News from the Department
Updates from our faculty, affiliates, and students past and present.
New Summer Course
The NYU Department of Classics is excited to announce a new undergraduate summer course, Special Topics in Classics: Medical Terminology. This course prepares students to recognize and understand the basic elements (the roots) of English medical words, the vast majority of which are of Greek and Latin origin. This course will help students to understand how these words are constructed and enable them to understand words they have not seen before simply by recognizing their parts and construction.
The course is ideal for students pursuing a career in any of the biological sciences, especially medical, dental, veterinary, and nursing students, but is open to everyone interested in the construction of scientific words (including the names of dinosaurs). There are no prerequisites. For more information, email Greta Gualdi at gg1967@nyu.edu
Recent Graduate Placements
The NYU Department of Classics is pleased to announce the following recent placement of our recent graduate students in academic and teaching positions:
Rebecca Sausville ('23) is teaching in the Dept. of Classics and Early Mediterranean Studies at Brandeis University.
Del Maticic ('22) is teaching in the Dept. of Greek and Roman Studies at Vassar College.
Lorenzo Del Monte ('22) is teaching in the Dept. of Classics at the University of Tennessee.
Laura Santander ('22) is teaching in the Classical Languages and Literatures Dept. at Sarah Lawrence College
Chris Parmenter ('21) is teaching in the Dept. of Classics at Ohio State University.
Phil Katz ('20) is Academic Administration Fellow in the Office of the Dean of the Faculty at Princeton University.
Stephanie Crooks ('19) is teaching Classics at the Nightengale-Bamford School
Calloway Scott ('17) is teaching in the Classics Dept. at the University of Cincinnati.
George Baroud ('15) has just been appointed in the Classics Dept. at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Inger Kuin, ('15) is teaching in the Dept. of Classics at the University of Virginia
Melania Subucus ('15) is teaching in the graduate program in Classical Studies at Villanova University.
Recent Graduate Placements
The NYU Department of Classics is pleased to announce the following recent placement of our recent graduate students in academic and teaching positions:
Rebecca Sausville ('23) is teaching in the Dept. of Classics and Early Mediterranean Studies at Brandeis University.
Del Maticic ('22) is teaching in the Dept. of Greek and Roman Studies at Vassar College.
Lorenzo Del Monte ('22) is teaching in the Dept. of Classics at the University of Tennessee.
Laura Santander ('22) is teaching in the Classical Languages and Literatures Dept. at Sarah Lawrence College
Chris Parmenter ('21) is teaching in the Dept. of Classics at Ohio State University.
Phil Katz ('20) is Academic Administration Fellow in the Office of the Dean of the Faculty at Princeton University.
Stephanie Crooks ('19) is teaching Classics at the Nightengale-Bamford School
Calloway Scott ('17) is teaching in the Classics Dept. at the University of Cincinnati.
George Baroud ('15) has just been appointed in the Classics Dept. at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Inger Kuin, ('15) is teaching in the Dept. of Classics at the University of Virginia
Melania Subucus ('15) is teaching in the graduate program in Classical Studies at Villanova University.
New Book by Emilia Barbiero
Emilia Barbiero has published her book Letters in Plautus: Writing Between the Lines with Cambridge University Press, which analyzes the role of embedded letters in Plautine comedy as metatheatrical mirrors.
Biennial Classics Graduate Student Conference
The Classics Department is now offering a graduate track in Ancient History and/or Classical Archaeology. Learn more here.
Alessandro Barchiesi to Give Paper at UMass Amherst
Alessandro Barchiesi will speak at the UMass Amherst conference on Vergilian Space and Places on October 15. He will be presenting a paper titled "Mountains and the Aeneid." Additional information on the conference can be found here.
Raffaella Cribiore delivers lecture series for 2021 Biggs Family Residency in Classics
Congratulations to Raffaella Cribiore for her recent lecture series presented by the Department of Classics at Washington University in St. Louis. The series, titled “Taking Notes in Classical and Late Antique Philosophers’ Classes”, ran from March 22-March 25 as the 2021 Biggs Family Residency in Classics. The residency celebrates John and Penelope Biggs, who studied Classics at Harvard and continue to support the discipline. Attendance at this year’s virtual series topped 120 people - a testament to Raffaella’s work!
Andrew Monson on Scientific Exchange of the Swiss National Science Foundation
Andrew Monson is being hosted at the University of Basel for a six-month research visit sponsored by the Swiss National Science Foundation. He was invited to participate in a scientific exchange with the Departement Altertumswissenschaften on the topic of fiscal institutions in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt.
Alessandro Barchiesi to give paper at the 2021 Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America
Alessandro Barchiesi is giving a paper, “Aeneas in Campania,” at the 2021 Virtual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America. The paper will be part of a panel in honor of Craig Kallendorf on Tuesday, April 13 at 2:20pm. For more details, see the meeting website.
Mike Peachin at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton
Mike Peachin is spending this year on sabbatical as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is working mainly on two larger projects: a volume edited together with Claire Bubb of the NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, Medicine and Law under the Roman Empire, which will be published in the OUP series, "Oxford Studies in Roman Society and Law;" and, a monograph which will ask an utterly elemental question, but will do so in the most expansive terms possible: What did the Romans want, both individually and as a community, from their law and from the judicial system that implemented that law?
Del Maticic appointed to SCS Board of Directors
Del Maticic has been appointed to the SCS Board of Directors as a Member-at-Large, a two-year term beginning in January 2021. Del, who is currently the Co-Chair of the SCS Graduate Student Committee, will be the first graduate student ever to sit on the SCS Board. To view the full announcement, please visit the SCS website.
Alessandro Barchiesi to speak in Rome
Alessandro Barchiesi will speak at the Fondazione Primoli on October 13th in conversation with the author of Ovidio: Storie di metamorfosi, Piero Boitani, for the release of his book. Further event details, including a link to the livestreamed talk, are available on the Fondazione Primoli website.
Matthew Santirocco Appointed as President-Elect of SCS
Congratulations to Matthew Santirocco for his election to the SCS as President-Elect, for a term in office beginning January 2021! For the full announcement and election results, visit the SCS website here.
Upcoming Workshops Co-Organized by NYU Graduate students
In exciting upcoming news, two new Zoom workshops co-organized by graduate students are scheduled to begin this month. Bad Intertextuality in Premodern Literary Cultures, co-organized by Del Maticic and Josh Ziesel, and Work/Life: Subjectivities, Institutions, and Human Resources in the Roman World, co-organized by Del Maticic, will both have sessions held on Zoom. For more information about these workshops, including pre-circulation of papers, please contact Del Maticic.
Laura Viidebaum receives Humboldt Foundation Fellowship
Congratulations to Laura Viidebaum on her Humboldt Foundation Fellowship, which will take her to Munich from January 2021 through August 2022. While in Munich, she will work on her new project focusing on Aristotle's Rhetoric.
David Konstan to be Israel Institute for Advanced Studies Fellow
David Konstan will be a fellow at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies from October 12, 2020 through January 23, 2021.
Peter Meineck named Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar
Congratulations to Peter Meineck for being named a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar for 2020-2021! Listen to his recent Key Conversations podcast episode here.
David Konstan receives National Endowment for the Humanities grant
David Konstan has been awarded a $250,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities Scholarly Editions and Translations, 2019-2022. Congratulations!
Andrew Monson elected as Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute
Andrew Monson has been elected Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute. He was nominated by the Commission for Ancient History and Epigraphy in Munich. The notification letter cites the outstanding quality of his research, combining "highly productive theoretical concepts for economic and social history with precise analysis of the papyrological documentation" as well as his engagement for international collaboration. An official document of appointment (Ernennungsurkunde) is to be issued on December 9th, 2020, anniversary of the birth of the German archaeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768).
Graduate Curricular Planning for Fall 2020
The University and the Graduate School is committed to providing as robust an onsite experience as possible in the fall. In accord with this, classics graduate courses in fall 2020 will to the fullest extent possible be offered in person by instructors who will, moreover, also be addressing students via zoom who, for pandemic-related reasons, cannot attend in person. Other courses will be taught entirely via Zoom by instructors who for health reasons cannot safely attend in person. Since our graduate courses are offered in a consortial arrangement with Fordham University and the City University of New York, this scheme may have to be modified to some extent, although Fordham’s hybrid teaching plans should accord well with ours.
The intellectual life of the department will be engaged as before, with our Works in Progress talks and with a series of outside lecturers presenting talks online.
CONGRATULATIONS TO CHRIS PARMENTER AND PHILIP KATZ
The Classics department is pleased to note that two of our graduate students recently defended their dissertations successfully almost back to back (in Zoom sessions):
April 15th: Christopher Stedman Parmenter, “Commodity and Identity in Archaic Greece.”
April 16th: Philip Katz, “Cultural Histories of the Ship in the Greek and Roman Aegean.”
Raffaella Cribiore to co-organize the 69th Entretiens sur l'Antiquité Classique
Raffaella Cribiore will serve as organizer of the 69th Entretiens sur l’Antiquité Classique (to be held at the Fondation Hardt, Geneva), entitled ‘Les Espaces du Savoir, the Ancient Classroom: Spaces and Contexts for Learning, together with Prof. Daniel Anderson.
NYU Classics Letter to the Paideia Institute
To: The Board of Directors, The Paideia Institute
We are appreciative of the work that Paideia has done over the course of its existence to promote the study of Latin and Greek among a wide range of students. At the same time, it is clear from the evidence that has been brought forward from a variety of people that there have been serious problems in the running of the organization, especially with regard to its lack of proper procedures to handle credible claims of discrimination and harassment when they have arisen.
That you yourselves have recognized the seriousness of these problems is clear from the steps which you have announced that you are taking, and we hope very much that those will be put into force and that they will be effective. We have already paid our Institutional Membership subscription for 2019/20, but our willingness to renew that membership and to continue our association with Paideia in other respects will be dependent on your satisfying various conditions, principally those set out by the Board of Directors of the Society of Classical Studies in their public statement on October 13. That statement gave you a deadline of April 20, 2020 to respond; at that time we too will reevaluate the question of our future association with your organization.
Summer Program for Refugee, Asylee, and Immigrant Teens
This summer professor Peter Meineck and Aquila Theatre conducted the first "Hear Our Call" summer Greek Drama program for teens from Refugee, Asylee and Immigrant families in Classics and the Tisch School of the Arts. The 16 participants were enrolled in an NYU Classics youth course called Applied Youth Theatre: Greek Drama which was partnered with a Classics/Tisch undergraduate course on Applied Theatre. In this three week intensive program the teens read Aeschylus Suppliant Women, trained in acting, movement, masks, textual analysis and writing, visited the Met Museum and Skirball Center and staged a final performance of Aeschylus and their own works inspired by Suppliant Women. The program was supported by the Onassis Foundation and we plan to repeat it again next year.
Department of Classics Mourns the Passing of Larissa Bonfante
We in the Department of Classics mourn the passing of Larissa Bonfante (23 August 2019). She was a dear friend, a cherished colleague, a wonderful teacher, and a renowned scholar. Larissa is sorely missed. We shall be organizing an event to remember Larissa, and to celebrate her life. This will be announced soon via the usual media. Click here for obituary
Politeia Publishes Volume in Honor of Philip Mitsis
The international, interdisciplinary review Politeia published its most recent volume in honor of Phillip Mitsis. The volume contains a contribution from David Konstan as well, titled "Lucretius and the Conscience of an Epicurean." Phillip is an Honorary Board member for the review. More information on Politeia can be found here.
Alessandro Barchiesi to deliver paper at the launch of the International Ovidian Society in Pisa
The International Ovidian Society will host its European launch in Pisa at the Scuola Normale Superiore on June 18 and 19, 2019. As part of the conference, Alessandro Barchiesi will deliver a paper entitled “Reflections on Metamorphosis and Art.” More details about the Society and the events can be found here.
Raffaella Cribiore Delivers Paper at Yale Philology Conference
Yale University hosted its annual conference on Aprill 11th and 12th in honor of Philologus Day. The conference topic this year was "The Counsel of Book-Worms: Literary and Physical Constructions of the Book in Imperial Book Writing." As part of the conference, Rafaella Cribiore delivered a paper entitled, "Winged Words: Were Stenographers Trustworthy?"
Rebecca Sausville and Phil Katz Visit Egypt
This spring, two NYU Classics graduate students had the opportunity to participate in a research trip to Egypt co-organized by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) and the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem (AIAR). For ten days in February, Rebecca Sausville, currently the Michael Jameson Fellow at the ASCSA, and Philip Katz, the 2018-2019 Oscar Broneer Traveling Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, joined more than forty fellow students and faculty as they visited the archaeological sites and museums of both Lower and Upper Egypt, from Cairo to Aswan. The trip provided a unique opportunity not only to see material related to both of their dissertations, but also to strengthen connections with colleagues from across the Mediterranean. Highlights were nearly innumerable, but included crawling inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, visiting the conservation laboratory and the vividly restored reliefs of Karnak’s Khonsu Temple, seeing the newly re-opened tomb of Seti I in the Valley of the Kings, and exploring the Ptolemaic temples at Denderah and Philae. More information about the trip and photos can be found here. Some of Phil's photos can also be seen here.
Pete Meineck's Warrior Chorus program receives grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities
Peter Meineck's Warrior Chorus program has been awarded a $250,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, for Warrior Chorus: American Odyssey, a veteran and scholar-led public engagement program linked with Aquila Theatre's national touring production of Homer's Odyssey. Program partners include NYU Classics, the Society for Classical Studies and Aquila Theatre and there will be Warrior Chorus sites at NYU, UT Austin, and FIU, Miami, with twenty-four venues across the United States.
Raffaella Cribiore to serve as the John and Penelope Biggs scholar in residence at Washington University, St. Louis
Raffaella Cribiore has recently accepted an invitation from Barbara A. Schaal, Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences at Washington University to serve as the 2021 scholar in residence for the John and Penelope Biggs Residency in the Classics.
The Biggs Residency hosts a distinguished classicist every spring. Past resident scholars include David Sedley, Eleanor Leach, and NYU's own David Konstan. During her residency, Rafaella will offer lectures and more informal presentations as well as interact with the students and faculty at the university in a number of settings and events. Her presence as the Biggs resident scholar will be invaluable to the students an faculty at Washington University, St. Louis. Congratulations, Raffaella!
Mike Peachin to Deliver Lecture at Middlebury College on March 19
Mike Peachin will present his talk, "What Did the Roman Jurisprudents Want from Aquilian Liability?" to the students and faculty of Middlebury College in Vermont on March 19th. The event is free and open to the public. The talk's abstract can be found below:
"This talk proceeds from the suspicion that when the Roman jurisprudents of the so-called classical period wrote about law, they were neither necessarily, nor solely, hoping to formulate rules which would regulate litigation in courts of law. Rather, they arguably thought of themselves as authors of a form of literature."
Additional information can be found here.
The École normale supérieure in Paris Welcomes Andrew Monson as Guest Lecturer
This month the History department of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris welcomed Andrew Monson as a guest lecturer. Over the course of March and April, he will give four lectures: "Constitutions, Credible Commitments, and Public Finance in Ancient Greece," "Egyptian Villages," "Eisphora and Legitimacy,"and "The inventory of the kingdom: The capitation in Egypt under Cleopatra VII."
More details can be found here.
Alessandro Barchiesi To Give Mini-Lecture Tour in China
In May 2019, Alessandro Barchiesi will do a mini-lecture tour in China (invited by Guanqui Center, Shanghai/Columbia Global Center, Beijing, and two universities in Shanghai), in connection with the project of new Chinese edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Lectures will be held at Columbia Beijing Center, Guangqi Center and Fudan University, both in Shanghai.
NYU Strongly Represented at the 2019 AIA-SCS meeting
This year, the 120th annual joint meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) and the Society for Classical Studies (SCS) was held from January 3-6 in San Diego. Once again, several members of the NYU Classics community participated in the conference proceedings.
Graduate student Phil Katz gave a paper entitled, “Unmasking the Helmsman: Painted Prows and Enigmatic Eyes at the Archaic Symposium” on the AIA panel “Form and Object.” In his paper, Phil presents a new interpretation for a series of Attic eye-cups which surround the eyes with the prows of ships. A more detailed abstract can be found here.
At the SCS, Dr. Calloway Scott presented a paper, "Medical Hellenicity in the Letters of Hippocrates." The paper examines how the Hippocratic pseudepigrapha use plague narratives to reinforce the boundaries of the "Hellenic" community in a way that shows how medicine, like specific forms of religious activity, could be perceived and mobilized as a distinctly Greek cultural technology. The paper was part of the "Medical Communities in the Ancient Mediterranean" panel sponsored by the Society of Ancient Medicine (SAM).
Dr. David Sider co-presided over the panel, “Herculaneum: Works in Progress,” which was organized by the American Friends of Herculaneum. The panel featured papers on graffiti, virtual analysis of archaeological material, and architectural features of Roman villae.
Dr. Rafaella Cribiore was also present to participate in the meeting of the SCS program committee. It is her second year as a member of that committee.
Finally, NYU once again held a public reception one evening at the SCS convention. The event was sponsored by Classics as well NYU's Center for Ancient Studies and ISAW.
Congratulations to all of these members of the NYU community for representing the department and for presenting their research at such a significant event!
Alessandro Barchiesi Giving Two Papers In Rome in 2019
Alessandro Barchiesi will give a paper entitled, 'Testo e frammento nell'Achilleide di Stazio," at the conference
Opus Imperfectum," on March 15th, 2019. The conference, a symposium on the unfinished and incomplete in art and text, is organized by Massimiliano Papini (Rome I) and will be held in the Odeion at the University of Rome La Sapienza. In November he is scheduled to give (sharing the podium with Barbara Graziosi of Princeton University) the Third Annual Balzan-Lincei-Valla Lecture, at Rome's Accademia dei Lincei. His paper is titled "Il provinciale: Apuleio, Roma e il Romanzo."
Alessandro Barchiesi To Speak at Yale Classics Department
The graduate students of Yale Classics have elected Alessandro Barcheisi to speak to the department on February 20th, 2019. He will be presenting a paper entitled, "Statius' Achilleid: Fragment, Design, Ideology."
Laura Viidebaum To Participate in WestWing Writers' Show "Speakeasy"
Laura Viidebaum has been invited to participate in a speechwriting show hosted by WestWing writers in Caveat on January 22nd at 9:30pm. Alongside Emmy award winning comedians and actual speechwriters, Laura will give a short presentation about speechwriting in antiquity focusing on one of her favorites - Lysias. She will then answer questions from the floor. Come if you can and bring a friend!
Scheduling information:
Date: January 22nd, 9:30pm
Place: Caveat (21 A Clinton St. between Houston and Stanton)
For more information, please visit https://www.caveat.nyc/event/west-wing-writers-presents-speakeasy-1-22-2019.
Classics Department now offering a graduate track in Ancient History and/or Classical Archaeology
The Classics Department is now offering a graduate track in Ancient History and/or Classical Archaeology. Learn more here.
Archived News
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