Rutgers Classics in effect at CAAS 2009 Annual Meeting, McMaster “Cross Cultural” conference

Representation of Cato the Censor, from an 18th century edition of Plutarch’s Lives. Source: LIFE

Rutgers Classics turned out in force for the 2009 annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States, 8-10 October, at the storied Doubletree Hotel in downtown Wilmington Delaware.

The conference program featured Liz Gloyn, a Rutgers Classics PhD candidate, presenting her talk “Life in Plastic, It’s Fantastic: Classical Reception and Barbie”. Gloyn, currently the holder of a University and Bevier dissertation fellowship, is now back to working on her PhD thesis on the ethics of the family in Seneca. But she has promised the RU Classics blog a peak at her “Plastic, Fantastic” conclusions—watch this space!

RU alumnae also made a considerable contribution to the papers at the meeting. Deborah Lemieur (Saint Joseph’s University), MA 2006 spoke on using Apollonius, King of Tyre as an intermediate Latin text. Marice Rose (Fairfield University), who completed her PhD in art history at Rutgers, spoke on how to use current events in archeology to encourage significant learning.

As if that wasn’t enough, Sarolta Takács, Dean of the SAS Honors Program and Professor of History at Rutgers, was elected CAAS First Vice President during the business meeting of the Association in its Saturday session.

Also seen: Katherine Wasdin, Rutgers Classics visiting assistant professor, and RU Classics graduate students Charles George and Kate Whitcomb. The 2010 CAAS meeting will be in Newark, NJ, right in Rutgers’ home territory—we look forward to seeing an equally strong turnout then!

But that’s not all. In Hamilton, Ontario, on 3 October 2009, Eleanor Jefferson, a second year graduate specializing in Roman history, presented a paper “United We Stand?: Cultural Negotiation in Cato’s Origines” at the McMaster University graduate student conference “Cross Cultural Influence In The Roman World.” The keynote speaker at that conference was Emma Dench of Harvard University, who spoke on “Roman and Local Conceptualizations of Time”.

Left to right: S. Takács, K. Wasdin, E. Gloyn, at the 2009 CAAS annual meeting