Call for Vergilian Society Program Directors

Would you like to direct a tour or workshop for the Vergilian Society in 2024?

Vergilian Society tours are designed to appeal to a wide range of travelers interested in the ancient Mediterranean. Our programs welcome college students, instructors and nonprofessionals.

For 2024, we are particularly interested in tours of the ancient Mediterranean or study programs that are based at the Villa Vergiliana, a study center in the Bay of Naples, Italy.

If you have any questions about proposal submissions, please contact the Chair of the Villa Management Committee, John Wonder, at jwwonder@sfsu.edu

You’ll find previous tour details at https://www.vergiliansociety.org/previous-tours/

For those interested, please send a proposal to the Chair of the Villa Management Committee. The proposal may be a paragraph describing the planned program or a longer version. The Vergilian Society has offered study programs since 1937, and our directors have enjoyed many rewarding experiences.


Report on the 75th American Classical League Institute

The Diamond Jubilee Institute of the American Classical League took place on June 24th – 26th, 2022, at the beautiful and historic College of Charleston. This was the first in-person Institute held since 2019 and there was an overwhelming feeling of joy and happiness among the attendees to be able to gather together in order to learn from some amazing peers, laugh with old friends, and enjoy the sights, sounds, and food of Charleston, South Carolina.

From the opening plenary and on through many of the sessions during the Institute, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) was at the forefront of many conversations. Dr. Anika Prather of Howard University in that plenary implored all of us to take the steps necessary to make Classics accessible for all and to remind us that, regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender, we can all trace a line in our personal stories back to world of the Greeks and Romans. 

Multiple other sessions encouraged participants to think critically about the erasure of Black Classicists in America, to consider how to meet the needs of our neurodiverse learners, and to intentionally seek out the missing voices of women in our stories and our instructional materials. Amy Cohen along with Kim Dang of Weston Middle School (MA) and Sophia He, a rising senior at Newton Country Day School (MA) took us on a journey through “The Road to Latin” textbook written by Helen Chesnutt, Martha Olivenbaum, and Nellie Rosebaugh, made freely available thanks to the work by Project Nota and hosted by Lupercal. The link to the textbook is available here: Link to The Road to Latin (https://www.lupercallegit.org/_files/ugd/a8964a_356fe1ca30024cd583195b935000f46c.pdf)

In a similar vein, Leigh Grace Rouver (Louisiana Foreign Language Teacher of the Year) showed attendees her “Monumental Mulieres” project, marrying STEM (through the use of 3d scanners, design lab, VR, and maker spaces) with affording students to tell the stories of women in myth and history. Her students researched women, wrote original Latin to narrate their perspectives and experiences, and then created original monuments to those women. Overall it is incredible to see how that as the conversations and discussions we have at the professional level spill over into the classroom, providing many opportunities for all students to see themselves in Classics.

Lastly, outgoing ACL President Mary Pendergraft of Wake Forest University provided for us an update to the state of the American Classical League. At the time of the address, there are 1675 members of the organization with 237 attending the Institute (about 50 of which were virtual.) As ACL has also benefited from the generous gift of Rudolph Masciantonio, the organization’s finances are recovering from the impact of the pandemic. The fund that was started to assist members through the struggles of the last couple of years will now pivot to support more projects, especially those that seek to expand classics to more types of learners. ACL is also preparing to launch a new initiative dubbed ‘REDI’, which aims to provided on-demand talks, workshops, and professional development from members, for members. Coupled with that, ACL has also launched a new online community space for discussions and conversation.

The governance of the American Classical League is also shifting slightly, A few years ago the Board of Governors was formed and the flow of operations was rebuilt from the ground up, including naming an Executive Director (Sherwin Little) of the organization. The BoG, which was previously 16 members, was becoming unwieldy in ways and so a task force was charged with looking to increase efficiency of operations. As a result, the proposal to reduce the Board of Governors to 12 was voted on and accepted, streamlining certain aspects and creating opportunities for the Board to tackle some larger issues. Before a final vote on the matter, the proposal was vetted by the governance standing committee as well as the organization’s parliamentarian Jack Dutra.

Respectfully submitted,

Kevin Ballestrini
Executive Secretary
Delegate to ACL