New year, new look: who’s who at RU Classics (1 of 3)

There’s so much new afoot at Rutgers Classics that a September 1st summary seems in order.

Let’s start with the faculty and staff…

Left to right: continuing Classics faculty Thomas J. Figueira, Serena Connolly, T. Corey Brennan, Leah Kronenberg, Timothy Power, Emily M. Allen.

Associate professor Corey Brennan is new (sort of) at Acting Chair. He served two terms as Chair of the department (2002-2008), and returns also for 2008/9 in the position. This fall Brennan teaches an undergraduate lecture course in Roman Civilization.

Serena Connolly came to Rutgers in 2007/8 as a visiting assistant professor, after three years of full-time teaching at Yale. She now holds a tenure-track appointment, and is the department’s new Graduate Director. Connolly’s courses this fall are Sallust for advanced Latin undergraduates, and a graduate seminar on Rome in the Age of Augustus.

New assistant professor Timothy Power joins the Rutgers faculty from the University of Washington, where he had taught since 2001. This semester at RU he teaches intermediate Greek prose and an undergraduate lecture course in Greek Civilization. Power also assumes the duties of Acting Undergraduate Director. That is because…

Assistant professor Leah Kronenberg, who is the department’s Undergraduate Director, starts the second year of a two-year competitive research leave, funded by the American Council of Learned Societies (07/08) and the Harvard Loeb Classical Library Foundation (08/09). Kronenberg is in the midst of a new book-length project entitled Gods and Monsters: Roman Representations of Epicureanism. Her first book, Fables of Farming from Greece and Rome, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press/UK.

Professor (II) Thomas J. Figueira in 2009 will see his 30th year teaching in Classics and History at Rutgers. This fall he offers intermediate Latin prose and (for the History Department) an undergraduate lecture course on Ancient Greece. Figueira also starts a term on the Rutgers University Senate as a faculty representative of the School of Arts and Sciences—New Brunswick.

Emily Allen has taught various courses at Rutgers in Greek prose and verse, as well as a lecture course on the epic hero. Allen is on leave this year—among other things, she will travel to Paris to finish her Harvard/Sorbonne doctoral co-tutelage requirements—but starts at Rutgers Classics in September 2009 as a tenure-track assistant professor.

Visiting assistant professor Matt Fox (not pictured above) is the former Robert B. Aird Chair in the Humanities at Deep Springs College (California). This coming year is the second in Fox’s two-year appointment at Rutgers Classics as a visiting assistant professor. For the fall he teaches Elementary Greek, and undergraduate lecture courses in Greek & Roman Mythology as well as Roman Drama in Translation. Fox also will coordinate the department’s introductory Latin program. That features as Teaching Assistants RU Classics graduate students Andriy Fomin, Charles George, Benjamin Hicks (Head TA), Rachel Loer, and Lisa Whitlatch, each offering his or her own class section in the language.

And that’s just half the story…

An unusually impressive group will offer individual courses for the Classics department this fall.

Board of Governors Professor (II) Alan Code taught at Berkeley from 1977-1992 and from 1997-2007. He retired from Berkeley in 2007, and now teaches in the Philosophy Department at Rutgers. This fall he offers an undergraduate lecture course on Philosophy of the Greeks, cross-listed between Classics and Philosophy.

Gregory Golden received his PhD from Rutgers Classics in 2008, following degrees at Penn, Chicago, and Oxford. A highly versatile teacher who has taught a full range of Greek and Roman language and civilization courses, this fall he offers Medieval Latin to a mixed undergraduate and graduate class, in addition to classes in History at Rutgers—Newark.

Tuna Sare teaches for her second year in Rutgers Classics, this fall offering an advanced undergraduate lecture survey course on Greek and Roman Art. Sare is a senior graduate student in the RU Art History Department, who earned her first degree at Bilkent University in Turkey. Her specialty is Hellenistic art and archaeology.

Visiting researcher Stefan Schorn will present a graduate seminar on Greek and Roman Biography before taking up a new continuing post in the Ancient History Department at Leuven. Schorn formerly was a research assistant and an assistant professor at the Universities of Bamberg and Würzburg; he came to Rutgers first in 2007 thanks to a fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Azzan Yadin is an associate professor in the Jewish Studies department, who this fall will teach a Classics graduate seminar on Allegorical Interpretation in Late Antiquity. Yadin received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. His first book, Scripture as Logos: Rabbi Ishmael and the Origins of Midrash, was published in 2004 by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

And last but certainly not least: Kathryn Neal continues in her seventh year as Department Administrator. Kathryn holds BA and MA degrees from Rutgers in Political Science, as well as a MFA in Writing from Spalding University in Louisville, KY. For the third straight year she will be assisted by Metaxia Drakopoulos (class of 2010), an undergraduate double major in Anthropology and French.

In addition to taking courses with the faculty listed above, this term Rutgers Classics graduate students are enrolled in seminars in affiliated Rutgers Departments (e.g., Art History and Philosophy), as well as in classes offered through the Inter-University Doctoral Consortium, which includes Princeton, Columbia, NYU, and other universities in the New York metropolitan area.

In all, Rutgers Classics is seeing over 800 students enrolled in its courses for just Fall 2008; of these, 205 students are taking classes in the Latin and Greek languages.

Full details on RU Classics Courses and People can be found at our new departmental website.

Coming soon…Who’s who at RU Classics among graduate students (2 of 3) and undergraduate majors (3 or 3).