UCLA Department of Classics

Winter 2017 UCLA Department of Classics Greetings from the Chair Dear Friends of Classics, Recently I attended the first initiation ceremony of the UCLA chapter of the Classics Honorary Society, Eta Sigma Phi (see p. 9). It was a happy and also a moving occasion. A group of enthusiastic undergraduates, majors, minors, and those who had taken several Classics courses, had worked together for months to form this new chapter. They are full of plans for the future—including movie nights and competitive quizzes with their © Reed Hutchinson 2010 counterparts art USC (something that should be worth seeing!). What was moving was the almost palpable sense of classicists young and old existing Inside this issue within a long tradition and taking care that this tradition was handed on to future generations. Graduate students from the program were on hand, Department News ....................... 2-3 representing learning from the Greek and Roman traditions. It was a real Faculty Bookshelf ........................ 4 community. Most of the undergraduates at the ceremony won’t go on to Graduate Conference.................. 5 graduate school but will proceed to successful careers outside Classics, carrying Graduate Travels ......................... 6-7 with them the values inculcated by studying the ancient world: rigorous scrutiny, intellectual curiosity, a sense of and respect for history (without, Caldwell Awards ......................... 8 however, being enslaved to the past), an appreciation of beauty (and of its cost), Eta Sigma Phi .............................. 9 a canny eye for the mystifications of language and rhetoric. Events like the Eta Alumni Spotlight ......................... 10 Sigma Phi initiation seem to me to encapsulate the spirit of the department. Alumni News ............................... 11 This spirit of community was recently acknowledged in one of the faculty as well: Professor Amy Richlin was a recipient of the leadership award of the Palevsky Lecture Invitation ......... 12 Women’s Classical Caucus as a recognition of her efforts in encouraging women to enter and remain in our field (see p. 3). At the graduate student level it is inspiring to hear of students who volunteer to lead workshops and study sessions for the undergraduates. Alumni and friends of the department also do their part. I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have contributed to the Centennial Scholarship fund, which now stands at $17,290 thanks to a department booksale and generous donations during the last six months. (Continued on page 2) 1 Department News Greetings from the Chair (continued) In other news, it is a time of new beginnings in Dodd Hall, both physically and intellectually. We are currently in the midst of conducting on-campus interviews for our two assistant professor positions, and are reveling in new research on the historian Tacitus, his contemporary Pliny, not to mention the physician and philosopher Galen (and that’s just in the last two weeks!). Stay tuned for news on the exciting conclusion of our searches in the summer newsletter. And then there are the ceilings. Last year the administration decided, at long last, to fund the overhaul of the antiquated heating and cooling system in the building. Work started over the winter break with the removal of the ceilings in the second-floor hallway, and is progressing overnight and on weekends. We are all looking forward to the happy conclusion (next summer if all goes well), but it also provides its share of amusement, with pipes making mysterious clanging noises at all hours of the day, and spectral voices insinuating themselves into offices and classrooms through long-hidden vents. There is a real opportunity for an enthralling sequel to Poltergeist featuring the ghosts of Alcibiades and Pompey. You heard it here first. Kathryn Morgan The Department of Classics can now be found on social media: @uclaclassics @ClassicsAtUCLA https://www.facebook.com/uclaclassics/ https://twitter.com/ClassicsAtUCLA Rome, the Eternal City Robert Gurval At least it is becoming more familiar and lasting in my life as I led the UCLA Travel Study Program in Rome for the fifth time last summer, the third in the last four years. Twenty-six UC students (all but one from UCLA) and Classics fourth-year graduate student TA Elliott Piros joined me in the two-course academic program, “The History and Monuments of Rome.” Four weeks in Rome in the month of July, however, is no Roman holiday. Leaving early almost every morning from our meeting point at the Giuseppe Belli statue beside the Ponte Garibaldi, we walked in the steps of Cato, Augustus and Constantine, as we visited most of the city’s open archaeological sites, early Christian churches, and major museums. Evenings were left to obelisks and fountains, Caravaggio paintings, Bernini and Borromini, and of course gelato. Among the highlights this year was my very first visit inside the Pyramid of Cestius. Beautifully cleaned up and newly opened to the public (by appointment and on weekends only) by the generosity of a Japanese businessman, the pyramid was built in the Augustan era and survived mostly because of its fortuitous incorporation into the Aurelian Wall. The Temple of Portunus and Round Temple in the old Forum Boarium are also now open to visitors two weekends each month. Fortunately, the worst we suffered was one stolen iPhone at McDonalds (as if you need another reason not to eat there) and an attack by sea urchins at the beach that sent Elliott and two students limping to the doctor’s office. It was also the coolest day I ever remembered in Pompeii during the summer. Too bad the amphitheatre was closed. All in all, it was another successful and memorable visit to Rome. I am looking forward to another summer returning to the Eternal City in 2017. If in Rome, alumni, colleagues and friends are always welcome to join the group on our walks and talks. Venite! 22 Faculty Bookshelf Department News Ancient Methone Archaeological Project: Our Third Season Sarah Morris and John Papadopoulos The summer of 2016 brought UCLA faculty and students in Archaeol- ogy, Conservation and Classics back to Greece for a third season of excavation and fieldwork (in geophysics and terrestrial LiDAR research) at the site of ancient Methone in northern Greece. In our collaboration between UCLA and the Ephorate of Pieria, we continue to enjoy working with specialists from several countries who dedicate themselves to ceramics, conservation, photography, and drawing to process and present the results of our research. As in previous seasons, our five trenches continued to produce evidence for Bronze Age burials, Early Iron Age workshops, and Archaic through Classical art (including the rim of a clay basin with a beautiful cavalcade scene in East Greek style, one of many objects recovered from a pit filled after the destruction of Methone by Philip II in 354 BC). That pit has now reached a depth of nearly 7 meters, with shallow cuttings for steps, stairs, or shelves, but its total depth and original purpose still eludes us, until we finish excavating it next year. Once again, we particularly enjoyed the participation of twelve Institute for Field Research students from several uni- versities, including those from UCLA who shared their experiences and enthusiasm in the Daily Bruin (http:// dailybruin.com/2016/10/25/uc-students-and-professors-participate-in-summer-excavation-in-greece). In addition, we are grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA for their sustained support of our field research in archaeology. Breaking News Professor Amy Richlin was doubly honored at the recent meetings of the Society for Classical Studies in Toronto. She was presented with a Leadership Award from the Women’s Classical Caucus. This award recognizes an individual for outstanding contribution in encouraging women to enter and remain in our field. She was also the focus of a workshop entitled “Feminist Scholarship in the Classics: Amy Richlin’s Arguments with Silence: Writing the History of Roman Women.” The announcement for the session tells us how the workshop examines questions arising from Professor Richlin’s 2014 book, “which situates her own important work on Roman women and ancient sexuality within the context of feminist scholarship in Classics since the 1970s. By looking back at her earlier essays and reflecting on their context, she chronicles her growth as a scholar over a 30-year period, on a trajectory that reflects her commitment to integrate activism with academic life. At the same time, she generously documents her debt to colleagues who influenced her along the way. Four panelists whose work and lives intersected with those of Amy … comment on aspects of the book that resonate with and/or challenge them.” This was a great event: Congratulations Amy! 3 Inside Story Headline Faculty Bookshelf Utopia 1516-2016 More’s Eccentric Essay and its Activist Aftermath Edited by Han van Ruler and Giulia Sissa Amsterdam University Press, 2017 Chicago University Press, for diffusion in the US Five hundred years after its first publication, Thomas More’s Utopia continues to raise intellectual controversy. The present collection of articles explores both the original book and its historical aftermath. The co-editors, Giulia Sissa and Han van Ruler, argue for a novel interpretation, which places Utopia not only in the context of Erasmian humanism, but at the core of the intellectual and ironic exchanges between More and Erasmus. Utopia is supposed to emulate Plato’s Republic. Utopia is an Epicurean garden. Starting from this tension, Sissa argues that if there was a humanist who felt free to advocate both Platonic communality and Epicurean pleasure, this was Desiderius Erasmus. Thomas More’s own political views were profoundly different. This contrast appears in Utopia where ‘Morus’ disagrees about the praise of the Utopians, by their discoverer, Raphael Hythloday (‘Idletalk’).

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