2012 Classics Newsletter.Pdf
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FALL 2012 STANFORD UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF Cllassicsassics NEWSLETTER 2012 From the Chair Faculty and Staff . 2 New Faculty . 3 LASSICS KEEPS GROWING. Last sprawling Biology Department, where she year our deans approved two used to handle hundreds (and hundreds) Commencement . 4 searches, an exceptional commit - of students. Her outstanding track record, Events . 6 C ment to a moderately sized department and the continuing presence of our enter - Eitner Lectures . 7 and a gratifying sign of recognition of our prising student services officer Lori Lynn Faculty News . 9 outstanding record in teaching and Taniguchi and our surefooted administra - research. We were able to hire Christopher tive associate Margo Keeley, leave no Graduate Student Stories . 14 Krebs, formerly at Harvard, to shore up doubt that we are once again in good ORBIS Project . 16 our Latin program and build new strengths hands. Undergraduate Student Stories . 19 in the areas of historiography and rheto - Recent Books . .24 ric. The second appointment allowed us Recent years have witnessed unprece - to expand our archaeology program by dented growth in the number of Classics Theater . 25 adding a third classical archae - majors, and we are doing our SCIT . 25 ologist. A recent Penn PhD and best to keep it this way. Maud Graduate Student News . 26 NYU postdoc and already an Gleason has kindly agreed to Alumni News . 28 established scholar of underwa - step in as Director of Under - ter archaeology and heritage graduate Studies while Gio - Staff Updates . .31 management, Justin Leidwanger vanna Ceserani enjoys her New will add whole new areas of Directions Fellowship from the ORBIS: expertise to our department. Mellon Foundation ( the second While he is completing a second time our department has won STANFORD CLASSICS postdoctoral fellowship in this award). John Klopacz REDRAWS THE MAP Toronto, his place is being filled WALTER SCHEIDEL remains a pillar of strength for OF THE ROMAN WORLD for the current academic year by our undergraduate Latin pro - PAGE 16 Alicia Jiménez, a specialist in ancient Iber - gram, and we are grateful to our tireless ian archaeology. As the icing on the cake, emeritus Marsh McCall for his continuing the noted Latinist and reception scholar contribution to undergraduate Greek. The Andrew Laird has joined us from Warwick replacement of the Introduction to the as this year’s Webster Visiting Professor. Humanities courses for freshmen with a new program, Thinking Matters, has given In July, the time had come to say goodbye us an opportunity to redesign our offer - to our most outstanding department man - ings. We have launched new “gateway” ager in living memory, Ryan Johnson, who courses on ancient athletics and ancient was very deservedly promoted to run a Egypt and are in the process of develop - much bigger department on the engineer - ing entire series of core courses that will http://classics.stanford.edu ing side of campus. During the previous help undergraduates pursue their inter - http://www.facebook.com /stanfordclassics four years he had made an enormous con - ests in a reliably structured format. email: classic [email protected] tribution to our program, for which we remain in his debt. Luckily for us, this posi - Commencement witnessed the invention Classics Department tion was recently filled by Valerie Kiszka, of what I hope will become a new tradi - Main Quad, Building 110 Stanford, CA 94305-2145 the multiple-award-winning former stu - tion, as our alum Carey Perloff, artistic dent services administrator of Stanford’s (650) 723-0479 CONTINUED ON – PAGE 2 FROM THE CHAIR — FROM PAGE 1 heated up, and Classics should have much staged in Athens and here on campus. to offer in the process of rethinking this Speaking of drama, last year’s perform - director of the American Conservatory The - format: What is a Classics PhD for? Should ance of a heavily updated version of Aristo - ater in San Francisco, kindly accepted our the requirements for all candidates be the phanes’ Assemblywomen by our graduate invitation to be our first departmental com - same? Questioning apparent certainties students set new standards for raucous - mencement speaker and shared her own will pose challenges but also open new ness, which would surely have pleased the Classics experience with our graduating opportunities. Classics, after all, does not author. ORBIS, our new interactive simu - students and their families. merely prepare students for academic lation of connectivity in the Roman world, positions; it can do much more than that. attracted hundreds of thousands of visi - Under Grant Parker’s leadership, the grad - tors and global media coverage within uate program is likewise doing well. An In order not only to survive but to prosper, weeks of its launch in May, reminding us unusually large cohort entered the pro - Classics must make its voice heard well of the size of the potential audience for gram last year, and we were once again beyond the Ivory Tower: outreach is essen - classical matters. The challenge lies in able to welcome most of our top candi - tial. Mary Beard’s visit as our 2011-12 reaching this audience. Digital Humani - dates this fall. Several of our new and Lorenz Eitner Lecturer (once again spon - ties approaches are already a crucial recent alums defied the sluggish job mar - sored by our generous benefactors Peter means to this end and are bound to grow ket by securing tenure-track positions: Al and Lindsay Joost) brought to our campus further in importance. Our unique location Duncan at the University of Utah, Sarah one of the world’s leading promoters and in the heart of Silicon Valley puts our pro - Levin-Richardson at the University of San popularizers of Classics in electronic media gram in a superb position to contribute to Diego, Darian Totten at Davidson College, old and new. And we just continued in this the fostering of Classics in this rapidly Brett Rogers at the University of Portland, vein with this fall’s Eitner lecture by Peter changing world. Help from many sources and Lidewijde de Jong in her native Nether - Meineck of NYU, who has made a name will be necessary. If you support Stanford lands. Melissa Bailey took a postdoc at for himself with his innovative productions Classics, you invest in the future of the Northwestern. But this was also the year of ancient plays. Our colleague Rush Rehm field. when the debate about the nature and the continues to be active in the same area: Walter Scheidel future of the PhD in the Humanities finally his Wanderings of Odysseus was just Walter Scheidel, Chair Classics Department Faculty and Staff EMERITI: PROFESSORS: ASSOCIATE PROFESSORS: LECTURERS: Mark Edwards Alessandro Barchiesi Giovanna Ceserani Maud Gleason Marsh McCall, Jr. Andrew Devine Christopher B. Krebs John Klopacz (Recalled for 2012-13) Richard Martin Jody Maxmin Edward Spofford Ian Morris Grant Parker RESEARCH SCHOLAR: Susan Treggiari Reviel Netz Jennifer Trimble Adrienne Mayor Michael Wigodsky Andrea Nightingale Josiah Ober COURTESY PROFESSORS: ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF: CHAIR: Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi Chris Bobonich Valerie Kiszka Walter Scheidel Rush Rehm Alan Code (Department Manager) Richard Saller (Dean, Charlotte Fonrobert Lori Lynn Taniguchi DIRECTOR OF Humanities & Sciences) Ian Hodder (Student Services Officer) GRADUATE STUDIES: Walter Scheidel Bissera Pentcheva Margo Keeley Grant Parker Michael Shanks Steven Weitzman (Administrative Associate) Susan Stephens Caroline Winterer DIRECTOR OF Yiqun Zhou UNDERGRADUATE STUDIES: Maud Gleason 2 STANFORD UNIVERSITY Spotlight on New Faculty Christopher B. Krebs Associate Professor WHEN CHRISTOPHER also, along with the Clas - chose Latin as his first foreign sical Tradition, his primary language at primary school in field of interest. His most Berlin, he did not foresee that he recent mon ograph, A Most would one day teach Classics at Dangerous Book: Tacitus’s Stanford. But, happily, that’s Germania from the Roman what happened, and he is very Empire to the Third Reich much looking forward to work - (with W. W. Norton), was a ing with students and colleagues KREBS NYT Book Review Editor’s on Greek and Roman literature Choice and a TLS Book of the and its afterlives. He previously held Year; it has been translated into several positions at Harvard and Oxford and at languages and has led to many interest - the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in ing discussions about the long and var - book of the Bellum Munich, where he worked on words ious afterlife of the Germania and clas - Gallicum , which is quite colorful starting with P and R for “probably the sical culture more generally. He has also under its seemingly monochrome sur - most scholarly dictionary in the world” co-edited a volume, Time and Narrative face. But he also hopes to continue pur - (Encyclop aedia Britannica), and–for in Ancient Histo riography: The ‘Plupast’ suing his interests in the classical tradi - those curious about the project –wrote from Herodotus to Appian (with CUP), tion and the history of ideas. an article for the TLS entitled “You Say which studies references to the past in Putator.” He was also a visiting profes - narratives of the past–a phenomenon Among the courses he will teach this sor at the École Normale Supérieure in comparable to references to the stage year are a graduate seminar on Sallust Paris, where he lectured on Cicero, Sal - on the stage. He is currently working on and Vergil and a freshman seminar on lust, and Livy. Caesar as a man of letters in the Cam - Cicero and rhetoric, another important bridge Companion to Caesar and an edi - classical heritage, as the speeches dur - Greek and Roman historiography is tion and commentary of the seventh ing the recent election revealed . Andrew Laird Alicia Jiménez Visiting Professor and Webster Distinguished Acting Assistant Lecturer, Autumn 2012 Professor ANDREW LAIRD is Professor of (Oxford 1999).