Month: February 2010

CONF: All Roads Lead From Rome

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Seen on Classicists (please send any responses to the folks mentioned in the quoted text, not to rogueclassicism!):

The Rutgers Classics Graduate Student Organization would like to invite you
to our conference, "All Roads Lead From Rome." It will be held on 9 April
2010 at the Busch Campus Center, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ. The
registration form is attached, and should be emailed in return to Liz Gloyn
(lizgloyn AT eden.rutgers.edu) by March 12th. The conference is free, but we
would like an estimate for catering. People are welcome to attend without
registering.

Please visit our Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=147915551768&ref=ts

Registration begins at 9 AM, and the program is as follows:

Panel I (10:00-11:30 AM):
"The Iliad in the Original: Theorizing Classical Reception in Filmic and
Televisual Texts"
Vincent Tomasso, Stanford University

" ‘As You Wish’: The Reception of the Greek Romance in The Princess Bride"
Katharine Piller, University of California at Los Angeles

"The Hyper-Alexandrianism of Virgilian Centos and Girl Talk’s ‘Mashups’ "
Patrick Burns, Fordham University

Keynote Speaker (11:45-12:30 PM):
"Classics for Cool Kids: Popular and Unpopular Versions of Antiquity for
Children"
Sheila Murnaghan, University of Pennsylvania

Panel II (1:30-3:00 PM):
"Europa Barbarorum and the Rehabilitation of Historical Accuracy"
Michael Sullivan, Rutgers University

"Animaniacs and Ancient Greek Satyr Drama"
Sophie Klein, Boston University

"Transformation as Disease, Reincorporation as Cure: A Comparative
Case-Study of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses & C.S. Lewis’ The Horse and His Boy"
Midori E. Hartman, University of British Columbia

Panel III (3:15-4:45 PM):
"The Classics and the Pursuit of Legitimacy in Modern Medicine"
Jan Verstraete, University of Cincinnati, Montclair State University
Jorie Hofstra, Rutgers University

"Brought to You Live or in Living Color: The 1960’s Reinterpretation of a
1950’s Socrates Portrayed in Maxwell Anderson’s ‘Barefoot in Athens’ "
Charles Castle, Northwestern University

"Creating the Grotesque: Zombification in Lucan’s Bellum Civile, Shelley’s
Frankenstein, and Romero’s Day of the Dead"
Andrew McClellan, University of British Columbia

Hellenistic Tombs

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Haven’t heard of any reports of this in any greater detail, alas:

Eight tombs dating to the Hellenist Period were partially revealed recently in the region of Gonous, Larissa prefecture, after flooding caused by heavy rainfall swept away a rural dirt road.

The Archaeological Service subsequently conducted an excavation, which brought to light the tombs which, according to initial assessment, date back to between the end of the 4th century BC and the beginning of the 3rd century BC.

Of the eight tombs, only one is intact.

via Hellenistic Period tombs unearthed by torrential rainfall | ANA.

On the Utility of Classics

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Seen in the New York Times:

I couldn’t help noticing a theme running through the Book Review for Jan. 24. The lead review treated books by Garry Wills, whose primary academic training was in classics (Latin and Greek), and John Yoo, whose teachers at the Episcopal Academy in Pennsylvania, where I teach Latin and Greek, remember him as a stellar high school Latin student. (He graduated the year before I arrived.) There was a letter to the editor from Ralph Hexter, the Hampshire College president, one of many classical scholars now running colleges or universities. Later in the issue, Steve Coates reviewed David Malouf’s “Ransom,” a novel about King Priam of Troy.

Can we draw the obvious conclusion? If you want to make legal arguments from the right, or analyze politics from the left, or lead a college, or simply find a good story, spending a little time with Latin and Greek can’t hurt.

LEE T. PEARCY

via Letters – Ipso Facto – NYTimes.com.