d.m. Natalie Kampen

From the Providence Journal [thanks to Dr. Lisa Trentin]:

KAMPEN, DR. NATALIE (TALLY) BOYMEL a pioneering feminist scholar and teacher of Roman Art History and Gender Studies, died on August 12, 2012 at home in Wakefield, Rhode Island. She was 68. Kampen taught graduate courses on the ancient world at Columbia University and undergraduate courses in feminist the-ory and gender studies at Barnard College, where she was the first faculty member to hold the endowed Barbara Novak chair in Art History and Women’s Studies, and became professor emerita in 2010. She was most recently a visiting professor of Roman Art and Architecture at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University and co-administrator of a Getty Foundation Grant sponsoring international study of the art and architecture of the Roman provinces. She was one of the world’s most notable experts on the history of the Roman provinces. Dr. Kampen was an internationally known teacher and scholar. She was a research fellow at Oxford University in 2000, received the Felix Neubergh Medal at the University of Gothenburg in 2004, and was a visiting professor of Art History at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi in 2010. As a senior scholar she was interested not only in promoting the careers of her Columbia students but of graduate students in Eastern Europe, South Asia and the Middle East. She was the author of Image and Status: Roman Working Women in Ostia (1981) and Family Fictions in Roman Art (2009), editor of Sexuality in Ancient Art (1996), and author of numerous articles and chapters in scholarly journals, encyclopedias, and books, including Art Journal, American Journal of Archaeology, Art Bulletin, and The Art of Citizens, Soldiers and Freedmen in the Roman World (2006), edited by Metrau and D’Ambra. Dr. Kampen was born on February 1, 1944 in Philadelphia, the daughter of Jules and Pauline (Friedman) Boymel. She was an enthusiastic supporter of left causes from the 1950s to the present, was an effective force in the development of feminist philosophy, and played a key role in the struggle for women’s rights. She raised generations of women’s consciousness. She received her BA and MA from the University of Pennsylvania in 1965 and 1967 and her Ph.D. from Brown University in 1976. She taught Art History at the University of Rhode Island between 1969 and 1988, where she helped to found one of the first Women’s Studies programs in New England and became a life-long patron of the Hera Gallery, a feminist artists’ collective in Wakefield, Rhode Island. She was an avid horseback rider and a lifelong owner of Labrador dogs. She was married to Michael Kampen from 1965 to 1969 and to John Dunnigan from 1978 to 1989. In all her pursuits, scholarly and otherwise, Tally’s generosity was extraordinary. She was famous as a beloved friend and colleague who nurtured lifelong friendships, forged groups of strangers into friends, and could change a person’s perspective on life after only an hour’s acquaintance in an airport. Even after the onset of her final illness, she led a group of younger scholars to Greece, determined to work with them while she was still able. Dr. Kampen is survived by her sister, Susan Boymel Udin, her brother-in-law David, and her niece and nephew Rachel and Michael Udin. A memorial service will be held at a later date. Contributions can be made in Dr. Kampen’s name to Rhode Island Community Food Bank, 200 Niantic Avenue, Providence, RI 02907. The family will be observing a week of Shiva at 33 Shadow Farm Way, Wakefield, RI 02879. Visitors will be welcome from 2-8 PM beginning August 13, 2012.

Also Seen: Homeric Variations ~ Interview with Graeme Bird

The Center for Hellenic Studies has an interview with Classicist (and jazz musician) Graeme Bird on his work with Homeric papyri and the connections it has with jazz (amongst other things). Here’s a (very brief) excerpt:

[…]

CHS: In addition to being an active member of the faculty at multiple schools, you are an accomplished and active jazz musician. How does this inform your work on the Homeric corpus and on the concept of composition in performance?

G.D.B.: For some time I have been exploring possible connections between techniques of jazz improvisation (for the piano in particular) and oral formulaic poetic techniques. Years ago I met a graduate student writing his PhD music thesis on this very topic, looking at the improvisational style of the jazz pianist Bill Evans (sadly deceased at a young age), and comparing it with the Parry-Lord theory of oral formulaic poetry. I decided that since I can both read Homeric Greek and play improvised jazz piano (but by no means in the league of Bill Evans!), I would explore this idea further, and also try to demonstrate it in actual performance. I would say that I am at the beginning of what I hope will become something more valuable and more profound. I have given a couple of live “performances” in which I consider some lines of Homeric text – both in Greek and in English, as my audience generally are not all familiar with Greek – and then play some jazz piano, including improvised material. I seek to show by analyzing the improvised piano lines that these lines tend to follow patterns not unlike those illustrated by Lord in his book Singer of Tales. In fact I set out both sets of material (Homeric and jazz) in very similar ways to enhance the similarities. But of course I remind my audience that there are significant differences between Homer and jazz, and that these should not be overlooked in a simplistic hunt for superficial parallels.

I would say that I have two goals in this (at least two): to show that Homeric formulaic composition is compatible with true creativity (i.e. not just sticking formulas together in some artless fashion) – that the system does not exclude the creativity; that jazz improvisation is similarly compatible – in this case that the creativity does not rule out the system; and finally that the two share elements of both system and of creativity – that two seemingly unrelated art forms have more in common than might be apparent at first glance (or hearing). Along these lines, I seek to clarify what true “improvisation” is: the OED definition (“improvise”: To compose (verse, music, etc.) on the spur of the moment; to utter or perform extempore.) is woefully inadequate, and many, if not most people seem to have misconceptions of what its true nature is. As a practicing musician who tries to practice at least an hour a day (which is barely sufficient to keep one’s “chops” in shape), I am acutely aware of how much work it takes to become an even average improviser. True improvisation has nothing really to do with “making stuff up on the spot”; rather it is the creative and inspired weaving together of previously rehearsed material (“formulas,” if you like, which include fragments of scales and arpeggios, things which musicians are constantly practicing) in a way that allows the performer to perform a given song (one of my favorites is Cole Porter’s “Night and Day”) before an audience in such a way that they both recognize the song being played, and are inspired by the way it is being performed. To me this applies in a very real way to how I imagine a passage of Homer would have been performed. And the concepts of “multitextuality” and “intertextuality” seem to apply in jazz just as they do in Homer. […]

Check out the whole thing at:

Also Seen: Diana, Callisto, and Philip II

While I was poking around at Wonders and Marvels, I notice Helen King has written about a painting by Titian (Diana and Callisto) which has been popping up in the news for the past little while: