Monthly Archives: November 2012

Imaginative bust of Sicilian lyric poet Stesichorus (c. 640-555 BC) in Catania

On Thursday evening 29 November 2012, as everyone in these parts knows, Rutgers battles Louisville in an epic struggle for an outright Big East football championship title.  So it seems particularly apt that before the game the Rutgers Classics Graduate Student Association is sponsoring a lecture on the archetype of all such mythic tasks.

Two and a half hours before kickoff, at 5.00 PM in Douglass Campus Center Meeting Room E, Professor Raymond Capra from Seton Hall University will deliver a lecture entitled, “Stesichorus and the Labors of Herakles: Post-Homeric Poesis and Muthos.” Continue reading →

It’s all over the news today. Maryland and Rutgers are in serious talks to exit their respective sports conferences (ACC, Big East) for the Big Ten. An announcement may come as early as Monday 19 November 2012.

Here at RU we’ve been down this road before, as Steve Politi pointed out Saturday 17 November in the Star-Ledger. And it wouldn’t be cheap. Still, as Politi writes, “the $10 million fee to get out of the Big East would be the happiest divorce settlement in college sports history. This is more than just replacing USF and Memphis with, potentially, Michigan and Ohio State on the schedule. This is the way countless future students will view the university.” Continue reading →

Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion. Credit: Gjon Mili, LIFE/Google

Recent (2008) Rutgers Classics PhD Ryan Fowler has positioned himself at the very cutting edge of top-quality interactive on-line instruction in the humanities, a pedagogical wave that none of us can afford to ignore.

After teaching Classics and Philosophy as a visiting assistant professor at two selective liberal arts colleges—Grinnell College (2008-2009) and Knox College (2009-12)—Ryan has taken up an appointment at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC as a Sunoikisis Fellow for Curricular Development. Continue reading →

Our RU undergraduates have done it again. This Tuesday night—at 9 PM on 13 November 2012, to be exact—the Rutgers Classics Club launches the latest installment of its sensational “Professors Talk” series. You’ll want to head over to historic Scott Hall (Room 105) on the Rutgers College Avenue campus for this great event.

The professor in question? None other than Classics Department Chair James F. McGlew, who came to Rutgers in 2011 from the University of Missouri. His specialty is ancient Greece, especially its political culture and notions of citizenship in the Classical period. Continue reading →

Amphora (c. 560-550 BC) depicts death of Ismene following Mimnermus F 21 W

On  Thursday 15 November 2012 at 5 PM, the Seminar Room of the the Rutgers Classics Department (Ruth Adams Building 003, Douglass Campus) will be the setting for what promises to be a lecture of unusual interest. Richard L. Hunter (38th Regius Professor of Greek in Cambridge University, and Fellow of its Trinity College) will present on “One Verse of Mimnermus? Latin Elegy and Archaic Greek Elegy”.  Continue reading →

While we have a little lull in RU Classics news…You gotta hand it to de Lisle Guitar Co. of picturesque Zionsville Indiana, just eight miles northwest of Indianapolis. When de Lisle wanted to unleash its monster 23-watt, single 12” speaker hand-wired tube guitar amplifier on an unsuspecting world—an amp that would blow away the traditional market leader in its class, the venerable Fender Princeton Reverb—it providentially christened it….the Rutgers Reverb. Continue reading →

On 6 November 1869—143 years ago to this date—Rutgers hosted Princeton in the first-ever football game between two collegiate institutions, making Rutgers the birthplace of college football.

The game took place on a Saturday afternoon (3 PM kickoff) in a field along College Avenue in New Brunswick, now occupied by the gym affectionately known as “The Barn”. There a fired-up crowd of about 100 saw Rutgers beat Princeton 6-4. The rules were primitive, there were 25 players to a side, and the only equipment was the ball. And oh yeah—the Rutgers students caused a stir by showing up wearing the same color, namely scarlet. Continue reading →

Alas, the venerable Institut Ausonius thought of this great image first

This coming Thursday (8 November 2012) at 4 PM  the Rutgers Classics Graduate Student Association and the RU Department of Classics welcome Dr. Grégory Bonnin (Université Michel de Montaigne—Bordeaux 3 & the Institut Ausonius). He will be speaking on the topic of the Aegean islands under Athenian hegemony in a lecture entitled, “Is the Athenian Empire Controlling the Market? Megara and Melos at the Heart of Athenian Economic Ambitions.”

Continue reading →

Before the power, lights and internet went out here in central NJ thanks to the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, the RU Classics Weblog was engaged in a two-part meditation on all the great things Classics can do for your career, with features on the Rutgers undergraduate major and then some impressive but not unexpected outcomes.

But then—as if on cue—a new blog launched itself in the UK on 1 November wholly devoted to the question that we raised in our Part 2, namely: what Classics-educated folks have gone global? Continue reading →