Yearly Archives: 2014

Announcements 18 Oct

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CANE

  • ​2015 Annual Meeting: Final Call for Proposals
    The 109th Annual Meeting of the Classical Association of New England will take place March 13h and14th, 2015 at Noble and Greenough School, Dedham, MA. Proposals for papers, workshops, and discussion groups on all topics related to Greco-Roman antiquity are cordially invited. Studies of authors and works regularly taught in schools and colleges are particularly welcome, as well as historical, archaeological, and pedagogical papers of interest to a general audience of classicists.
    ​Please send a one-page (300 word) abstract to:
    CANE President
    Elizabeth Keitel
    Department of Classics
    524 Herter Hall, University of Massachusetts
    Amherst, MA 01003.
    Electronic submissions can be emailed to: eek@classics.umass.edu.
    All papers must be suitable for presentation in a fifteen-minute period, to be followed by a brief question and answer period. To be considered for the annual meeting, abstracts must be submitted by the deadline.
    Deadline is December 1, 2014.
  • The winter deadline for the quadriannual CANE Discretionary Funds grant is December 1st.  If you have a great idea for a class activity but need funds for books and/or materials, please apply!  For more information on this or other grants/scholarships that CANE offers, visit this page.
  • The deadline for the Alison Barker Travel Scholarship (http://caneweb.org/BarkerScholApp.pdf), offered annually to undergraduates wishing to participate in educationally-enriching travel abroad, is December 1st.
  • The deadline for requesting aid from the Thomas and Eleanor Means Fund (http://caneweb.org/MeansScholApp.pdf) is December 1st.  Awards from this fund are granted to middle- and secondary-school students who wish to travel abroad for educational purposes.
  • It’s time to start thinking about this year’s CANE Writing Contest! Deadline is December 15.

BEYOND CANE

 

  • The Yale University Art Gallery has recently renovated its ancient art galleries, and there is a great special exhibit entitled “Roman in the Provinces: Art on the Periphery of the Empire” running now through February 4th.
  • UConn’s Homer Babbidge Library is showing an exhibit of Roman aqueducts using Legos through Oct 24.
  • Speaking of Legos, there’s also an exhibit in Quincy Market in Boston that includes Lego reconstructions of a Greek vase and classical statuary through Jan 11.

Conferences/Meetings

  • Mementote!  The Massachusetts Foreign Language Association (MaFLA) is holding its annual conference in Sturbridge, MA October 23rd-25th. There is a full schedule of Latin workshops and talks (nota bene, however, that the deadline for registration was September 26th).  Please note that the Classical Association of Massachusetts’ Annual Meeting takes place here on Friday night.
  • New York University’s Center for Ancient Studies will be hosting the Rose-Marie Lewent Conference on “WarStories:  Ancient and Modern Narratives of War” on Tuesday, November 11th, at 5:30 pm at NYU’s Hemmerdinger Hall, Silver Center for Arts and Science, 100 Washington Square East.  The event will be free and open to the public; a full program can be found here.

Meetups

  • Live in western MA or northern CT and want to practice speaking in Latin? There is a large group that meets weekly in Amherst! For details, contact TJ Howell.
  • In the Boston area? Check out the Active Latin Meetup page for events.

Jobs

  • The American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) is seeking to fill several positions.  See the ASCSA website for information about current positions and to obtain an application.

Awards, Scholarships and Fellowships

  • The Society for Classical Studies has extended the deadline for nominations for its Precollegiate Teaching Award to Friday, November 7, 2014. Instructions for submitting nominations appear at this link.
  • THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF CLASSICAL STUDIES AT ATHENS presents…THE M. ALISON FRANTZ FELLOWSHIP IN POST-CLASSICAL STUDIES AT THE GENNADIUS LIBRARY
    Deadline: January 15
    The M. Alison Frantz Fellowship, formerly know as the Gennadeion Fellow in Post-Classical Studies, was named in honor of photographer and archaeologist, M. Alison Frantz (1903 – 1995) whose photographs of antiquities are widely used in books on Greek culture.
    The Frantz Fellowship is awarded to scholars whose fields of study are represented by the Gennadius Library in Athens, i.e. Late Antiquity, Byzantine Studies, post-Byzantine Studies, or Modern Greek Studies.
    Eligibility: Ph.D. candidates and recent Ph.D.’s (up to five years) from a U.S. or Canadian institution. Successful candidates should demonstrate their need to work in the Gennadius Library.
    Terms: A stipend of $11,500 plus room, board, and waiver of School fees. Fellows are expected to be in residence at the School for the full academic year from September 1 to June 1. A final report is due at the end of the award period, and the ASCSA expects that copies of all publications that result from research conducted as a Fellow of the ASCSA be contributed to the Gennadius Library of the School.
    Application: Submit application for Associate Membership with fellowship, curriculum vitae, description of the proposed project, and three letters of reference online on the ASCSA web site .
    Web site: www.ascsa.edu.gr or http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/admission-membership/grants
    E-mail: application@ascsa.org
    The award will be announced by March 15.
    The American School of Classical Studies at Athens does not discriminate on the basis of race, age, sex, sexual orientation, color, religion, ethnic origin, or disability when considering admission to any form of membership or application for employment.

A Basic Film Project on the Roman Empire

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At some point in the first few weeks of Latin I, usually shortly after I’ve thrilled a crowd of tacit freshmen by explaining what diphthongs and antepenults are, I try to set aside a chunk of class to walk through a broad timeline of Roman history.  As the year progresses, and we learn about Romulus and Hannibal and Augustus in detail, it’s my hope that this initial overview of the chronology will remind my kids that the Roman state itself was impressively enduring.  Rome begins with a mob of Italian shepherds and rogues, inspired by bird-signs, building huts on the Palatine.  It ends with an army of Greeks and Genoans, gathered on the walls of Constantinople, desperately repairing breaches created by Turkish cannons.  In order to explain how in the heck we start in Italy and end in Thrace two millennia later, I’d like my students to understand how all the pieces fit together.
When they get into the history, the textbooks — for sound reasons, of course — tend to focus almost exclusively on the Republic and the very early Empire.  Still, it seems a shame to me if my students only encounter Diocletian or Constantine XI as little more than names attached to dates.  Therefore, time permitting, I occasionally offer my classes options for projects that might encourage them to do some solid exploration into the later years of the Roman Empire.  I have offered, as an example below, the instructions for a simple film project:
 
Description:  Create a new HBO series focused on the reign of a later emperor.
Requirements:
( 1 )  Write plot outlines for 10 episodes (1/2 pg each, double-spaced).  The story arc should cover the entire reign of the emperor (or emperors) chosen.  Although you should ultimately be aiming to create a show that would be a work of historical fiction, you must make reference to at least ten actual events from that emperor’s reign.
( 2 )  Create a list of characters who will appear in the series, with a brief description of each one.  You must include six characters who were historical figures, along with four fictional characters.
( 3 )  Film a trailer for the series (roughly 5 minutes), in which you should introduce at least half of the characters and make reference to at least five key events.
List of Emperors:
(a)  Valerian (253-259) and Gallienus (253-268)
(b)  Diocletian (284-305)
(c)  Constantine I (306-337)
(d)  Valentinian I  (364-375), Valens (364-378), and Theodosius I (379-395)
(e)  Arcadius (383-408) and Honorius (393-423)
(f)  Justinian I (527-565)
(g)  Heraclius (610-641)
(h)  Irene the Athenian (797-802)
(i)  Basil II the Bulgar-Slayer (976-1025)
(j)  Alexius I Comnenus (1081-1118)
(k)  Constantine XI Palaeologus (1449-1453)