Upcoming New Humanities Faculty Salon features Rosalie Stoner, February 24th!

New Humanities Faculty Salon

Tuesday, February 24

6:00-7:30pm

Uris Hall, Room 107 (Calder Lounge)

Register here.

Please join Division of Humanities Dean Bruno Bosteels in welcoming our newest colleagues from across the division.  

Hosted by the Division of Humanities in the Arts and Sciences, the New Humanities Faculty Salons are an opportunity to meet new faculty members as they join the Columbia Humanities community.  Learn about their current work while you enjoy conversation, drinks, and snacks with faculty and graduate students.  By bringing together scholars from across the Division, we hope to open conversations across the wider Humanities community.  

This February, we welcome:

  • Chika Ogura, Lecturer in Japanese Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures   

  • Ethan Plaue, Assistant Professor Department of English and Comparative Literature   

  • C. Riley Snorton, Professor English and Comparative Literature;  Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender  

  • Rosalie Stoner, Assistant Professor Department of Classics

Moderated by:

  • Bruno Bosteels, Dean of Humanities; Jesse and George Siegel Professor in the Humanities

Faculty and graduate students from all divisions are welcome to attend.  Wine and snacks will be served. 

Registration is required.  Register here to attend.

Columbia Global Core in Athens, Curatorial Project Summer 2026 Course

Columbia Summer Global Core in Athens: Curatorial Project 

Program: The Columbia Summer Global Core in Athens: Curatorial Project is a three week summer program that offers a Global Core Course: Hellenism and the Topographical Imagination (3 points.) This program takes Athens as a vantage point to consider larger contemporary issues regarding urban planning and nation-making, public life and democracy, climate crisis and displacement, and immigration and the accommodation of cultural alterity. Combine seminar study with field visits to unique locations, meetings with local experts, and the acquisition of practical project-based skills. The program culminates in an online permanent exhibition curated by the students that is historically based and contributes to the public discourse about contemporary Greece and its place in the world.

Application Deadline: Friday, February 13th. Click ‘Apply Now’ on the program website to begin your application. 

Info Session: We will hold a virtual info session for the program on Tuesday February 3rd from 2-3pm. Please register here to attend and/or receive the recording afterwards. The recording from the December info session is posted on the program website.

Program Adviser: Students can email the program adviser, Hannah, at hhk2104@columbia.edu with any questions, or to set up an advising appointment. 

Funding for Students:

  • Global Learning Scholarship (Application deadline: February 13, 2026) - Columbia undergraduates (CC/EN/GS) who demonstrate financial need may apply for the GLS that may partially cover the tuition and fees. It is a one page application that is separate from the program application. Students must complete the GLS and program application by the GLS deadline in order to be considered.

  • Financial Aid - Students should check with their financial aid offices to understand if any federal funding can be used toward their summer program.

  • Funding by the Athens Global Center is generously provided to cover some program expenses including flights for students.

Columbia Global Core in Athens, Ancient and Modern Olympics Summer 2026 Course

Columbia Summer Global Core in Athens: Ancient and Modern Olympics

Program: Columbia Summer Global Core in Athens: Ancient and Modern Olympics is a 4 week program that includes a 3 point Global Core course entitled Ancient and Modern Olympics. This program introduces you to classical sport and spectacle through the lenses of literature, geography, and material culture and considers how sport has shaped political identity, social values, and cultural memory, questions that remain relevant to our understanding of the modern Olympic and Paralympic games today. The choice of Athens as the location will allow the course to be enriched by extending the classroom experience to local museums, exhibits and multiple venues of the Olympic and Panhellenic Games.

Application Deadline: Friday, February 13th. Click ‘Apply Now’ on the program website to begin your application. 

Info Session: We will hold a virtual info session for the program on Tuesday January 27th from 11am - 12pm. Please register here to attend and/or receive the recording afterwards.

Program Adviser: Students can schedule an appointment with the program adviser, Hannah, at hhk2104@columbia.edu with any questions

Funding for Students:

  • Global Learning Scholarship (Application deadline: February 13, 2026) - Columbia undergraduates (CC/EN/GS) who demonstrate financial need may apply for the GLS that may partially cover the tuition and fees. It is a one page application that is separate from the program application. Students must complete the GLS and program application by the GLS deadline in order to be considered

  • Financial Aid: Students should check with their financial aid offices to understand if any federal funding can be used toward their summer program.

  • Funding by the Athens Global Center is generously provided to cover some program expenses including flights for students.

Karen Van Dyck: On Translating Ellipsis in C. P. Cavafy’s ‘Che Fece … Il Gran Rifiuto’

Professor Karen Van Dyck wrote an article for Modern Poetry in Translation entitled On Translating Ellipsis in C. P. Cavafy’s ‘Che Fece … Il Gran Rifiuto’; this article was written on translating Cavafy and thinks about why translating minor literature is so important these days.

The article is available online on the Modern Poetry in Translation for all to read via this link.

Photo Credit: CC BY-SA 4.0 Cavafy Archive Onassis Foundation

Congratulations Emma and Valeria on being published!

Emma Ianni and Valeria Spacciante's volume of essays from the AMPRAW conference Center and Periphery was published online through Columbia's Academic Commons in September.

Conversations about how the Classics contributed to create the myth of a pure and privileged Western culture against which all attempts at intervention have been delegitimized are becoming more and more frequent within North American universities. This volume responds to a most important and timely dialogue around how we define what gets treated as a center and why, and who is left out. Reception Studies, in particular, are still treated as “peripheral” to the discipline of Classics in many places, in spite of their increasing importance. They have been sidelined both by those who advocate the study of Classics as an unquestionable discipline, and those who wish to do away with the classical heritage completely. Framing the discussion in terms of center and periphery has the effect of illuminating the ways in which this dichotomy has historically inhabited – and haunted – academia. The papers in this volume thus model ways in which classical reception can facilitate interpretive approaches that take care to engage with antiquity without losing sight of the dynamics of marginalization and oppression that populate both the ancient sources and the modern systemic structures surrounding their study and deployment(s). Foregrounding the innovative work of early career scholars, we aim to model and reimagine together new ways to be in Academia, and to rethink our discipline vis-à-vis today’s power structures.

It features five contributions, plus our Foreword. The Stanwood Cockey Lodge Fund sponsored the publication.

Read the series here! https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/search?f%5Bseries_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Annual+Meeting+of+Postgraduates+in+the+Reception+of+the+Ancient+World&search_field=all_fields

Joe Howley named to a Fellowship at Columbia's Institute for Ideas and Imagination in 2025-6 !

While at the Institute, Professor Howley will work on a comprehensive study of the role of enslaved labor in the culture and technology of the book in the ancient Roman world, with a focus on the early centuries of the imperial era.

Congratulations, Joe !

https://ideasimagination.columbia.edu/news/announcing-our-2025-26-class-of-fellows/

John Ma named a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow

Prof Ma proposes to his Fellowship to pursue research on gender and sexuality in the Hellenistic world, namely the Afro-Eurasian spaces from Italy to Central Asia and the Indus Valley and the Black Sea to Upper Egypt, in the dynamic period defined by the destruction of the Persian Empire and the creation of extensive conquest-states with Greek ruling elites. This political watershed was accompanied by shifts in the conception of the self, changes in patterns of consumption and exchange, intensified and multipolar encounters between cultures. The subject is hence the construction of sexual roles and the relationship within sexes in a fascinating period defined by persistence, change, and inventivity. 

Official Announcement: https://www.gf.org/stories/announcing-the-2025-guggenheim-fellows

Congratulations, John!

Department of Classics Recent Ph.D.s Land Jobs

Dr. Emma Ianni (*24) will take up an Assistant Professorship at Bates College in the fall.  Dr. John Izzo (*24) is moving to Kenyon College for a Visiting Assistant Professorship.

Congrats, Emma and John!

Summer Research Funding Opportunities

Dear Students,

The Department of Classics is delighted to announce two summer research funding opportunities:

1.     Commager Fund. The terms of this endowment stipulate that “Income to be used for a fellowship for an undergraduate or graduate student in the School of Arts and Sciences for research, travel, or study during the summer. Between candidates of equal merits, preference is to be given to a student specializing in Latin.” Approximate annual endowment: $3,000, which may be divided among multiple applicants.

2. Undergraduate Latin Fund. The terms of this endowment are as follows: “The endowment payout from the Fund shall be used to support current undergraduate students pursuing research or summer studies exclusively related to Latin language and literature. Columbia undergraduate students are eligible to receive support regardless of major or level of study.” Approximate annual endowment: $3,000, which may be divided among multiple applicants.

 

To apply for either (or both) of these funds, please submit a proposal, which includes a brief, one-page description of your planned course of study or research program, a budget and timeline by 5:00PM March 24, 2025. Email the proposal to the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Classics (nk2776@columbia.edu).

All best wishes,

NPK

Classics Undergraduate Prize Exams

The Department of Classics is delighted to announce that we will be hosting two prize exams, one in Greek and the other in Greek and Latin translation later this semester. These exams, described below, are named and endowed. We hope you will consider taking one or both of them. 

 

EARLE PRIZE IN CLASSICS
This prize is awarded annually to an undergraduate student (from any division: CC, GS, Barnard) for excellence in sight translation of passages of Greek and Latin. It was established in memory of Mortimer Lamson Earle, Class of 1886, lecturer and Professor in the Department of Greek and Latin. The exam will be held on 4/4, 2:30-4:30pm in Hamilton 618.

 

BENJAMIN F. ROMAINE PRIZE FUND
Established in 1922, this gift of Benjamin F. Romaine provides to a Columbia College student (noting that only CC students are eligible) a prize for proficiency in Greek language and literature. The exam will be held on 11/4, 2:30-4:30pm, in Hamilton 618.

 

To take either exam (or both), you need do nothing more than show up—no registration or advanced notice necessary. 

 

We hope to see you there.



2025 Society of Classical Studies Annual Meeting

We are proud that Columbia Classics made quite an impact at the 2025 Society of Classical Studies (SCS) Annual Meeting in Philadelphia; faculty and graduate students of the Classics Department submitted papers and participated in panels.  Below is a breakdown of our representation at the conference.

SCS 2025 Columbia University

Presenters:

  1. Melody Wauke (PhD Candidate)
    Fictive Kinship through Rhetorical Training in Philostratus and Lucian

  2. Marissa Swan (PhD Candidate)
    The Animalization of Imperial Bodies: Lactantius and the Tetrarchic Emperors

  3. Geoffrey Harmsworth (PhD Candidate)
    Plutarch, Dio Chrysostom, and the Punditry Sphere in the Roman-era Polis

  4. José Cancino Alfaro (PhD Candidate)
    Indigenous voices? Four cantiunculae of a Machi in Bernard Havestadt’s Chilidugu (1777)

  5. Elizabeth Heintges (PhD Candidate)
    Missive Missiles: Inscribed Sling Bullets and Communication in the Late Republic

  6. Riley Parker (Undergraduate, Classics)
    Exiled by Fate: Memory and National Identity in Aeneid VIII

  7. Kit Pyne-Jaeger (PhD Student, English and Comp-Lit)
    Styling Queerness and Decorating Time: J.W. Waterhouse and Ovid’s Metamorphoses

Presiders/Roundtables:

  1. Joseph Howley (Assoc. Professor of Classics, Columbia) - Labor Panel

  2. Kristina Milnor (Professor of Classics, Barnard) - Co-organizer of the Queer Families in the Ancient Mediterranean World Panel (Lambda Classical Caucus)

  3. Valeria Spacciante (PhD Candidate) and Umberto Verdura (PhD Student) - Roundtable: Ancient Narrative Interest Group [based on the roundtable, this will be a consistent paper panel going forward for future SCS conferences]

Congratulations, Hanyang (Deborah) Chen, recipient of the Davis Fellowship for 2024–2025

The Department of Classics Hanyang (Deborah) Chen (2nd year M.A.) on being awarded a Davis Fellowship for 2024-25 as recognition for her excellent academic record. 

The Davis Fellowship is funded by a $10 million bequest from the late Kathryn Wasserman Davis, ’31 GSA, commending academic achievement. 


"I felt really honored to be given this fellowship, and I will see this as both an encouragement and reminder for me to keep up my study in the next semester and in the future study as well," said Deborah.


Congratulations, Deborah!



Department of Classics at Columbia University in the City of New York
1130 Amsterdam Avenue, 617 Hamilton Hall, MC 2861, New York, NY 10027, USA
(212) 854-3902 | (212) 854-7856 (fax) | classics@columbia.edu

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