New Year
Anyone who knows the program director here at ECU Classics knows that I am a big football fan. It’s been a pleasure to root for the Pirates these past eight seasons. I’m pleased to be writing this new post as ECU is dominating Appalachian State. I find it especially pleasing since the last time I watched App State play, they were embarrassing my poor Big Ten alma mater, whose fortunes have only gotten worse since that shameful day two years ago. Go Pirates!
At ECU Classics, we’ve had our first full week of classes in the 2009-2010 academic year. It’s shaping up to be an excellent year. Our enrollments are as high as they’ve been in at least five years, thanks to strong interest in our Latin courses taught by Prof. Stevens and Prof. Wilson-Okamura, and in Prof. Teske’s Mythology and Etymology courses. I’ve had six students come to me to declare a Classics or Classical Civilization major just since the beginning of summer. We have three seniors who are pursuing major undergraduate research projects this year, all of whom will write a senior thesis at the culmination of their work. The Ancient Greek Reading Group got off to a strong start on Wednesday, reading one of the goriest texts to survive from the ancient world, “The Martyrdom of Polycarp.”
The Classics faculty held our first meeting of the year on Thursday. After welcoming our newest member, Prof. Marylaura Papalas, we discussed several new initiatives. Our participating Anthropology faculty members, Profs. Mazow and Perry, are working on course proposals for several archaeology courses that will eventually span the ancient world from the early Egypt to the Byzantine Period. Archaeology has been a big hole in our curriculum for a long time. It will soon be filled. (Or excavated?) We’re also planning some changes to our Mythology course. Right now, it’s only offered as a 3000-level course, meaning that freshmen have to get special permission to take it. We intend to lower the number so that it becomes an entry-level course for our curriculum, like Etymology and Intro to Classics. Extracurricularly, Prof. Wilson-Okamura is planning to start a Latin Reading Group to complement the Greek group. And we will have our production of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata next March 25–27.
Finally, thanks to the efforts of senior James Duffy, our Classical Studies Student Association is getting started for the year. If you are interested in participating, please contact him. I’ll give him space here for any announcements he would like to post.
Thanks to all our ECU students and our Athena’s Owl readers for your interest in Classical Studies!
