Summer 2005

Dear friends of Classics,

I’m delighted to welcome you to the

relaunched Departmental newsletter and hope

that you will find it interesting and

informative.

There have been some major developments

since the last newsletter appeared, of which

the most significant is probably the

reconstitution, on January 1 of this year, of

the Committee on the Ancient Mediterranean

World as an independent Ph.D. track within

the Department of Classics. The merger was

undertaken partly in recognition of the

broader and more interdisciplinary skills that

are now demanded of Classicists and partly to

allow Ancient Mediterranean World students

access to the level of fellowship support and

From the Chair

New Books by Former Students!

2004 was a banner year

for former students

turning their PhD

dissertations into books

published by various

university presses. Vicky

Pagán’s Conspiracy

Narratives in Roman

History (Texas) has

appeared, along with

Department FacultyDanielle Allen

Michael Allen

Elizabeth Asmis

Shadi Bartsch

Helma Dik

Chris Faraone

Jonathan Hall

Ralph Johnson (em.)

David Martinez

Emanuel Mayer

Mark Payne

James Redfield

Allen Romano

Nicholas Rudall

Richard Saller

Antonia Syson

Peter White

David Wray

Associate FacultyJonathan Beere

Lee Behnke

Michael Dietler

Jas’ Elsner

Elizabeth Gebhard

Janet Johnson

Walter Kaegi

Bruce Lincoln

Glenn Most

Richard Neer

Martha Nussbaum

Wendy Olmsted

Dennis Pardee

Gabriel Richardson

Seth Richardson

Robert Ritner

Martha Roth

David Schloen

Laura Slatkin

Matthew Stolper

Theo van den Hout

Classics at Chicago

funding opportunities that were previously

restricted to their Classical Languages and

Literatures peers. A newly designed

curriculum will enter into effect in September

2006 for the new Ph.D. track (to be known as

the Program in the Ancient Mediterranean

World) and the Department has officially

changed its name to the Department of

Classics to reflect more accurately the broader

constituency that it represents.

Our graduate students are the life-blood of the

Department and I am delighted to report that

they continue to enjoy great success with job

placement. No fewer than five dissertations

were defended this last academic year and as

many as nine graduates presented papers at

the APA in Boston. A generous gift from the

Radcliffe G. Edmonds III,

Myths of the Underworld

Journey: Plato,

Aristophanes and the

“Orphic” Gold Tablets

(Cambridge). Peter Struck,

who took his degree in

Comparative Literature but

is a much loved “adopted”

member of our department,

saw the publication of his

Birth of a Symbol: Ancient

Readers at the Limits of

their Texts (Princeton).

Congratulations to all

three!

Chris Faraone

“Five students in thenewly mergedClassics and AncientMediterranean Worldprogramssuccessfullydefendeddissertations thisyear.”

PAGE 2

From the Chair (cont’d)

Cohen family has endowed the Abigail Rebecca

Cohen Fellowship Fund which will, in future

years, offer us valuable resources to attract,

train, and maintain the most intellectually

adventurous graduate students in the field.

The end of every year inevitably sees

departures and arrivals. We were sorry to bid

farewell to Campbell Grey (Visiting Assistant

Professor of Roman History) and Julia Kindt

(Collegiate Assistant Professor in the

Humanities) but wish them every success in

their new positions at the University of

Pennsylvania and the University of Sydney

respectively. Meanwhile, we are delighted to

Plaudits for Graduate Students

To our great pride, five students in the newly

merged Classics and Ancient Mediterranean

World programs successfully defended

dissertations and settled into the world of

post-doctoral employment this year. John

Hyland (“Tissaphernes and the Achaemenid

Empire in Thucydides and Xenophon”) will

stay on with us on for another year as a

Visiting Lecturer in the Social Sciences

Collegiate Division. Carolina López-Ruiz (“The

Sons of Earth and Starry Heaven: Greek

Theogonic Traditions and Their Northwest

Semitic Background”) has begun a tenure-

track Assistant Professorship at the Ohio

State University, and has just published a co-

authored paper (with Chris Faraone and Brien

Garnand) in the Journal of Near Eastern

Studies under the title “Micah’s Mother

(Judges 17:1-4) and a Curse from Carthage

(KAI 89): Evidence for the Semitic Origin of

welcome Emanuel Mayer as Assistant

Professor of Classical Archaeology. Trained at

Munich and Heidelberg and teaching until

recently at Oxford, Emanuel is the first

tenure-track archaeologist in the Department

for more than a generation and his

appointment is an indication of the

Department’s determination to build and

expand upon its traditional existing strengths.

With best wishes,

Jonathan M. Hall

Professor and Chair of Classics

Greek and Latin Curses against Thieves?”

Ilse Mueller completed her dissertation on

“Strategies for Survival: Widows in the

Context of Their Social Relationships” and

continues teaching humanities in Canada, as

she has now for several years. Stacie Raucci

(“Gazing Games: Propertius and the Dynamics

of Visions”) has stepped up from a visiting

appointment to that of John D. and Catherine

T. MacArthur Assistant Professor at Union

College. Ben Stevens (“The Origin of Language

in Greek and Roman Thought”) has begun a

second year as Visiting Assistant Professor at

Bard College.

Our pre-doctoral students have also scored

notable successes this year. Robert Germany

will interrupt his work on campus to hold a

Visiting Instructorship at Trinity University in

Texas for a part of the year. Alex Gottesman

and William Bubelis have won Whiting

PAGE 3

New Faculty Profiles:

Mark PayneI joined the University of Chicago faculty in

2003, after completing a dissertation on the

bucolic poetry of Theocritus at Columbia

University. This summer I finished revising

this project for publication, and it will appear

in book form from Cambridge University Press

in 2006, entitled Theocritus and the Invention

of Fiction. I am a regular contributor to the

Poetry and Poetics program here, which aims

to encourage dialogue between readers of

poetry in different departments of the

University, and also invites poets to read and

lecture on campus. My next academic project

will be in keeping with the goals of this

program, as I look to explore common forms of

poetic assertion in archaic Greek poetry

(Sappho and Pindar) and a range of

modernists from William Carlos Williams to

Paul Celan. I am also an avid traveler (see

right) and the editor of this newsletter.

Antonia SysonIn my final year as an Oxford undergraduate I

read Lucan’s lush civil war epic and realized

that I had to carry on thinking about Latin

literature, a realization which sent me to

California for Berkeley’s PhD program in

Classics. Discovering the term “narrative

addict” (used by A. S. Byatt for readers of

Patrick O’Brian’s naval adventure stories)

helped me confront my long-held curiosity

about the power of all kinds of narratives –

whether by Sallust, Cicero and Vergil or by

Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot – to shape

readers’ understanding and become part of

their experience. This curiosity has driven

my work at Berkeley (I completed my PhD in

2003), and here in Chicago. I moved to the

city first as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at

Northwestern University, and then came

south to teach Latin Literature here in Hyde

Park. At the moment I am teaching all kinds

of Latin courses, and completing a manuscript

based on my PhD dissertation: “Reading for

the Novel: Fiction and Transformation in

Vergil’s Aeneid.”

Elektra WorkshopOn May 25, 2005, the Classics Department

and Classical Lecture Society joined together

to sponsor an afternoon tea and workshop

entitled “Sophokles’ Elektra: Staging Agonism

and Revenge” in the First Floor Theater of the

Reynolds Club. Prompted by the University

Theater’s June production of Sophokles’

Elektra, translated and directed by Professor

of Classics D. Nicholas Rudall, the workshop

sought to address textual and performative

issues associated with the staging of Greek

tragedy, focusing particularly on the central

agon of the Elektra. Attending faculty and

students received an exclusive preview

performance of the agon between

Clytemnestra and Elektra played by the

respective members of the UT cast, Emily

Boyd and Angeline Gragasin, after which

followed comments by panelists W. Ralph

Johnson, Professor Emeritus of Classics, Allen

Romano, Lecturer, Teresa Lemieux, Graduate

Student, and D. Nicholas Rudall. Discussion

ranged in topic from the morality of revenge

and the Sophoklean definition of justice to the

significance of shame and legal language in the

debate and the prevalence of ritual activity in

the play as a whole.

Teresa Lemieux

Mark in Mexico

Dissertation Fellowships. Shawn

Deeley won both a Tave Teaching

Fellowship in the College and a

Nicholson Center Fellowship for short-

term research in the British Isles.

Fanny Dolansky won a Martin Marty

Center Dissertation Fellowship. Phil

Venticinque participated in this

summer's seminar in papyrology

sponsored by the American Society of

Papyrologists at the University of

Michigan, and he will hold an Ephron

Teaching Fellowship later this year.

In addition, Brad Atwell, Ari Bryen,

Shawn Deeley, Jodi Haraldson, and

Phil Venticinque have taken

advantage of travel fellowships from

the Ryerson and Boyer endowments

to pursue research abroad during the

summer.

Peter White

Plaudits for GraduateStudents (cont’d)

University of Chicago1010 East 59th StreetChicago, IL 60637

Phone:773 702-8514

Fax:773 702-5728

E-Mail:Classics-Department@uchicago.edu

Do you have material forthe next newsletter?

Email it straight to:kfox@uchicago.edu

New AppointmentsPresident Randel has named three

members of the Classics Department

as appointees to named chairs. On

July 1, Shadi Bartsch became the

inaugural Ann L. and Lawrence B.

Buttenwieser Professor of Classics

and Chris Faraone became the

inaugural Frank Curtis Springer and

[LABEL HERE]

Department of ClassicsGertrude Melcher Springer

Professor in the Humanities

and in the College. As of

October 1, Jonathan Hall will

become the Phyllis Fay Horton

Professor in the Humanities.

Graduate Student ActivitiesThe 2004/05 year was both busy and visible

for Chicago graduate students locally and

nationally. Winter and spring quarters

brought two very personable visitors to the

department at the invitation of the student-

run Classical Lecture Society. Traianos Gagos

(Michigan) presented on a unique prayer

document from Egypt, while David Konstan

(Brown) offered a stimulating discussion of

humor in Greek epigrams. Both papers were

followed by lively dinners with the speakers.

At the APA meeting in Boston, Chicago was a

noticeable presence with nine current

students on the program, both senior and

junior students delivering papers. The topics

reflected a wide range of interests, literary

and historical, and included studies of Homer

and Hesiod, near Eastern connections to

Greek myths, the Hellenistic Peloponnese,

Greek-Persian relations, Roman religion, and

Coptic Egypt. Chicago was also well-

represented at CAMWS in Madison with

presentations on 4th century Athenian history,

Greek orphans, and late-antique Egypt.

Fanny Dolansky

In the next issue:

Undergraduate Affairs

Profiles of EmanuelMayer and Allen Romano

SAVE THE DATE!Friday November 11,

4:00pm, Classics 10

George B. Walsh Lecture

“A Roman Writes a Postcard

Home: Pliny the Younger,

Roman Imperialism and

84 Charing Cross Road.”

Greg Woolf

Professor of Ancient History

and Head of School of Classics,

The University of St. Andrews.