Athena's Owl

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

We now have a webpage for information on our spring production of Lysistrata.  The webpage includes news about upcoming auditions, including a list of characters actors can try out for.  Please check back to the webpage for updates about the play.  You can find it at:  www.ecu.edu/classics/lysistrata.cfm.

Note that the dates of the performances have shifted slightly.  Due to a scheduling conflict, we have had to move our Thursday performance to Sunday.  So the dates are now March 26, 27 and 28, 2010.  All performances will be at 8:00 p.m. in the Great Rooms of Mendenhall Student Center at ECU.  There will be no charge for admission!

On Veterans’ Day, yesterday, the New York Times featured an article entitled “The Anguish of War for Today’s Soldiers, Explored by Sophocles.”  It describes how a group of professional actors are touring the country performing staged readings of Sophocles’ Ajax and Philoctetes on military bases.  These plays deal with the traumas of war and can be read as precursors to modern diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder.  The reactions of the soldiers, as described in the article, testify to the ongoing power of these classical plays.  As we remember the brave men and women who have fought for our country, it is thrilling to see how the Classics can help our modern mythological heroes to understand themselves and their experiences.

You can read the article here.

Please plan to attend this upcoming lecture by Dr. Megan Perry of ECU’s Anthropology Department and Classical Studies Program.  Regular readers of Athena’s Owl will remember Dr. Perry’s summer research report from Jordan.  Come and hear the results of her work.

East Carolina University Department of Anthropology

presents:

Beyond the Façades:

An Archaeological Perspective of Petra, Jordan

a lecture by:

Megan A. Perry

Associate Professor of Anthropology, East Carolina University

Director of the Petra North Ridge Project

November 11, Wednesday

7PM

Flanagan 265

We were saddened to learn yesterday of the passing of Roger Hornsby, Professor emeritus of Classics at the University of Iowa.  Prof. Hornsby was a very good friend of the ECU Classics Program.  He was the first classicist to hold the Whichard Chair, our College’s annual distinguished visiting professorship, in 1997-98.  During that year, he gave the well remembered lecture “The Liberal Arts, The Humanities and Other Good Things.”  He visited Greenville numerous times in the succeeding years.  His presence was always a welcome respite from the routine of the academic year.  He had a deep, loving and infectious understanding of ancient literature.  He possessed the sharpest wit I have ever known, outpaced only by the sharpness of his sagacious mind.

Prof. Hornsby spent his career at the University of Iowa.  His early books on Latin literature and especially his book on similes in Vergil’s Aeneid are models of Classical scholarship.  Yet he will not be remembered primarily for his scholarship.  He was never the most prolific publisher.  Rather, his life demonstrated that the scholar’s influence need not be between the woven covers of a tome.  He leaves behind a veritable legion of students whose lives he touched deeply.  I myself was never fortunate enough to study with him.  I have, however, met several who did, and have repeatedly found that they will regale you with improbable Hornsby tales and, more importantly, will express without provocation how Roger shaped their lives in the classroom and beyond it.

nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum
tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,
accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,
atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

Here is some information about an exciting summer program at my undergraduate alma mater.  I thought some of you might be interested.

Summer Latin Workshop 2010
July 11 to 16, 2010, Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania

We will read selections from De orbe novo by the Italian humanist Peter Martyr of Angleria (1457-1526), the most important early account of Columbus’ voyages to the new world. This work was originally written in Latin, and was complete by 1501. Martyr did not travel to the new world himself, but did interview Columbus and his shipmates, as well as other players in the events. His Latin is not difficult, and the spare and straightforward style of this work could best be compared among classical works to Caesar’s commentaries.

Given the topic this year, a special invitation is extended to teachers and scholars interested in early contacts between Europe and the Americas who would like to read De Orbe Novo in the original.

INSTRUCTORS: Prof. Christopher Francese and Prof. Meghan Reedy, both of the Dickinson College Department of Classical Studies

TO APPLY: please contact Mrs. Barbara McDonald, mcdonalb@dickinson.edu by the application deadline May 1, 2010.

FEE: The fee for 2010 is $300, due in a check made out to Dickinson College, by the fee deadline June 1, 2010. Please send it to Mrs.
Barbara McDonald, Department of Classical Studies, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA 17013. (The full cost is about twice that, but the workshop is subsidized by the Roberts Fund for Classical Studies.)

MORE INFORMATION: http://latincamp.wetpaint.com/

This Classicist, for one, gets excited every year for this day: the telecast of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.  It’s a great day for watching really smart kids showing off their knowledge of Greek and Latin (and many other) roots.  It’s a shame that our students in Classics 1300 are too old to compete!

The Spelling Bee has grown in popularity over the years to the point where the finals are now televised in prime time on ABC.  It used to be that I had to sneak away from graduate school classes on a weekday afternoon.  The Bee was televised on ESPN, of all places, but it was hardly at a convenient time.  Along came the documentary “Spellbound” (here’s the IMDB entry), which tracked several of the contestants for the 1999 Bee, and the Bee’s popularity soared.  There was even, believe it or not, a Broadway musical version of the spelling bee, called “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin.  The Classics world has held a special place in the Bee, since University of Vermont Classics professor Jacques Bailly has been the chief pronouncer for the past few years.