F ALL 2011 STANFORD UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT of Classicslassics NEWSLETTER 2011 Faculty and Staff List . 2 From the Chair Visitors . 3 WO EVENTS provided pleasing we believe every Stanford undergraduate Human History . 4 bookends to our 2010-11 academic should take at least one Classics course year. First, in September, a long- before receiving a degree. Here let me Commencement . 5 Tawaited study by the National Research note that this year we have further in- Events . 6 Council rated Stanford’s graduate program creased our efforts to reach undergradu- Eitner Lecture . 7 in Classics the best in the country. The NRC ates through exciting new courses, an ini- Teaching Classics . 8 based its results on a combination of rep- tiative spearheaded by our department utational scores (how other Classicists manager and our student services spe- Faculty News . 10 view us) and more quantifiable cialist. Let me mention, too, Undergraduate Student Stories . 14 criteria, suchC as numberl of pub-assithat featuredcs articles in this is- Mapping the Grand Tour . 16-18 lications per faculty member,DEPARTMENTsue of the newsletter highlight Graduate Student Stories . 22 awards and outside grants to fac- some of our recent innovations ulty, the time it takes students to in teaching. Alumni News . 26 obtain the Ph.D., how well they Many other factors have Graduate Student News . 28 are financially supported while come into play in developing Summer Theater . .30 at Stanford, and how many of and maintaining our top-ranked them end up obtaining academic SCIT . 30 program: a spacious and cen- jobs. (Further details can be tral building; an ethos of colle- found on our website.) Then, in MAPPING THE RICHARD MARTIN giality, friendliness, and acces- May, undergraduate director GRAND TOUR sibility; plenty of socializing all Maud Gleason announced that the latest PAGE 16 year, with attendant free food; staging an student to declare a major in Classics had international conference or two; well-cho- brought the combined number of our sen visiting lecturers who interact with majors and minors to 70—a new record. students; informal reading groups and Next goal: 100. workshops; the Classical drama of the Taken together, these indications year put on by Stanford Classics in of vitality suggest to us that we might be Theater; study abroad opportunities dur- doing something right. But asked to com- ing term-time and excavation options in ment on our success—as we have been, the summer (subsidized by Department by admiring deans and others—one strug- funds); one-to-one teaching, advising, and gles to pinpoint a cause (nor do we real- mentoring; an active network of alumni ly want to, for fear of the evil eye… ). and friends; a minimal number of meet- Certainly, foremost among the many in- ings and committees; clear protocols and terlocking aspects of a strong program is high expectations; widespread dissemi- http://classics.stanford.edu the ability to attract and retain world-class nation of all information; and full trans- http://www.facebook.com/stanfordclassics scholars and teachers, who in turn devote parency in all administrative procedures. email: [email protected] themselves to crafting courses that ap- Our superbly dedicated and efficient staff peal to a wide variety of audiences, from is crucial for meshing these multiple Classics Department the most motivated and discriminating pieces together. And from the President Main Quad, Building 110 graduate students down to incoming stu- on down, it helps hugely that Stanford Stanford, CA 94305-2145 dents who have absolutely no background (650) 723-0479 in the field. As for the latter, by the way, CONTINUED ON –PAGE 2 FROM THE CHAIR —FROM PAGE 1 by Lindsay and Peter Joost and given this Giovanna Ceserani, newly tenured this year by John Ma of Corpus Christi College, past spring, has agreed to head Under- proudly commits itself to education in the Oxford. His thoughts on the multiple con- graduate Studies, giving Maud Gleason a humanities—even though departments structions of the ancient Greek city-state well-deserved break from those consider- like ours don’t normally generate patents. kicked off continuing discussions on the able duties. Maud and Jen have given of Such a confluence of good energies is meanings of and necessity for civic life— their time, expertise, and pure humane rare; we are extremely lucky. subjects not irrelevant to the diagnosis of concern generously and without stint— our present political situation. The same Maud for five years, and Jen for three, As difficult as identifying a prime topic, in a rather different light, came up while she was also heading up the Stan- cause for the program’s health is any in the May production of an Aristophanic ford Archaeology Center. Theirs will be effort to name a single high point from comedy by the now-veteran Stanford Clas- hard acts to follow, and I am grateful to the past year, during which I served as sics in Theater (SCIT) troupe. Their hilar- Grant and Giovanna for taking up the chal- interim chair while Walter Scheidel took iously over-the-top version of Wasps (a lenge. I must also make special mention well-deserved time away to teach in New play many of the cast happened to be of the omni-competent administrative staff York and Abu Dhabi. Commencement, reading at the same time in a graduate that has made our Department the envy however, is always a wonderful moment. Greek seminar) featured, among other of the School of Humanities and Sciences: It was fascinating to hear from our majors thespian delights, a clutch of singing and our department manager Ryan Johnson, this June about their plans for the imme- dancing Mama Grizzlies to replace the our administrative associate and general diate future, from Hollywood script-writ- cranky-old-guy jurors of the original—and coordinator Margo Keeley, and our student ing to consulting work, advanced study it worked! I was also pleased to observe services officer Lori Lynn Taniguchi. With- in forestry science, and graduate school that the producers had found a dramatic out them a Chair could not survive. in ancient philosophy (just a small glimpse use for my cast-off pirate costume… of the broad horizons open to those with a Classics background). The full list of stu- We began the new academic year dents who took their degrees can be (2011-12) with a change of Directors: Grant found on p. 5. Another high point was the Parker has taken over from Jen Trimble the RichardRichard P. Martin, Martin Chair annual Eitner Lecture, generously funded task of managing Graduate Studies, while 2010-2011 Classics Department Faculty and Staff EMERITI: PROFESSORS: ASSOCIATE PROFESSORS: LECTURERS: Mark Edwards Alessandro Barchiesi Giovanna Ceserani Maud Gleason Marsh McCall, Jr. Andrew Devine Jody Maxmin John Klopacz (Recalled for 2011-12) Richard Martin Grant Parker Edward Spofford Ian Morris Jennifer Trimble RESEARCH SCHOLAR: Susan Treggiari Reviel Netz Adrienne Mayor Michael Wigodsky Andrea Nightingale COURTESY PROFESSORS: Josiah Ober Chris Bobonich ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF: CHAIR: Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi Ian Hodder Ryan Johnson (Department Walter Scheidel Rush Rehm Bissera Pentcheva Manager) Richard Saller (Dean, Caroline Winterer Lori Lynn Taniguchi (Student DIRECTOR OF Humanities & Sciences) Yiqun Zhou Services Officer) GRADUATE STUDIES: Walter Scheidel Margo Keeley (Administra- Grant Parker Michael Shanks tive Associate) Susan Stephens DIRECTOR OF UNDERGRADUATE STUDIES: Giovanna Ceserani S T ANFORD UNIVERSITY 2 Visiting Faculty Emily Gowers Visiting Professor and Webster Distinguished Lecturer, Autumn 2011 EMILY GOWERS is Senior Lec- Satires I is forthcoming with Cam- turer in Classics at the University of bridge University Press. She has pub- Peter O’Connell Cambridge and a Fellow of St. John’s lished widely on Latin authors—Ter- College. Her first book, The Loaded ence, Horace, Virgil, Ovid, Valerius Mellon Fellow in Table: Representations of Food in Maximus, Columella, Persius, Roman Literature (Oxford 1993) won Apuleius—and on aspects of Roman the Humanities the Premio Langhe Ceretto and was culture from sewers to horticulture, translated into Italian. She co-edited symbolic trees, and emperors’ retreats. Ennius Perennis: The Annals and She is currently working on the figure Beyond (Cambridge Classical Journal of Maecenas as a key to understand- Supplement 2007) with William ing Augustan culture, the topic of her Fitzgerald. A commentary on Horace’s graduate seminar at Stanford. Laura Jansen Visiting Assistant Professor O’CONNELL LAURA is delighted to join the Classics faculty this year and to have PETER O’CONNELL received his the opportunity to research and teach bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from in such a wonderful place as Stanford. Harvard and an M.Phil. degree from She spent the last four years in St. the University of Cambridge, where Andrews, Scotland, as a Teaching Fel- he was a Frank Knox Fellow. His inter- low in Latin literature. Laura did grad- ests include Greek prose of all peri- uate work at Oxford before moving to ods, Classical Athenian literature and Trinity College, Dublin, where she com- culture, Greek law, and Greek religion. JANSEN pleted a doctorate in Literae Human- His dissertation discusses the perfor- iores. Roman Literature and Culture, a col- mative effects of the language of lection of essays that explores the sight in Athenian forensic oratory. Laura specializes in the literature interplay between paratexts (e.g. pref- Peter is thrilled to be part of the Stan- of the Roman Republican and Imper- aces, titles, indices, inscriptions, post- ford Classics Department. As a Mel- ial periods, and her research focuses scripts) and reading from a post- lon Fellow, he will teach a course on particularly on textuality and the cul- Genettean perspective. Her work has Lysias and Antiphon in the fall and tures of reading and writing.