Monthly Archives: May 2008

How sweet it is. Sixteen Rutgers undergraduate majors in Classics received their BA degrees in commencement ceremonies on 21 and 22 May 2008—one of the largest groups in memory.

Congratulations to departmental majors Niti Bagchi, Nicholas Bendick, Thomas Biggs, Danielle Bonner, Shaam Brown, Jacqueline Cross, David Danbeck, Andrew Dodemaide, Ruthann Gerrard, Deborah Grau, Efstratios Monafis, Jesse Rosen, Alexander Smith, Michael Sobota, Jeffrey Ulrich, and Theo Webster.

Biggs, Danbeck, Dodemaide, Gerrard, Smith, Sobota and Ulrich (see pictures below) also received departmental honors for their senior thesis work.

Plans for this year’s seniors include graduate degree study in Classics at Columbia (Sobota) and Yale (Biggs, Danbeck).

Projections for the Class of 2009 show at least eighteen majors and as many minors in Rutgers Classics.

A Rutgers Classics team—faculty member Corey Brennan with graduate students Ryan Fowler (PhD ’08), Andrew Scott (PhD ’08), and Kate Shea—has produced a full edition of the unpublished Autobiography of Thomas Robert Shannon Broughton (1900-1993), one of the truly towering Romanists of the twentieth century.

Written at his family’s prompting over several summers in the late 1980s, this immensely detailed work of 233 typewritten MS pages—the bulk of which is a rich travelogue—offers much especially on the topography, ecology and material remains of Rome’s provinces.

The Autobiography also sheds remarkable light on Broughton’s formation as a scholar and person, and his experiences in the world of Canadian, American and international Classics over a period of some six decades.

As a bonus, there is included an introduction by the historian’s son, T. Alan Broughton (professor emeritus of English at the University of Vermont), dozens of photos from the Broughton family collection, and also the text of an unpublished 1970 lecture Broughton delivered at Bryn Mawr in tribute to Lily Ross Taylor, entitled “Roman Studies in the 20th Century”.

The Autobiography appears August 2008 as a special number of the American Journal of Ancient History, published by Gorgias Press.

At the Rutgers general university commencement on 21 May 2008, President Richard L. McCormick singled out new Classics PhD Ryan Fowler for his years of service in the university’s Graduate Student Association, Senate, and as a Trustee of the University (ex officio as graduate student representative).

Rutgers has been in the business of training folks in Classics since 1771, though it took a good two centuries (to be precise, the year 1971) for the University to confer a PhD in the discipline. The date of 21 May 2008 marks a milestone of sorts, in that four recipients of the Rutgers doctorate in Classics walked across the commencement stage, our highest number ever.

Heartfelt congratulations to the following dissertation writers who received a 2007/8 degree: Ryan C. Fowler, “The Platonic Rhetor in the Second Sophistic”; Gregory K. Golden, “Emergency Measures: Crisis and Response in the Roman Republic (from the Gallic Sack to the Tumultus of 43 BC)”; Michael J. Johnson, “The Pontifical Law of the Roman Republic”; Andrew G. Scott, “Change and Discontinuity within the Severan Dynasty: The Case of Macrinus”.

Next year one can find these young scholars at Grinnell (Fowler), Rutgers (Golden), Davidson (Johnson), and Hendrix (Scott).