Report from Jenny Dean, Cornelia Catlin Coulter Scholarship Winner
One of CANE’s missions is to help enrich learning of the classics by funding study at the American Academy of Rome’s summer program. In return, we ask that each winner provide an account of their experience to inspire future applicants. If you are interested in applying, please visit this page on the CANE website. The deadline is January 15, 2015.
The most recent recipient of the Cornelia Catlin Coulter Scholarship, Jenny Jean, who teaches Latin at the Kingswood Oxford School in Connecticut, sent us the following report!
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This summer (2014), I had the honor of taking part in the Classical Summer School at the American Academy in Rome (AAR) through the support of C.A.N.E.’s Cornelia Catlin Coulter Scholarship. The trip began in mid June, after the end of my second year teaching Latin at the Kingswood Oxford School in Connecticut. I felt relief as well as a twinge of sadness at the completion of the school year, but also a great deal of excitement about doing something as novel and interesting as the Classical Summer School program.
The Classical Summer School program is based in the city of Rome. Graduate students and Latin teachers from around the world live together for the duration in a residential neighborhood of Rome, high on the stunning Janiculum hill; they attend lecture in the bucolic grounds of the AAR, conducive to both serious study and repose with an excellent library on one side and a bocce court on the other as well as many other amenities. Over the course of six weeks, the program moves through the history of Rome, from early Etruscan culture and the foundation of the city to the post-classical, Christian-dominated Rome. Learning is facilitated by lectures, site visits, and museum visits and supplemented by a Latin reading group, teaching seminars, and, my personal favorite, material culture seminars, which make use of the vast array of materials in AAR’s study collection. My experiences with the Classical Summer School were very enjoyable for me as a learner, and, moreover, they will help me proceed to teach the Classics with greater expertise and vibrancy.
As I reflect back on my summer, I could note many learning experiences that profoundly affected me as a learner, teacher, and a person. Among my favorite lectures sections were those on Roman building techniques, Epigraphy, and frames of reference. In the first of those three, we learned about things like brick, tuffa, and opus reticulatum, the building blocks of Rome. Following the lecture, we ventured out to look at structures on site, and I felt my whole understanding of something as simple as a wall start to shift. I considered structures more deeply than ever before, thinking about when and how they were made, who made them and why, and the traces and significance of the materials used to cover them. Looking back at my former, perfunctory understanding of the remains of Roman buildings, I realized how little I actually understood about this subject that is so central to the teaching of classical culture. Heading into the classroom next year, I hope to help my students to be more critical observers of both their own material surroundings and the remains of Roman architecture that we study in class.
Our studies of Epigraphy were also enlightening, as they pushed me to acutely consider things like the source, or lack thereof, of ancient inscriptions as well as the formulas of funerary and dedicatory epigraphy. After the lecture, we took part in a material culture seminar in which we made actual rubbings from tombstones mounted in the cortile of the lovely AAR, analyzing the abbreviated writing and creating a narrative of the lives behind the stone. Thinking about inscriptions and the people who inscribed the words left to us will be another way for my students to come to know the ancient world more intimately.
As a final example of a remarkable learning experience, I will note the frames of reference lecture, which, like many aspects of the summer, had a profound effect on my understanding of classical material. The lecture’s premise was to alert the observer to how and why an exhibition, or indeed any planned space, has the capacity to manipulate a visitor’s gaze. Visits to the antiquarian galleries of the Capitoline Museum as well as EUR (Esposizione Universale Roma, designed in the fascist era) pushed me to think more about how the designers of a space manipulate my understanding of its and its relationship with the present. Going forward, it is my sincere hope to empower my own students with a similar ability to reflect on the shape of their world and to understand the part that Classics plays within it.
Participation in the Classical Summer School program at the AAR has pushed me both personally and professionally. I have gained a heightened intimacy with the material that I teach and I hope to bring much of what I have learned into my classrooms this year. More importantly, perhaps, this summer gave me the opportunity to spend six wonderful weeks with professionals in my field, who, by their intelligence and drive to excel, encouraged each person, teacher and graduate student, alike, to improve.