Assorted tidbits that have accumulated over the past while …

Timothy Howe is amongst a handful who were granted tenure at St. Olaf:

• St. Olaf announces faculty promotions, tenure

Peter Struck was talking about ‘Ancient Heroes and Superheroes’ in an appropriate venue:

• Batman, Superman leap off the page at Penn Museum superhero event

Marie Bolchazy was making some reading suggestions:

• Learning About the Past Can Help You Prepare for the Future

Mary Boatwright was talking about grade inflation:

• Grading on a curve

A review of Leslie Mitchell’s bio of Maurice Bowra:

• Maurice Bowra, the great Oxford gossip

I’m trying out some new ‘organizational principles’ for certain types of post … one category will be devoted to items where a particular Classicist and/or their work is the focus, to wit:

Paul Cartledge:

• The myths of ‘ancient Greece’ dispelled (Charlotte Higgins in the Guardian)

Robert Graves:

• From Meccania to Atlantis – Part 9: Goodbye To All That (Brussels Journal)

Lorna Robinson (Iris Project):

• Latin, ad nauseam (Audio interview at Lingua Franca)

Andrew Wilson (Oxford):

• Oxford professor discusses Roman economy with the Daily (Tufts Daily)

Monica Cyrino (UNew Mexico):

• Star of ‘Rome’ makes surprise visit to Classics class (Daily Lobo)

• Women of HBO’s Rome to be discussed (Register Mail)

Jinyu Liu and Ellen Muehlberger (DePauw):

• Two DePauw Professors to Make Presentations at Conference on Late Antiquity (DePauw Press Release)

Ray Van Dam (UMichigan):

• Dr. Ray Van Dam to Lecture on Rome and Constantinople (Baylor Press Release)

Steven Fineberg (Knox College):

• Fineberg Awarded Research Grant (Press Release)

• Prof to study Greek art at University of Chicago (Register-Mail)

How W. Royal Stokes is spending retirement:

• The jazz writer: Music critic and former classics professor semiretires to Elkins (Gazette)

… and of course, we can’t ignore the coverage of Gail Trimble’s success on the UK University Challenge:

• One-woman winning machine Gail Trimble rises to the final University Challenge (Times)

• Leading article: University challenged (Independent)

• Nicholas Lezard: The challenge of Gail Trimble (ditto)

• Oxford student Gail offered lads’ mag photoshoot (ditto (!))

• Your starter for ten: Why do so many people hate this girl simply for being clever? (Daily Mail)

• Editor’s blog: Trimble’s University Challenge to UK economy (Management Today)

A reviewish sort of thing of a biography of Maurice Bowra  in the New Statesman includes this tantalizing bit, inter alia:

He was a scholar of ancient Greek literature but, despite a string of books, produced nothing exceptional (one contemporary compared his prose to “a man writing luggage labels”) and failed to get an Oxford chair. He was allegedly a great wit, but does not have a single entry in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. He was almost certainly homosexual and, to his friends between the wars, proclaimed himself a leader of the Homintern. Yet he ducked out of public backing for homosexuals, most shamefully in 1947 when he refused to support André Gide, as open a honorary degree. Many thought him the model for characters in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time, but it probably wasn’t true in either case. Nor was it true that, on being greeted by Hitler with “Heil Hitler!” he responded: “Heil Bowra!” It was his friend (and possibly lover) Robert Boothby who shouted “Heil Boothby!” and he was responding, not to Hitler himself, but to a secretary. When the false version of the story circulated, Bowra implored Boothby not to spoil it. Which says, perhaps, all you need to know about the man.

… there’s more:

• The trouble with Oxford