in 2008, Greece has played host to a cultural renaissance unlike anything seen in the country for over thirty years. In Austerity Measures, the very best of the writing to emerge from that creative ferment—much of it never before translated into English—is gathered for the first time, featuring poems written by native Greeks, émigrés and migrants alike. Yanis Varoufakis calls it "living proof that the Greek crisis is of global significance." We will be joined by editor Karen Van Dyck and poets Maria Margaronis, Hiva Panahi, Gazmend Kapllani, Stephanos Papadopoulos, and Yusef Komunyakaa. Co-sponsored by Black Sea Networks at Columbia University. More details are available here.
Event date:
Tuesday, March 21, 2017 - 7:00pm
Book Launch for Marcus Folch's "The City and the Stage"
You are invited to the book launch cocktail party for Professor Marcus Folch's new book, "The City and the Stage" published by Oxford Univeristy Press.
The party will be held on Wednesday April 27th, 2016 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM at the Faculty House Ivy Lounge & Coffee Bar, 64 Morningside Drive
THE CITY AND THE STAGE
PERFORMANCE, GENRE, AND GENDER IN PLATO'S LAWS
Marcus Folch
DESCRIPTION
What role did poetry, music, song, and dance play in the social and political life of the ancient Greek city? How did philosophy respond to, position itself against, and articulate its own ambitions in relation to the poetic tradition? How did ancient philosophers theorize and envision alternatives to fourth-century Athenian democracy? The City and the Stage poses such questions in a study of the Laws, Plato's last, longest, and unfinished philosophical dialogue. Reading the Laws in its literary, historical, and philosophical contexts, this book offers a new interpretation of Plato's final dialogue with the Greek poetic tradition and an exploration of the dialectic between philosophy and mimetic art. Although Plato is often thought hostile to poetry and famously banishes mimetic art from the ideal city of the Republic, The City and the Stage shows that in his final work Plato made a striking about-face, proposing to rehabilitate Athenian performance culture and envisaging a city, Magnesia, in which poetry, music, song, and dance are instrumental in the cultivation of philosophical virtues. Plato's views of the performative properties of music, dance, and poetic language, and the psychological underpinnings of aesthetic experience receive systematic treatment in this book for the first time. The social role of literary criticism, the power of genres to influence a society and lead to specific kinds of constitutions, performance as a mechanism of gender construction, and the position of women in ancient Greek performance culture are central themes throughout this study. A wide-ranging examination of ancient Greek philosophy and fourth-century intellectual culture, The City and the Stage will be of significance to anyone interested in ancient Greek literature, performance, and Platonic philosophy in its historical contexts.
Columbia University Ancient World Graduate Student Conference: Abstract Deadline
REFUGE AND REFUGEES IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
November 11-12, 2016. Columbia University in the City of New York
Abstracts are due by May 2, 2016. Please email cuconference2016@gmail.com
We invite papers from graduate students working across disciplines related to the ancient world for a two-day conference which will explore the issues of refuge and refugees. From representations of refugees and the notions of “refuge” to their physical traces in the archaeological record, we hope to discuss how ancient societies experienced and conceptualized the flight and plight of displaced peoples.
In light of the recent upsurge in work on ancient Mediterranean migration and exile, as well as current events, new questions arise: What heuristic value does the term “refugee” have for our understanding of the ancient equivalent? How do we define refuge and refugees? Where do we look for the voices of refugees among the ancient evidence? What and where are the sites of “refuge” attested across the ancient Mediterranean world?
We welcome papers in any disciplinary field––and interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged––pertaining to the ancient Mediterranean world and surrounding regions, including Egypt, the Near East and the expanses of the Roman Empire, and falling within the period spanning from the Bronze Age to Late Antiquity.
Undergraduate Open House
Come and find out about Majoring and concentrating in Classics, Classical Studies, and Ancient Studies! Free food!
Tues. 23 February 4-5:30pm in Hamilton 617b
Symposium: Philosophy in Cicero's Letters
Co-sponsored by the Department of Classics and the Society of Fellows in the Humanities
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE)—ill-fated statesman during the collapse of the Roman Republic, Latin orator extraordinaire, and the author of a wide-ranging and influential corpus of philosophical writings—is unique among premodern individuals in that we possess large parts of his correspondence and are thus unusually well informed about both the minutiae of his life and the developments of his thought. In recent years and months, scholarly interest has increasingly turned to the philosophical aspects of this correspondence, which contains everything from passing references to philosophical jokes, serious disquisitions, and the author's attempts to apply philosophical precepts to his own and his correspondents' lives.
The one-day symposium, "Philosophy in Cicero's Letters" aims to capture this moment in the fast-developing scholarship on Cicero, ancient philosophy, and intellectual history.
Four scholars who are right now working on some aspects of the topic will be presenting papers: Margaret Graver (Dartmouth), Nathan Gilbert (University of Toronto), Katharina Volk (Columbia), and Raphael Woolf (King's College London. These speakers will be paired with responses from four established specialists on Cicero, ancient philosophy, and late Republican culture: Yelena Baraz (Princeton), Brad Inwood (Yale), Wolfgang Mann (Columbia), and James Zetzel (Columbia).
Carmela Franklin Elected President of the Medieval Academy of America
Professor Carmela Vircillo Franklin, has been elected President of the Medieval Academy of America.
New York Classical Club Oral Reading Context
New York Classical Club Contests 2016
Oral Reading of Greek and Latin
Saturday, 9 April 2016, 2:30pm
602 Hamilton Hall, Columbia University
ALL ARE WELCOME TO ATTEND
The New York Classical Club is pleased to announce two prize contests:
I. Prizes for the Oral Reading of Greek: 1st: $300; 2nd: $200; 3rd: $100.
II. Prizes for the Oral Reading of Latin: 1st: $300; 2nd: $200; 3rd: $100.
Purpose
To encourage students to acquire both facility and enjoyment in the oral performance of works of Greek and Latin literature, all of which were originally created with the intention of their being performed orally and not read silently.
Eligibility
Any student of Greek or Latin (elementary, secondary school, undergraduate, or graduate level). Contestants may compete for both the Greek and Latin prizes, or for either one.
Format of the Contests
1. One set passage for all contestants:
a) Greek: Iliad, Book 3, lines 95-110
b) Latin: Aeneid, Book 4, lines 265-78
2. One passage of ancient Greek/Latin literature chosen by the individual contestant (poetry or prose, ca. 15 lines). Contestants are required to supply three photocopies of this passage for the judges.
Judges of the Contest
Prof. Katharina Volk (Columbia University; Director of the NYCC Oral Reading Contests)
Prof. Sulochana Asirvatham (Montclair State University)
Prof. Joshua Katz (Princeton University)
Criteria for Judgment
1. Contestants will be judged on the consistency of pronunciation, metrical and rhythmic clarity, and literary expressiveness.
2. Memorization of the performed texts is optional and will not be a criterion in the evaluation of the contestants.
(The judges reserve the right not to award one or more of the above prizes.)
Entries
Students who wish to enter the contest must e-mail Prof. Katharina Volk at kv2018@columbia.edu by April 2nd.
Marcus Folch Awarded Heyman Center Fellowship
Assistant Professor of Classics Marcus Folch was selected for a Heyman Center Fellowship for 2016-17.
The fellowship is funded by The Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia and provide faculty the opportunity to work on research projects and to participate in the Heyman Center Fellows Seminar.
The project Professor Folch will be working on while on fellowship at the Heyman Center will be the first major study of bondage, incarceration, and the prison in ancient Greece and Rome. This book explores the history of incarceration through the lens of ancient law and philosophy, and it contextualizes the history of the prison alongside forms of bondage that are often overlooked in studies of incarceration in antiquity (e.g., slavery, debt bondage, and execution). It departs from earlier studies of the ancient prison by concentrating not only on the historical reconstruction of the ancient prison, but also on the literature of incarceration; and it traces a literary tradition, which appears as early as Archaic Greek poetry and spans into early Christian hagiography, in which the prison becomes a site of political dissent, a space to critique, and articulate values antithetical to, the dominant cultures of ancient Greece and Rome. Its chief contribution is to propose a new interpretive framework for understanding the political function and sociology of incarceration in antiquity, arguing for the centrality of the prison in ancient notions of sovereignty and restoring a neglected institution to a central place in ancient Greco-Roman literature and history.
The City and the Stage, Publishes October 2015
What role did poetry, music, song, and dance play in the social and political life of the ancient Greek city? How did philosophy respond to, position itself against, and articulate its own ambitions in relation to the poetic tradition? How did ancient philosophers theorize and envision alternatives to fourth-century Athenian democracy?
The City and the Stage poses such questions in a study of the Laws, Plato's last, longest, and unfinished philosophical dialogue. Reading the Laws in its literary, historical, and philosophical contexts, this book offers a new interpretation of Plato's final dialogue with the Greek poetic tradition and an exploration of the dialectic between philosophy and mimetic art. Although Plato is often thought hostile to poetry and famously banishes mimetic art from the ideal city of the Republic, The City and the Stage shows that in his final work Plato made a striking about-face, proposing to rehabilitate Athenian performance culture and envisaging a city, Magnesia, in which poetry, music, song, and dance are instrumental in the cultivation of philosophical virtues. Plato's views of the performative properties of music, dance, and poetic language, and the psychological underpinnings of aesthetic experience receive systematic treatment in this book for the first time.
The social role of literary criticism, the power of genres to influence a society and lead to specific kinds of constitutions, performance as a mechanism of gender construction, and the position of women in ancient Greek performance culture are central themes throughout this study. A wide-ranging examination of ancient Greek philosophy and fourth-century intellectual culture, The City and the Stage will be of significance to anyone interested in ancient Greek literature, performance, and Platonic philosophy in its historical contexts.
The City and the Stage: Performance, Genre, and Gender in Plato's Laws
Hardcover. 400 pp. Oxford University Press.
October 2015
Deborah Steiner Named Institute for Advanced Studies Fellow
Deborah Steiner awarded a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton for fall 2015.
Carmella Vircillo Franklin Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship
Professor of Classics, Carmella Vircillo Franklin, was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in April. Professor Franklin was one of eight Columbia University faculty and among 175 scholars, artists, and scientists chosen from more than 3,100 applicants this year.
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation provides grants for fellows to pursue work in their field. Professor Franklin's research focuses on medieval Latin texts and their manuscripts and she will use the fellowship to prepare the first critical edition of the Liber Pontificalis of the 12th century, to be published in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. This text is at the center of a larger project provisionally entitled “The Liber pontificalis of Pandulphus Romanus: From Schismatic Document to Renaissance Exemplar,” a study of the reception of the papal chronicle created during the schism of 1130.
Elizabeth Irwin Awarded NEH Fellowship
Elizabeth Irwin, Professor of Classics at Columbia University, was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Spring 2015.
Stathis Gourgouris Awarded Lenfest Distinguished Faculty
Professor of Classics, English, and Comparative Literature at Columbia University Stathis Gourgouris was awarded Lenfest Distinguished Faculty. This award is given each year to “faculty of unusual merit across a range of professorial activities—including scholarship, University citizenship and professional involvement—with a primary emphasis on the instruction and mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students.”
Karen Van Dyck Named Michael I. Sovern Affiliated Fellow
Kimon A. Doukas Professor of Hellenic Studies Karen Van Dyck was named Michael I. Sovern Affiliated Fellow by the American Academy in Rome for Spring 2015. The fellowship enables a member of the Columbia community to spend six weeks in residence at the Academy.
Joseph Howley Awarded Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Critical Bibliography
Joseph Howley, Assistant Professor of Classics at Columbia University, was one of 20 awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Critical Bibliography at the Rare Book School for 2014-16 in Charlottesville, Va.
Alan Cameron Recognized by the British Academy
Professor Emeritus Alan Cameron was awarded the 2013 Kenyon Medal for Classical Studies and Archaeology by the British Academy, citing “Alan Cameron has produced a major series of books on various aspects of the later Graeco-Roman world, from early Hellenistic times to the late Empire. He has a remarkable flair for synthesising literary with social and political history, at the same time clarifying the nature and relationships of the sources, and he regularly subjects long-accepted doctrines to examination and challenge.” The award is given every two years since 1957.