RU Classics PhD candidate Nicole Nowbahar in front of the Constitution of the Roman Republic of 1849 [inscribed 2011], overlooking the city from the Passeggiata del Gianicolo.

The American Academy in Rome Affiliated Fellowship has been such an amazing experience and crucial to my dissertation work. My dissertation is focused on both the ideal and transgressive clothing of Roman women. I look specifically at literary examples of cross-dressing women, who wear armor or men’s clothing for different purposes. Before discussing these instances of women wearing transgressive clothing, my first three chapters examine the ideal dress of women in literature and material culture.

During this fellowship, my mission has been to look at as many as I can of ancient sculptures, frescoes, and other ancient works depicting the clothed female body. By understanding how Romans visually depicted the ideal clothed woman, I will be able to understand the nuances and significance of dress that does not fit this ideal standard.

Statue of Aphrodite in Rome’s Centrale Montemartini Museum.

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CONFERENCE CALL FOR PAPERS: Food and Drink in the Ancient World

Rutgers University (New Brunswick NJ), Friday 31 May—Saturday 1 June 2019

Keynote Speaker: Dr Kristina Killgrove, UNC Chapel Hill

Extended deadline for submissions: 15 February 2019

Human activity is regulated by the constant need to acquire and consume food. Assuredly, food and drink played a significant role in antiquity just as now, and, since we all must eat and drink, we naturally become curious about what and how our distant ancestors ate and drank (Alcock 2006). The study of food and drink in the ancient world expanded tremendously in the 1990s and has continued to do so in the decades following (e.g. Davison 1997, Garnsey 1999, Wilkins and Hill 2006). This resultant trend is partly owed to a focus in research less preoccupied with the great deeds of great men, but one open to seeing antiquity as a period that offers a wealth of information on the varied life of the everyday world (Donahue 2015).

One does not need to look far in the corpus of classical literature to find mention of viands—there is animal sacrifice in the epics of Homer and Vergil, ever-flowing wine in the sympotic and love elegies of Alcaeus and Horace, conceited cooks in the comedies of Aristophanes and Plautus, and indulgence in the elite banquets of the Deipnosophistai and Satyrica. Beyond these portraits, there are ancient treatises specifically devoted to the topic of food and drink—both philosophical, such as Porphyry’s On Abstinence from Animal Food, and medical, e.g. Galen’s On the Power of Foods. In supplementation of investigations based on literary texts, archaeology has produced an immense amount of information for our understanding of consumption in antiquity. From grand tomb finds to the more ordinary discoveries of kitchen utensils, excavations have dramatically clarified our picture of ancient dining. Archaeozoology and archaeobotany have helped answer questions about ancient diets, as have the osteological analyses associated with bioarchaeology.

We invite abstracts for papers that explore the topic of food and drink through various disciplines, such as Classics, Archaeology, Anthropology, Food Science, and related fields. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

The Ancient Mediterranean Diet: staple foods in the Mediterranean (wine, oil, and bread; cereals and legumes); meat consumption, availability of seafood; specialized diets, medical approaches to nutrition (e.g. for the military, athletes, infirm)

The Social Context of Food and Drink: sacrifices and offerings, public and communal meals; variations in diet based on social class; food supply and shortages, grain doles (e.g. frumentatio, annona)

Food as a Point of Contact, Creator of Identity, Delimitation of Otherness: import and markets, especially for spices and exotic ingredients; horticulture, soil chemistry, and cultivation of local specialties; taboos (e.g. beer and milk as barbarian; cannibalism as historical fact or political slander)

Alcoholic and Non-Alcoholic Beverages: wine and viticulture (e.g. merum, mulsum, and conditum); access to potable water, aqueducts; drinking vessels (e.g. kylikes, skyphoi, kantharoi, and their images)

Our confirmed keynote speaker is Dr. Kristina Killgrove, teaching Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, research scholar at the Ronin Institute, and senior contributor to Forbes. Dr. Killgrove, a bioarchaeologist, will deliver a talk on Roman diet and its correlation to disease, climate change, and migration.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words (excluding bibliography) by February 15th, 2019 to rutgers.foodanddrinkconference@gmail.com. Be sure to include any audio-visual needs in this email. Papers should be no more than 20 minutes in length. Please include in the email your name, affiliation, and contact information. The abstract itself should be anonymous. Questions may be sent to the same email. Successful applicants should expect to hear back from conference organizers by early March 2019. In addition to providing accommodation, we are looking forward to hosting an ‘ancient’ feast for the conference organizers and speakers.

Emmanuel Aprilakis and Nicole Nowbahar (PhD students, Rutgers University) [organizers]

The last months have been an academic whirlwind for Rutgers Classics PhD candidate Emmanuel Aprilakis, now in his fourth year in our program. This past summer and fall have taken Emmanuel to the UK (twice) as well as Slovakia and Greece, for research, paper presentations, and more. But we’ll let Emmanuel Aprilakis tell the whole, intriguing story in his own words…

“I was fortunate enough to spend a portion of this past summer from June into July as an Academic Visitor at the University of Oxford. The main purpose of this endeavor was to undertake pre-dissertation research that would feed directly into my ensuing dissertation proposal to be submitted at Rutgers this fall. While there, I also presented a paper at the Graduate Workshop in Ancient Greek and Roman Music, which took place on June 29^that the Ioannou Centre, which houses the Faculty of Classics at Oxford.”

The Ancient Greek and Roman Music conference venue in the Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies

“Appearing on the panel treating music and drama, my paper, entitled “Athena’s Θεσμός: Sound, Assonance, and Speech Acts in Eumenides 566-73,” dealt with Athena’s ordinance, which is central to Aeschylus’ Eumenides, the culmination of his peerless Oresteia trilogy. As she presides over the very first trial there, Athena herself intermittently explains the institution of the pioneering law court on the Areopagus. My piece sought to highlight the sound imagery, assonance, euphony, and speech acts employed by Athena in this pivotal speech in the play.” Continue reading →

In our parts, one of the indisputable high points of the academic year is the Classical Association of the Atlantic States annual meeting. And this fall’s gathering—to be held at The Inn at Penn in Philadelphia on 4-6 October 2018—promises to be an especially memorable one.

Highlights are many. A presentation of outstanding undergraduate research, co-sponsored by Eta Sigma Phi. A book signing and panel organized by Kurt Raaflaub (Brown) to mark the publication of The Landmark Julius Caesar. The annual Clack Lecture, delivered by Emily Greenwood (Yale) on “What Thucydides Didn’t Write: Adventures on the Frontiers of World Literature and World History.” Plus workshops on developing race and ethnicity syllabi; the history of secondary school teaching in Classics; Gwendolyn Brooks‘ “The Anniad”; and two dozen additional panels and paper sessions. You can download the full listing of offerings here: CAAS_PROGRAM_FALL_2018.

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Fragment of a statue excavated in Varna (Bulgaria). Credit (for this and all photos in this article): Jonas Tai

Jonas Tai is a junior in Rutgers’ School of Arts & Sciences, who impressively will graduate with three majors: Classics (Greek option), History (Ancient History & Classics option), and Medieval Studies. Here Jonas recounts how he spent this past summer in Greece (including Crete) and Bulgaria on two intense and intensely rewarding programs.

“With the help of Rutgers Classics’ Ethel S. Cook Travel Scholarship, I was able to fund my participation in two excellent summer programs: the Summer Session of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and Late Antique archaeology in Bulgaria under the Balkan Heritage Foundation.

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The iconic quadriga atop Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, above scenes of the Centauromachy. Credit (for all images, unless otherwise noted): Max DuBoff

[Editor’s note: Rutgers’ Department of Classics holds an annual competition for its undergraduate and graduate students to receive one of several Ethyl S. Cook Scholarships, which support travel abroad for programs that specialize in fields relevant to classical studies. Here is the very welcome report of a recent recipient, Max DuBoff ’19, a member of the inaugural class of the Rutgers Honors College and a 2017/8 Lloyd C. Gardner Fellow who will graduate with a double major in Classics (Greek & Latin option) and Philosophy.]

“When I began to learn Latin, I felt like the language I had spoken my whole life suddenly made a whole lot more sense. I discovered roots behind common and uncommon words—I’ll never forget my first cognate, equus—and gained insight on the grammatical and linguistical development that helped shape English into the glorious hodgepodge it is.

Although I advanced greatly in my language learning in the interim, I experienced no similar wonderment for over half a decade, until this summer in Berlin, when I began to learn German at the Goethe-Institut with generous funding from the Ethel S. Cook Travel Scholarship program. I continually delighted in finding out which common English words derive from German; even though I knew abstractly that English is a Germanic language and that many of its grammatically integral words are from German, I simply did not understand German’s concrete influence on English. My new knowledge of German provided further color to my understanding of my native tongue as well as my other previous language learning.

The top of the classically inspired Triumph Arch opposite the New Palace in Sanssouci Park, Potsdam

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Official seal of the Rutgers Female Institute, featuring Revolutionary War personality Col. Henry Rutgers. From its 25th anniversary celebratory booklet (1864)

There is so much to admire in the new (2018) book The Douglass Century: Transformation of the Women’s College at Rutgers University, coauthored by Rutgers faculty members Kayo Denda (Libraries), Mary Hawkesworth (Women’s and Gender Studies), and Fernanda H. Perrone (Libraries), and published by Rutgers University Press. It is deeply researched, lucidly written, lavishly illustrated and wonderfully produced, and features more than a few narrative twists. In short, the volume marks an immensely engaging and indeed indispensable contribution to the history of women’s education in America.

For many readers, one startling item will leap out right at the beginning of the first chapter (pp. 4-6), the whole account of New York City’s Rutgers Female Institute. It was organized in 1838 with a bequest of three lots of land from the estate of Colonel Henry Rutgers—namesake of our university—and later (1867), with the introduction of a robust classics curriculum, transmuted into the Rutgers Female College. As such, it became the first institution in the city of New York where women could earn the degree of Bachelor of Arts—more than 20 years before the chartering of Hunter College and the founding of Barnard College.

First location of the Rutgers Female Institute (1839-1860), in NYC’s old Seventh Ward, in the lower east side of Manhattan. From the institution’s 3rd Circular (1841).

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Philip the Tetrarch (4 BCE-34 CE) of Judaea, son of Herod the Great, pays homage to Augustus in 8/9 CE; the reverse depicts the Augusteum at Paneas. Credit: Heritage Auctions no. 3018 (2016) lot 20068

Ever since Katheryn Whitcomb (Rutgers Ph.D. 2016) earned an A.B. in Classical Languages at Bryn Mawr College, her work has managed to maintain an impressive balance between ancient literatures and history, texts and material culture, center and periphery. Her primary research focus eventually centered on non-Roman perceptions of Rome during the late Republic and early Empire.

This trajectory resulted in an ambitious Rutgers dissertation entitled “Allies, Avengers, and Antagonists: Rome’s Leading Men Through the Eyes of Ioudaioi”. What Katheryn compellingly conveys here is a complex and ever-shifting variety of local attitudes, with each thread in her narrative showing real development. In the end, she shows that even some generations after Pompey’s invasion and assault on the Temple in 63 BCE, one can hardly speak of universal resentment of Roman rule in Judaea. Continue reading →

At High Point Solutions Stadium, graduating Classics seniors including Michael Antosiewicz’18 (front left), with Professor Emily Allen-Hornblower (front right)

At Rutgers’ rain-soaked 252nd Commencement on Sunday 13 May, university President Robert L. Barchi called the class of 2018 “the largest and most accomplished” in the institution’s history.

Ignoring the rain (more or less) at Rutgers’ 252nd Commencement (Mother’s Day, 13 May 2018)

In all, the event—which also included Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences—saw 12,961 receive graduate status, including 13 majors in the Department of Classics.

 “Every one of you has successfully completed a rigorous course of study”, said President Barchi to the graduates in the crowd of 32,500 at The Birthplace (a.k.a. High Point Solutions Stadium), “at Rutgers, one of the finest public universities in America.” 

Classics Undergraduate Director Emily Allen-Hornblower (left) with Atiya Aftab, Department of Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies Program

Speaking of rigorous, Classics Associate Professor and Undergraduate Director Emily Allen-Hornblower quite literally carried the departmental flag at both the general Commencement and the soggy ceremony for the School of Arts and Sciences, as a large and exceptionally talented group of Classics majors received their degrees: Madison Akins, Michael Antosiewicz, Akari Armatas, Michael Collins, JuliaRose Driscoll, Kat Garcia, Shannon Gilbert, Molly Kuchler, Katie Moretti, Eric Ng, Kim Peterman, Thomas Pettengill, and Tiara Youngblood.

One of many takeaways: our majors’ trilingual mortarboard decorations were off the proverbial hook.

From left, graduating Classics seniors Shannon Gilbert, Kim Peterman, Katie Moretti, Molly Kuchler

RU Classics wishes every single one of our majors and minors and indeed all the members of Rutgers’ Class of 2018 all the very best at this most important milestone. Please stay in touch!

Did we mention that Katie Moretti ’18 wrote her Honors thesis on Dido?

On Tuesday 1 May, the Dean’s Home at Rutgers’ Douglass Residential College hosted an elegant Classics Department celebration of undergraduate achievements and graduate milestones. Faculty, students, parents, and friends converged for an afternoon of ceremony and short presentations, all accompanied by seasonal refreshments and much good cheer.

Associate Professor and Undergraduate Director Emily Allen-Hornblower chaired the festive occasion, overseeing the award of gold medals to 13 Classics majors from the Rutgers class of 2018, and laurel crowns to four new members of the Zeta Epsilon chapter of Eta Sigma Phi, the national Classics honor society.

Associate Professor (and Undergraduate Director) Emily Allen-Hornblower and Professor (and Chair) James McGlew

Recognized at the event were graduating Classics majors Madison Akins, Michael Antosiewicz, Akari Armatas, Michael Collins, JuliaRose Driscoll, Kat Garcia, Shannon Gilbert, Molly Kuchler, Katie Moretti, Eric Ng, Kim Peterman, Thomas Pettengill, and Tiara Youngblood.

Four of this year’s 13 graduating Classics majors: from left, Michael Collins ’18, Eric Ng ’18, JuliaRose Driscoll ’18, Shannon Gilbert ’18

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