Monthly Archives: December 2008

Evelyn O. Wilson (American, 1915-2006), Winter Scene (ca. 1943). Image courtesy of Joanne Wilson Jaffe, and the Ben and Evelyn Wilson Foundation.

Looking back, 2008 really seems to have been a banner year for Rutgers Classics. (Just skim the past posts of this blog.)

Deep thanks and warmest seasonal greetings to our students, alumni/ae, and many friends both inside and outside Rutgers University.

More—indeed, much more—to come in 2009!

Rutgers postcard (no date). “Best Wishes for a Merry Xmas. Sis., Why don’t you write? Bro.” From the Kenlew Collection.

The McKim, Mead & White building of the AAR, during the Academy’s June 2008 Open Studios

Excerpted from a press release (12 December 2008) by Adele Chatfield-Taylor (FAAR’84), President of the American Academy in Rome:

“Roman historian T. Corey Brennan has been appointed to a three-year term as the Andrew W. Mellon Professor-in-Charge of the School of Classical Studies at the American Academy in Rome. Brennan’s appointment begins 1 July 2009.

Brennan comes to the Academy from Rutgers University-New Brunswick, where he is currently associate professor and chair of the Department of Classics and a former director of the university’s interdisciplinary program in Italian Studies. Before arriving at Rutgers in 2000, he taught for a decade in the Departments of Greek and Latin at Bryn Mawr College.

Brennan held a pre-doctoral fellowship at the American Academy in Rome in 1987-1988, and currently (2008-2010) serves as president of its Society of Fellows, an alumni group of more than 1000 that comprises Academy Rome Prize winners, Residents, and Affiliates.

[He] succeeds Professor Thomas A.J. McGinn (FAAR’85) of Vanderbilt University as Mellon Professor at the American Academy in Rome.”

Brennan’s three-year position is a temporary one, after which he returns to Rutgers for teaching. As Professor-in-Charge, Brennan will help advance the humanistic work of the Rome Prize winners and other members of the AAR community, and coordinate and supervise many aspects of the Academy’s varied resources and programs (especially “walks and talks” in the city of Rome, and trips further afield, plus lectures and conferences in the humanities). While in Rome, he also will continue to work closely with more advanced Rutgers Classics graduate students. You can see the Rutgers news release on this here. For an informative list of Rutgers’ links to the American Academy in Rome, see the final section of this article.

But we’re not quite finished yet…. Continue reading →

The genius of LIFE photographer Gjon Mili; this and roughly 2,000,000 other LIFE archive images now available for free viewing thanks to a new partnership between Google and LIFE.com

RU ready for this? In just under a month (8-11 January 2009) Philadelphia will host the 140th Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association (APA). For the 110th time, the meeting will be held jointly with that of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA).

The Philadelphia Marriott Downtown Hotel (1201 Market Street) is the headquarters hotel for the joint conferences. Pretty much everything takes place there: the Convention Registration, the exhibits, all AIA and APA paper sessions, the Placement Service, all placement interviews, and most committee meetings, special events, and receptions.

As always, Rutgers Classics will be fully in the house. All of our teaching faculty (Emily Allen, Corey Brennan, Serena Connolly, Thomas Figueira, Matt Fox, Leah Kronenberg, Tim Power) plus most of our graduate students and also some undergraduates are slated to attend. Here’s a punchlist of presentations by faculty, students and alumni/ae at the APA sessions (AIA listings to follow):

THURSDAY 8 JANUARY

8:00 P.M. – 10:00 P.M SECTION 1 The Veterans’ Story: Interviewers on Interviewing
Paper #4. Lawrence Kowerski (Rutgers Classics PhD 2003, now associate professor, Hunter College). “The Insider: Going from Visiting to Tenure-Track Positions”

More from Gjon Mili and the LIFE archives; about the best photo of CIL VI 11595=34044 that one is likely to see

FRIDAY 9 JANUARY

8:30 A.M. – 11:00 A.M. SECTION 2 Greek Law
Paper #1. David Mirhady (Rutgers Classics PhD 1992, now associate professor, Simon Fraser University). “Democratic Rituals: Jury Selection in Athens”

1:30 P.M. – 4:00 P.M. SECTION 18 New Approaches to the Political & Military History of the Greek, Roman, and Late Roman Worlds. Sponsored by the APA Committee on Ancient History
Paper #1. Thomas J. Figueira (Rutgers Classics Professor II) “Recent Studies on the Structure and Institutions of the Greek polis”
Respondent to Papers #3 (M.T. Boatwright) and #4 (N. Rosenstein). T. Corey Brennan (Rutgers Classics associate professor)

Through the first half of 1966 LIFE published a multi-part photo spread on ancient Roman culture; the Gjon Mili photos seen here were meant for the 4 March and 3 June issues.

SATURDAY 10 JANUARY

1:30 P.M. – 4:00 P.M. SECTION 38 The Etruscan Objects Speak: New Linguistic and Socio-Historical Approaches to Etruscan Epigraphy. Joint APA/AIA Session.
Paper #5. Gary Farney (Rutgers-Newark associate professor of History). “Lucumo to Lucius: Etruscans with Both Etruscan and Latin Names on Bilingual Inscriptions from Etruria”

1:30 P.M. – 4:00 P.M. SECTION 40 The Vergilian Tradition. Sponsored by the Vergilian Society.
Paper #2. Karen Klaiber Hersch (Rutgers Classics PhD 2002, now assistant professor, Temple University). “An Unknown Epithalamic Link? Apollonius, Vergil, and Statius”

Funerary relief from sarcophagus at Rome, photographed by Mili in 1965; a glimpse of the breadth of the LIFE archive holdings in Roman culture can be seen here

SUNDAY 11 JANUARY

11:30 A.M. – 1:30 P.M. SECTION 49 Thucydides.
Paper #4. Sean Jensen (Rutgers Classics graduate student/Member, American School of Classical Studies at Athens) . “The Milesian Sub-Hegemony”

11:30 A.M. – 1:30 P.M. SECTION 50 Roman Religion
Paper #2. Benjamin Hicks (Rutgers Classics graduate student). “Evocatio Imagery in Tacitus’ Histories 4.83-84 ”

1:45 P.M. – 4:15 P.M. SECTION 58 The Soul and Its Afterlife. Sponsored by the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies.
John Finamore (Rutgers Classics PhD 1983, now Professor and Chair, Iowa). Co-organizer.

[You didn’t mention that there will be an off-premises Rutgers party-Ed.]

Genius of a different sort: Pat’s Steaks at 9th and Wharton in South Philly, seen via Google Maps Street View.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York fully reopened its Greek and Roman galleries in April 2007, to much acclaim. What better resource, then, to put undergraduates enrolled in “Life & Culture in the Early Roman Empire” at Rutgers-Newark thoroughly into the antiquity zone?

With the help of a generous Resource Grant from the Classical Association of the Atlantic States, Rutgers graduate student Liz Gloyn did precisely that. Aided by the expertise of fellow Rutgers Classics PhD candidate Benjamin Hicks, Gloyn—a participant in the inaugural year of the innovative Rutgers-Newark Scholar/Teacher program—took her students on a whirlwind tour of the Roman galleries, pointing out highlights of the collection such as a Roman copy of the famous Aphrodite of Cnidos and two cubicula with reconstructed wall paintings.

Students were also able to see the kind of statues that would have been kept in a lararium, and the group stopped by the famous Etruscan chariot—leading to some questions about how people were supposed to ride in it.

The Rutgers-Newark students had good things to say about being guided around the museum. “I’ve been to the Met Museum of Art before. However, it is very different when you have someone tell you what the things you are seeing are about,” said Ghazal Behreini ’11.

The trip also helped students make a connection between the objects they were seeing and what they had read or heard about. “I was able to link the information discussed in the class to the actual tangible objects from the ancient times,” said Denis Pozdnyakov ‘12. And Betty An ’12 added, “the trip helped developed my understanding of the course materials even better because instead of just reading off from literary books and texts, I got to see the works in person.”

All the students seemed amazed at the level of skill shown in the objects on display. “This all helped to appreciate the workmanship of the Romans, and their attention to detail, even in the most mundane objects, like mirror handles”, pointed out Jen Silva ’10.

Gloyn feels the trip was a resounding success. “It’s so important to give students an understanding of material culture as well as literature, and to give them something concrete to help them remember what they’ve learnt over the course,” she said.

We’re sure that the Rutgers-Newark students will remember their experience of Roman culture long after the semester ends. [And the dynamic duo of Gloyn and Hicks too—Ed.]

Photo credits: Benjamin Hicks