Monthly Archives: October 2012

It won Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903) a Nobel Prize in Literature…

In our last post, the fall 2012 Rutgers School of Arts & Sciences (SAS) undergraduate Major Fair gave occasion for us to reflect on what makes studying Classics at RU so worthwhile.

“Classics is the ‘classic’ humanities major”, explained the department’s Undergraduate Director, Professor Leah Kronenberg, in an in-depth interview. “It still has the reputation of being a hard and impressive course of study, but our students quickly learn the truth about Classics: it’s really fun!”

But what can it do for your career? There is an awful lot to say here. But for a start, a glance at some of the successful folks who have received an undergraduate Classics degree suggests that there is a planet of possibilities and really no limitations. Continue reading →

Are you going to be there? It’s time once again for the Rutgers School of Arts & Sciences (SAS) Major Fair. It all goes down at the Rutgers Student Center, Multipurpose Room, on College Avenue campus. And when? Wednesday 24 October from 1:00 – 4:00pm.  Classics Undergraduate Director Professor Leah Kronenberg—who is interviewed below in this post—will be there throughout to answer your questions.

Here’s an inside tip. It’s not just for majors. The SAS Major Fair offers information for majors, minors, certificates, and careers.  And here’s how it works. Students speak with representatives of academic departments and programs, student services offices, and a variety of Rutgers Schools and Colleges by visiting their tables at the fair. Continue reading →

Decorative detail from the 1621 Chouet edition of Sextus Empiricus 

The Rutgers Classics Graduate Student Association is pleased to invite the world to the third installment of its 2012/3 lecture series. It takes place this Thursday 25 October 2012 at 6:00 pm in the Douglass Campus Center, Meeting Room E.

The speaker is Professor Richard Bett of Johns Hopkins University, whose lecture is entitled “The Pyrrhonist’s Dilemma: What to Write if You Have Nothing to Say.” It concerns Sextus Empiricus and methods of writing. You can find a version of this paper on “the Pyrrhonist’s Dilemma” on Professor Bett’s website. Continue reading →

RU undergraduates…want to meet up with fellow ancient history enthusiasts?
Interested in Romans and Greeks, history and myth, language and literature? Well, your one stop is the Rutgers Classics Club. The Facebook group is here.

With movie nights, field trips, and loads of fun events all year long, membership in the Classics Club offers some of the most happening experiences available on the Banks.

Take for instance this coming Tuesday night, October 23rd. It’s the Rutgers Classics Club 2nd Annual Coffee House. Last year’s November inaugural Coffee House event was a super-smash, and preliminary indications are that this year’s will take it to the next level. It all goes down Tuesday night in beautiful Scott Hall (Room 105) on the Rutgers College Avenue campus, starting at 9.10 PM. Continue reading →

The answer is TRUE, if you are talking about Garret Augustus Hobart (1844-1899), Vice President of the United States under William McKinley.

Hobart, who graduated with the Rutgers College class of 1863 at the precocious age of nineteen, served as Vice President from 4 March 1897 until his untimely death in office on 21 November 1899, at just 55 years of age.

Continue reading →

Ask anyone in these parts about the significance of the year 1869, and the answer is likely to be “Rutgers—fielding a team of mostly classicists—defeats Princeton in the first intercollegiate football game!” Anything else for that year? “Rutgers students found the campus newspaper The Daily Targum.” Keep going? “The Golden Spike.” After many iterations of the question, “Oh yeah, of course, the creation of the APA—the American Philological Association.”

Here’s the story in brief, from the Associations’s website. Founded in 1869 by “professors, friends, and patrons of linguistic science,” the APA is the principal learned society in North America for the study of ancient Greek and Roman languages, literatures, and civilizations. While the majority of its members are university and college Classics teachers, members also include scholars in other disciplines, primary and secondary school teachers, and interested lay people. Continue reading →

On the morning of Thursday 4 October 2012  (i.e., today), Facebook  founder and CEO Mark  Zuckerberg posted this status update on his page:

Not too long afterward, the planet saw the launching of the Rutgers University Department of the Classics Facebook page. The goal? Precisely to make and maintain those connections that Zuckerberg is talking about, in this case, among members of the larger RU Classics community (including our many alums) and between RU Classics and the rest of the world. Continue reading →

Here’s an anniversary you can be excused for having missed. This past August—the 31st of the month, to be exact—marked the 2000th year after the birth of  the Roman emperor Gaius, a.k.a. Caligula, in AD 12.

Now, whether you want to sleep on a new two-hour History Channel special devoted to the notorious emperor is a different matter. It’s called Caligula: 1400 Days of Terror—a reference to his short and violent reign of March 37 to January 41. The US premiere airs from 9-11 PM on Tuesday 9 October 2012. (It already debuted in Australia and NZ in time for that August anniversary; and it premieres in Italy Sunday 28 October.)

Rutgers Classics associate professor Corey Brennan plays a part in the show, that (as plugged by the History Channel) “examines controversial new theories about the man who ruled the world’s mightiest Empire with sadistic brutality”. You can see the trailer here. Continue reading →

A bronze issue of Augustus from ancient Mérida, showing the colony’s gateway

It all happens Thursday 4 October at 6 PM, in Ruth Adams Building 003. That’s when and where the Rutgers Classics Graduate Student Association (GSA) presents the second installment in its ambitious 2012/2013 series of lectures—a presentation by Professor Benedict Lowe of Aarhus University (Denmark). The topic? “Italian Immigration in Central Spain in the 1st and 2nd Centuries BC.” Continue reading →