OBERLIN COLLEGE, SUMMER 2020

Oberlin Classics

DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS FROM THE EDITOR’S QUARANTINE Oberlin College BUNKER 10 North Professor Street By Emily Hudson ’22 Oberlin, OH 44074 P: 440-775-8390 ello all you brave classicists and E: [email protected] welcome to another stunning W: oberlin.edu/classics H edition of the annual Oberlin Classics Department Newsletter, which is Drew Wilburn (Chair) not at all annual. You may have noticed Rebecca Frank that I am not Kirk Ormand, nor am I Ben Lee any other member of the department Kirk Ormand faculty whom you know and love. I am, Jane Sancinito rather, Emily Hudson, a rising third-year Chris Trinacty student at Oberlin majoring in (obviously) Joan Kaatz, Administrative Assistant classics and (less obviously) comparative literature. In an altogether strange and unexpected turn of events, I am now the Elliot Diaz ’23 and Emily Hudson ’22, acting out editor of this newsletter. Don’t ask me to Sophocles’ Trachiniae at the annual bardic reading. TABLE OF CONTENTS explain, for I cannot. 1 Editor’s Note I can, however, give you an overview of the busy and exciting year that our department has 2 Faculty Notes undergone. Despite our spring semester being cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic, we packed 3 The Martin Lectures as much into the 2019-20 school year as we could. Professor Daniel Selden of the literature 4 Jane Sancinito, Graduating department at University of California Santa Cruz gave the coveted Martin Lectures last fall, Seniors 5 Alumni News titled “Holy Wandering: The Worlding of the Alexander Romance.” Also in the fall, we held our 7 Alumni Books annual Winkler Lecture, this year awarded to Joseph Gerbasi from the University of Toronto, 8 In Memory of Jim Helm who lectured on Platonic principles in the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan. Since our last newsletter, we have had the pleasure of having Jane Sancinito as the second Thomas F. Cooper postdoc, after Elizabeth Wueste accepted a tenure-track job at the Editor: Emily Hudson ’22 American University in Rome. After two years at Kenyon College, Naomi Campa accepted a tenure-track position at the University of Texas, Austin, beginning this fall. As a result of Masthead image: Kylix with Palmette-Eye our (endearing) struggles to get this newsletter out annually, you will be both introduced and Motif, 520-510 BC, earthenware, 4 15/16 x 12 5/16 in., Allen Memorial bidding adieu to Professor Sancinito. Art Museum, General Acquisitions Fund, We hope that all of you Oberlin classicists out there are staying safe during this crazy, 1967 mixed-up time. We may not be holed up in the King Building, but we’re only a Zoom link away, should you need us. FACULTY NOTES

KIRK ORMAND: I’ve had a terrific couple Over the past two years, I’ve continued to chair the Department of years since the last newsletter. I’ve of Classics, but I’m getting ready to pass that position to Chris enjoyed teaching some of my favorite Trinacty. I was promoted to professor last year, in 2019. During classes, including the ancient epics course, my sabbatical, I was awarded a Franklin Research Fellowship my FYSP on the Odyssey and its afterlife, from the American Philosophical Society. I conducted research in an upper-level Latin course on Catullus, London on early modern magic for my next research project, which ancient sexuality, and this semester, via investigates how the Greeks and Romans used magic for home Zoom, my team-taught course with Jen security. I also had the chance to visit the Museum of Witchcraft Bryan (English) on Ovid and his reception and Magic in Boscastle, Cornwall! The Thomas F. Cooper Fund in the medieval period. As always, my for Faculty Research allowed me to travel to Greece and Italy to students have kept me on my toes with their challenging questions conduct additional on-site work. I’ve given talks in Chicago, Lecce, and fresh perspectives. In research, I finally published my article on Italy, and, most recently, at the Archaeological Institute of America the “New Sappho” in a volume titled Narratives of Gender and Time Annual Meeting, where I presented my work on the Karanis in Antiquity, and I have a piece titled “Sex and the City” coming out Housing Project, research I am continuing with the assistance of in the Cambridge Companion to Ancient Athens. I haven’t done as Emily Hudson ’22. In other news, Patrick (now 10) and Claire (now much travel in the past two years as I sometimes manage, but I’ve 8) were very pleased to welcome home Winnie, our new chocolate recently been awarded a grant to work at the Institute for Advanced lab, who is both cute and naughty. Study at the University of Strasbourg (USIAS), so I’m looking forward to spending several months in Europe this fall. I’ll be BEN LEE: Ben is happy teaching Greek spending that time starting a new book project, on invective poetry and Roman Epic, Homer, Martial, Ovid, from archaic Greece (especially Archilochus and Hipponax) and Latin 102 this year. He is researching 11th-century Latin translations of CHRIS TRINACTY: In the last couple Arabic medical texts that were made by years, I’ve been busy working on Seneca’s Constantine the African in the Abbey Naturales Quaestiones, a fantastic Stoic at Monte Cassino. He is working on this account of the natural world and its project with Francis Newton, Professor sublime phenomena (earthquakes, Emeritus at Duke University, and Professor lightning, floods). This has resulted in a Eliza Glaze of Carolina Coastal College. couple articles [“Non est facile inter mala He also has two research assistants helping magna consipere: Trauma, Earthquakes, him with these manuscripts, Emma Glen ’22 and Han Yang ’23. and Bibliotherapy in Seneca’s Naturales Online versions of these manuscripts will be hosted by Oberlin and Quaestiones,” In Emotional Trauma in will tentatively be called the Oberlin Articella Project. Greece and Rome: Representations and Reactions (Routledge, 2019) 125-42; and “Fear and Healing: Seneca, Caecilius Iucundus and the JANE SANCINITO: My two years at Oberlin Campanian Earthquake of 62/63 CE,” Greece and Rome 66.1 (2019) have been hugely productive and exciting. 93-112.]. I’ve also put together a website about one book of this work I arrived here straight out of my graduate (www.oberlinclassics.com). I’m excited to be teaching new courses program at the University of Pennsylvania on ancient science and a first-year seminar on heroes and villains. and was immediately welcomed into This past summer, I gave a paper in Greece and was able to bring my this exciting and inspiring community family to see the Acropolis and hike around the Agora. Next summer of students and scholars. I began by my son and I may try to climb Mt. Olympus—stay tuned! teaching Greek and Roman Mythology, introductory Greek, and History of DREW WILBURN: Like the other faculty Rome in my first year. At the same time in the department, I’m writing this note I was working on a pair of articles about from Oberlin Lockdown, as we all enjoy innkeepers in the Roman world, which were published during the pleasures of teaching and learning this 2019-20 school year. During my time at Oberlin, I have also remotely. Before the college moved to presented papers at four conferences on four different topics: online-only, I distributed amulets to my Egyptian produce transporters, Greek and Roman curse tablets, Magic and Mystery students, which helped Roman funerary inscriptions, and Visigothic coins. In my second everyone think about how amulets provide year, I taught two new courses, Pirates of the Mediterranean comfort and reassurance during times of and Advanced Latin: Roman Biography, and returned again to anxiety and uncertainty. History of Rome. During the spring semester of 2019, I drafted

2 FACULTY NOTES, CONT.

and submitted my book manuscript, The Reputation of the Roman Delphic oracle and oracular divination Merchant, which is now under contract with the University of in his writings. While at Oberlin, I will Michigan Press. I’m incredibly grateful to everyone at Oberlin for continue exploring the role played by their warm welcome and generous support. Next year, I will be Delphi in Greek philosophical discourse, taking up a tenure-track position as assistant professor of history at as well as understandings of oracular the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. divination in the Greco-Roman world. I will also be continuing my archaeological REBECCA FRANK: I will be joining the Department of Classics work at the Roman colony of Cosa, located this fall for a two-year appointment as the Thomas F. Cooper on the southern Tuscan coast. We are Postdoctoral Fellow. My research specialties include Imperial hoping to be able to return to the site next Greek literature, Greek religion, and Roman archaeology, with a summer when we will conclude our excavation of the colony’s bath focus on digital humanities. This spring I completed my PhD at complex. Finally, over the next year at Oberlin I will be teaching the University of Virginia with a thesis entitled “Plutarch and the Greek and Roman Mythology, Greek History, and Latin language. Delphic Oracle.” In my dissertation I investigated how the Greek I am looking forward to moving to Ohio and getting to know the philosopher and biographer Plutarch of Chaeronea presents the Oberlin community!

MARTIN LECTURES 2019

By Emma Glen ’22, Latin Language and Literature

escension into the depths of the sea in a glass bubble and the Persian Empire. The relationship between these three principles ascension into the stars in the sky might sound like premises helped establish a framework that would be used to examine the Dof an early science fiction novel. In fact, both are features of Alexander Romance in the lectures that followed. the Alexander Romance, a fictionalized biography of Alexander Tuesday night’s lecture, “The Quest for the Waters of Life,” took the Great first compiled in the 3rd century BCE. This work has a comparative approach to examining a particular episode within produced countless recensions not only in Greek and Latin but the Romance in which Alexander’s cook finds water that provides in multiple other European languages including Syriac, Arabic, immortality by accidentally resurrecting a fish. Selden used the Persian, and Armenian, to name a few. Each of these versions significance of this episode in the differing religious contexts of the is unique to the culture that receives and recreates it, and the various cultures that produced their own versions of it to ask, on complexities of this work—or, perhaps, collection of works—and a broader level, what changes the Romance undergoes as it moves the historical and cultural implications of its extant forms were the between different cultures and within the heteroglossia of individual topic of this year’s Martin Lectures, given by Daniel L Selden. languages. He showed how, ultimately, this anecdote and its Professor Selden works in the literature department at the variations challenged the central ideas of the Second Sophistic. University of California Santa Cruz and is also affiliated with the The third lecture was entitled “Guardians of Chaos” and departments of Jewish, Classical, and Italian Studies. He is an expert examined Coptic versions of the Romance and how Alexander in not only classical studies and literary theory but also Egyptology, was incorporated into the religious tradition of Egypt at the time. Mediterranean studies, poetics, reception studies, and much more. Selden also drew parallels between Alexander’s descent into “chaos” He earned a PhD in comparative literature at Yale University. He within these versions of the text and the Ancient Greek ideas of has published numerous articles on writings about and receptions of chaos and order. Alexander the Great and is the author of multiple books, including The final lecture, “Iskandar and the Idea of Iran,” delved into Holy Wandering: The Worlding of the Alexander Romance, and is Iranian receptions of Alexander the Great and the Alexander an editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Literatures of the Romance. In addition to the Romance itself, Selden analyzed Roman Empire. His lectures on the Alexander Romance provided fragments of the Avesta and showed how Alexander was historically the Oberlin community with an in-depth examination of the and symbolically incorporated into the cosmic battle between work’s construction and dissemination, and this examination in “good” and “evil.” This provided an important example of a negative turn allowed students to challenge the very framework of what we reception of Alexander rather than a glorifying one by employing a consider the “Classical world.” text giving voice to victims of Alexander’s colonialism. The first lecture, “Mapping the Alexander Romance,” provided Students had the chance to personally speak with Selden at a context on the epic and its spread. This included defining the ancient department dinner following the second lecture. This allowed both literary category of “romance,” explaining the historical significance classics majors and other interested Oberlin students to have in- of Aristotelian metaphysics, and describing tributary economics in depth conversations with Selden. The group discussed topics such continued on page 4 3 FAREWELL (AND HELLO) CONGRATULATIONS TO TO JANE SANCINITO CLASSICS GRADS! By Emily Hudson ’22

hroughout her two years at Oberlin, Professor Sancinito CLASS OF 2020: made herself an invaluable member of the Oberlin Jacqueline Brant, Latin (minor) T Classics Department. In addition to teaching several Samantha Clanton, Classical Civilizations (major) staple courses of the department, such as Roman History and Julia Deen, Greek (major) Elementary Greek, Professor Sancinito also taught Pirates of Rayna Forman, Classical Civilizations (major) the Mediterranean, a 200 level Classical Civilizations course, the syllabus for which she had been working on since graduate Justin Godfrey, Classical Civilizations (major) school. I had the personal privilege of assisting Professor Maddie Henke, Latin (major) Sancinito on a paper about Visigothic coins, as well as her Julian Hirsch, Classical Civilizations (major) forthcoming book on Roman merchants. John Kenslea, Latin (major) Perhaps Professor Sancinito’s most notable contribution Hannah Long, Latin (major) to Oberlin was her establishment of a new annual event: The Lucy Parr, Latin (major), Greek (minor) Women of Color in Classics Wiki Edit-athon. In conjunction Polyxeni Trikoulis, Greek (major) with Oberlin College renaming the library after Mary Church Terrell, an Oberlin Classics alumna, Professor Sancinito spent Kelley Zhong, Latin (minor) the day with students editing the Wikipedia pages of some of the women of color who graduated from Oberlin with a degree CLASS OF 2019: in Classics. Professor Sancinito and students updated these Justin Biggi, Greek (major) Wikipedia pages to more accurately and completely reflect the Owen Corser, Classical Civilizations (major) lives and achievements of these women. Although Professor Riley Davies, Greek (minor) Sancinito will be leaving us, she has nominated several students to take up the mantle of this important event and keep it going Mattie Gittings, Classical Civilizations (major) after she has moved on. Aidan Kidder-Wolff, Latin (minor) We know Professor Sancinito’s contributions to Oberlin Katie Maleckar, Latin (major) are just the tip of the iceberg for all she will achieve and we are Charles McCalmont, Latin (major) greatly looking forward to seeing what she does next as a tenured Rachel Vales, Classical Civilizations (major) professor at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. Thomas Valle-Hoag, Latin (major)

MARTIN LECTURES, CONT.

as translation and learning dead languages other than Latin and Ancient Greek and even shared their ideas on whether a translated collection of various iterations of the Alexander Romance would have an audience (answers were positive). Selden’s lecture series informed Oberlin students about a fascinating piece of ancient literature and challenged his listeners to reconsider their conceptions of the ancient “Western” world by showing the intertextuality that Greece and Rome share with the rest of the world in which they existed. The civilizations we consider Students with Professor Jane Sancinito at the department’s annual “classical” are not and never have been isolated from other ancient bardic reading. From left: Emma Glen, Jane Sancinito, David cultures and, as Selden reminds us, their interactions with other Gudjonsson, Chi Shu, and Auggie Fisher. cultures paint a far more complex picture of world history than can be gained from studying Greece and Rome alone. It was an honor to have Professor Selden visit Oberlin as a lecturer, and we are excitedly anticipating his forthcoming work on both the Alexander Romance and his other areas of expertise.

4 CONGRATULATIONS TO ALUMNI NEWS CLASSICS GRADS! PHYLLIS SAMSON MCCAULEY 1951 CLASSICAL CIVILIZATIONS [email protected] I’m not up to much due to age and COVID-19. Strictly quarantined, which is good, in a senior independent living community. My biggest news would be the publishing of a book of poetry last year. I sent it to the Oberlin alumni office at their suggestion for a destination. I never heard back about it, but it might be floating around somewhere. Called MY TWO CENTS WORTH. It’s a kind of memoir, with poems I wrote from 16 years old to 87 years.

ARLENE SAXONHOUSE Tim Platt, Emelio DiSabato, Karen Frenchu, Ploy Keener, Tom Buck, Tom Van Nortwick, and 1965 CLASSICS Eush Tayco during Oberlin’s 2019 commencement weekend. [email protected] After almost 50 years of teaching in the to retirement and long hours walking JOHN CONGDON Department of Political Science (and over wondering and writing. Have joined the 1990 GREEK 10 years as an Adjunct Professor of Classics) board of the Classics Association of New [email protected] at the University of Michigan in Ann England and am active in the local contra I’m pleased to announce that my daughter Arbor, I have retired. A symposium entitled dance and fiddling communities here. Imani is finishing up her senior year at “Political Theory: Past, Present and Future” Denison University with degrees in classics marked the occasion last December. I plan MARGARET SPENCER and creative writing and has been accepted to continue writing about the many ways 1981 LATIN, CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY into a summer program with the American that ancient political thought can enlighten [email protected] School for Classical Studies in Athens. I contemporary political life and participating I was unexpectedly let go from my job at attribute this success entirely to the fact in conferences (when they start up again), the University of Pennsylvania Museum that I recited the opening of the Iliad over but teaching—and faculty meetings!—are of Archaeology and Anthropology in and over as a lullaby for her when she was a in the past. I will miss the engagement with November 2018, so much of 2019 was taken colicky baby. Don’t let anyone tell you that students, but look forward to continuing up with looking for a job. It took a while, Classics isn’t a practical discipline. contact with colleagues across the country but in September I started working as a and abroad. legal assistant at Young Ricchiuti Caldwell TOM FISHER & Heller in Center City Philadelphia. I’m 1992 ENGLISH, GREEK LANGUAGE AND TED TARKOW learning a great deal about personal injury LITERATURE 1966 CLASSICS law, including how much the legal world [email protected] [email protected] has changed since I was a paralegal back in The best classes Tom Fisher ever took at Retired 8/31/19 after 50 years at U of MO; Boston in the early 1980s—the technology Oberlin were with Nathan Greenberg and still teaching a course each term, and is amazing! My boss also works with both Thomas Van Nortwick. To this day, these working on other classics related projects. the city of Philadelphia and the state on two remain for him vivid examples of lawsuits relating to the opioid epidemic, how to read and teach. Tom is presently ROBERT CRAWFORD which is a difficult and complicated area, a professor in the English department at 1974 CLASSICS so I always have something new to fill my Portland State University and, somewhat I just moved back to the U.S. after 13 years time. Other than that, life goes on in its recently, the author of two books, Writing in France. Semi-retired, but still freelance usual way—or at least I expect it to, once Not Writing and Sorsere. writing. we get the coronavirus kinks worked out. I look forward to singing in my church choir JOHN COTTS NELL WRIGHT again, doing volunteer work, hanging out 1994 LATIN, HISTORY 1979 GREEK with friends, and having theaters operating [email protected] I spent five weeks working with Palestinian again so I can get back to the business of I am a professor of history (medieval refugees in Greece in the fall. Home seeing as many plays as possible! Europe) at Whitman College, having been continued on page 6 5 ALUMNI NEWS, CONT. promoted to “full” in 2016. My work is still in the evolution of historiography as a genre York University (over Zoom!). Still, despite steeped in Latinity, and my current book during the period of Mongol rule in Iran pursuing a doctorate in modern art history, project is a translation of a 12th-century through a comparison of manuscripts of I’ve never lost my love for old stuff—the critique of the crusading movement: the most famous history written during the subject of my dissertation, contemporary Ralph Niger’s (c. 1140-1200) De re militari period. Articles supplemental to the book sculptor Charles Simonds, built tiny, delicate et triplici via Ierosolimitane (On Warfare were also published in issues of the journal ruins on the streets of New York City all and the Threefold Path of the Pilgrimage to Iran and the Central Asiatic Journal. This throughout the 1970s. Though they were Jerusalem) for Routledge’s Crusades Texts spring I received tenure and promotion to usually destroyed within days, his fragile in Translation series. Whitman is in lovely the rank of associate professor at Eastern and intricate “Dwellings” seemed to have Walla Walla, Wash., where I live with my Connecticut State University. In quarantine, endured for thousands of years. The Allen wife, Afton Truscott, RN, and my 5-year old I have figured out a way to repair the failing has a wonderful work by Simonds, “People daughter, Mary Caroline. binding of an Oxford Classical Text, using Who Live in a Spiral” (1974). Perhaps of as my test subject the volume of Hirtzel’s interest to classicists! EMILY HARVILLE edition of Virgil that got me through my 1998 BIOLOGY senior thesis almost 20 years ago. EUSH TAYCO [email protected] 2009 GREEK As an epidemiologist, this year has been LIZZIE EHRENHALT [email protected] particularly interesting. I am experiencing 2005 LATIN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE Things are weird! I was lucky enough to the pandemic in Tampere, Finland, where [email protected] attend my 10th reunion last year, where I I am on sabbatical from the Tulane School Learning Hebrew to keep myself busy in was able to catch up with TVN and spend of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, quarantine. (Knowing Greek is helping a lot. time with other classics alumni. Here in the studying multigenerational effects on birth Thank you, Oberlin Greek teachers.) Bay Area we’ve been sheltering in place and outcomes. Before we ceased to be allowed to I’ve been working from home. It’s been over venture more than walking distance from MAXWELL PAULE a month of quarantine and not venturing our apartment, my husband, Chris, and 2006 LATIN & GREEK out outside a two-mile radius. Isolation is three children (Charles, 12; James, 10; and [email protected] slowly driving me nuts. I had planned to Marjorie, 7) were exploring Finland and In May 2019 I took 12 intrepid Earlham spend my suddenly copious free time re- experiencing school and daily life in a new College students on a hike across the full learning Greek, but instead I’ve been playing place. We plan to return to New Orleans this length of Hadrian’s Wall! Sheep and Roman a lot of Animal Crossing. I hope everyone summer. forts were abundant and I only stepped in reading this is safe! If anybody needs help one (albeit hot off the press) cow pie. I also with anything that I can possibly help with, ELANA BAILES AND JACOB FEELEY earned tenure this year and spent much or you just need to reach out to someone 2000 (ELANA: GREEK, JAKE: LATIN) of my sabbatical working on a socially outside of your quarantine circles to shake [email protected] conscious Latin reader for intermediate things up, please do shoot me an email. Jake and I have two boys and live just students, focused on stories of awesome outside Philadelphia. Jake received his women from Greek and Roman myth. GABE BAKER PhD in ancient history from Penn, and is Somewhere in there I also published a 2010 CLASSICAL STUDIES (GREEK & teaching Latin at a magnet high school. fun (?) article in Eidolon about the latent LATIN) I teach third grade and am the writing white supremacy of the first Percy Jackson [email protected] coordinator at my school. My students love novel. In the midst of COVID-19, I’ve been I work on an online meeting tool that helps Greek mythology and once a week get to baking absurd amounts to distract myself people come together in an immersive stay in for lunch while I tell them the next from existential ennui and a growing sense space online and interact via avatars. You installment of the Perseus story, the Iliad, or of dread about the precarious state of our can explore 360 photos, 3D models (ancient the Odyssey. colleges and universities. Who wants a statuary, anyone?), and more. Check it out if cookie? you’d like: framevr.io STEFAN KAMOLA 2001 GREEK AND LATIN JULIA PELTA FELDMAN EMMA CHAPPLE [email protected] 2008 ART HISTORY AND LATIN 2012 CLASSICS CIVILIZATION In August, my first book,Making Mongol [email protected] [email protected] History: Rashid al-Din and the Jami` al- Just yesterday I successfully defended my I got married to a fellow Obie alum last Tawarikh, was published by Edinburgh dissertation, “Charles Simonds and the summer! Working at nonprofit training University Press. It reconstructs dynamics 1970s,” at the Institute of Fine Arts, New people who work in supportive housing—

6 ALUMNI NEWS, CONT. housing for people who have been homeless. two years, teaching Middle School English for me. I hope to be able to continue some It’s interesting, meaningful work, although as part of the inaugural Little Rock, of the work I did at Oberlin, in terms of it doesn’t have much to do with my major. Arkansas corps. She realized she missed experimental archaeology and hands on/ the classics and wanted to become a Latin media based learning. ELI GOLDBERG teacher as well. She began graduate school 2012 GREEK at the University of Colorado Boulder [email protected] in 2018, working on her masters with a After some delightful career meandering, I concentration in Latin pedagogy. She am about to graduate from medical school recently passed her comprehensive exam, ALUMNI BOOKS at the University of Vermont! I will be which covered about 25,000 lines of Latin staying in Burlington for the next three poetry and 500 pages of Latin prose. She years for a residency in Family Medicine. also successfully defended her teaching These days my use of classical languages project, a continuation of her work at is sadly limited to phrases like “nil per os” Oberlin concerning the Orpheus and and “stat”… however, a couple years ago Eurydice myth in Augustan poets. She has I deployed some nerdy Greek humor as a accepted a position at the Bentley School first-date icebreaker with a cute guy who in San Francisco, teaching Latin (and minored in classics. He’s now my husband: hopefully some English electives!). yet another unexpected benefit of a classical education :) SANDRA KIBBLE 2018 CLASSICS AND NEUROSCIENCE CLARA SHAW HARDY ’83 and ROB HARDY MAGGIE KILLMAN [email protected] ’86 announce the appearance this summer 2012 LATIN Since graduating, I have been working of their volume Athens 415: The City in I have taken the position of lifelong learning in a neurobiology of addiction lab at Crisis, with the University of Michigan manager at the Public Library of Cincinnati Duke University focusing on alcohol Press. The first title in the series Key and Hamilton County. Regardless of consumption during adolescence. It has Dates in the Ancient World, the book is widespread closures thanks to COVID-19, been a great experience and I even have an a source-based presentation of events in the library is assembling an array of virtual undergrad lab member who is majoring a very difficult year for Athens, intended programming to keep community members in Greek! I will always be amazed by how for classroom use and general reading. connected to learning opportunities and extensive the love of classics reaches. It is a Clara wrote the text for the book, and to each other. Find us on Facebook and great conversation starter! This fall, I will Rob provided original translations of the YouTube! start medical school at Pacific Northwest ancient sources. Their editor at the Press is University. Though outside the realm of Ellen Bauerle ’80. SARAH JOHNSON classics (perhaps though, arguably not), I Rob also had an article published 2015 CLASSIC CIVILIZATION will always hold this community close to in 2018, titled “The Long Sunset: R. C. [email protected] my heart. Kirk Ormand once told me that Sherriff and the Excavation of Angmering I am living in Oberlin and managing a that is part of its charm. We both knew Roman Villa,” which appeared in Volume sustainable vegetable farm in Wellington, that I had planned to follow my dreams 26 of Arion: A Journal of Humanities Ohio, called Lettuce Heads Aquaponics and pursue a career in medicine, but he and the Classics, detailing author and and Farm and loving every minute of it. ingrained in me that classics is something screenwriter Robert Cedric Sherriff’s Cicero thought that “of all the occupations that can always be studied. It is comforting excavation of Angmering in the late 1930s. by which gain is secured, none is better than knowing that you all too must believe this. In September 2019, LIZZIE EHRENHALT ’05 agriculture, none more profitable, none published a volume, titled Precious and RACHEL VALES more delightful, none more becoming to a Adored, of the complete letters exchanged 2019 CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION free man,” and personally, I agree! Who says between two lovers, Rose Cleveland and you have to work in academia or law to use I’ve been working as a paraprofessional Evangeline Simpson Whipple. The letters your classics degree? at the Brooklyn New School in NYC. I provide insight into the relationship work primarily with second graders and between the two women as they navigate EMMA STERLING have been delighted to contribute to the their lives as 19-century women invested 2016 LATIN, ANCIENT GREEK, ENGLISH education of others. That being said, in humanitarian work, amongst many [email protected] I’m currently exploring what kind of other things. Emma worked with Teach For America for educational environment would be best

7 Department of Classics 10 North Professor Street Oberlin, OH 44074-1095

IN MEMORY OF JIM HELM

JAMES HELM, beloved colleague and friend, Jim loved teaching and was very good at died unexpectedly on October 29, 2018, it. His lectures on classical literature, history, at the age of 80. Jim earned a BA in phi- and myth were meticulously researched, losophy from Elmhurst College (1959), a carefully structured, and crystal clear. In master’s in divinity from Union Theological classroom discussion, he was a patient lis- Seminary (1963), and a master’s (1965) tener, deftly leading students toward a larger and doctorate (1968) in classical studies and more informed knowledge of the text. from the University of Michigan. Except In language courses, his deep knowledge for one year as visiting associate professor of Greek and Latin, rigorous and thorough of classics at Scripps College in 1978-79, he preparation, and obvious love of the lan- spent his entire career, from 1967 to 2003, guages made him an enormously effective Tom Van Nortwick, Jim, and Nate Greenberg at at Oberlin, reaching the rank of professor teacher. The course he himself loved most Jim’s retirement dinner in 2002. in 1982. He quickly earned the respect and was the two-semester elementary Greek trust of his colleagues and served on every sequence, which he taught continuously from the profession. Perhaps his most important elected committee multiple times. His service the beginning of his career to the end. Never publication was a commentary on Plato’s on the Shansi Committee led to a decades- satisfied with the available textbooks for Apology for beginning students, developed long association with Lady Doak College in beginning Greek, he amassed over the years over years of teaching the dialogue in the Madurai, India, where he and Anne visited reams of supplementary material to guide his second semester of elementary Greek. This many times, teaching and raising funds for charges through the bewildering thickets of book has remained in print for decades and the college and its library. the aorist passive and “mi” verbs. He would is considered one of the best works of its Jim’s service to the classics department end the sequence by having the students read kind in the field. was extraordinary. Always looking for ways Plato’s Apology in the original language, Jim’s wonderfully generous nature to reach out to students, Jim was responsible giving them a chance to encounter one of the informed everything he did, as a teacher, a for starting and maintaining many of the masterpieces of western intellectual history scholar, and a member of the college com- classics department’s enduring institu- in their first year of studying Greek. munity. A brief summary cannot do justice tions: the annual Bardic Reading, student Jim’s scholarship was characterized by to the enormous impact he had on all who dinners at the Mandarin Restaurant, and the same intelligence, thorough research, were lucky enough to know and work with the incomparable Classics Picnic, held for and rigorous standards he brought to bear him. A loving husband, father, and grandfa- decades at Jim and Anne’s lovely home on on all of his professional work. He pub- ther, Jim was a model citizen in every com- Lincoln Street. A patient and caring mentor lished articles on Aeschylus, Catullus, on munity of which he was a part. His unshak- to dozens of young professors who came to the concept of Koros—satisfaction—in able integrity made him someone you could teach at Oberlin, including this reporter, Jim Greek literature and philosophy, and several always depend on. His wry and self-effacing was the consummate colleague, tireless in articles on computer applications to classics, wit made him someone you could love. his devotion to the department, his fellow a field just emerging during his early years teachers, and his students. at Oberlin, in which he became a pioneer in —Thomas Van Nortwick