THE PRINCETON CLASSICS DEPARTMENT investigates the history, language, literature, and thought of ancient Greece and Rome. We use the perspectives of multiple disciplines to understand and imagine the diversity of these civilizations over almost two thousand years and to reflect on what the classical past has meant to later ages, and to our own.
The Department of Classics is happy to share the news that four classics majors were elected to Phi Beta Kappa: Nicolette D’Angelo, Kevin Duraiswamy, Alyssa Finfer, and Rafail Zoulis. The Phi Beta Kappa Society, founded in 1776 and the oldest of all national honorary scholastic societies, has a chapter at Princeton. Election to this chapter is based on scholastic standing and generally includes the highest-ranking tenth of each graduating class. Congratulations to all!
We are pleased to announce that Joonho Jo, Class of 2021, is the winner of the Stinnecke Prize in 2019. It is given to the sophomore or junior who passes the best examination based on the Odes of Horace, Eclogues of Vergil, and the Latin Grammar and Prosody, as well as the Anabasis of Xenophon or Plato’s Euthyphro, Crito, Apology and Phaedo and the Greek Grammar. The winner receives a one-time stipend of $5,000. Sophomores and juniors in all departments are eligible to compete.
Zoulis, a classics major from Athens, says his experience of the events in Greece’s recent history has had a powerful impact on his intellectual and personal growth. “The most important element from this period was growing up during the financial crisis and the migration movements,” he said, giving him a particular interest in “transnational political and administrative units as well as a celebration of diversity.” Zoulis brings this current-day awareness to his studies of the past. You may read his address here.
Sommers is a physics major from Bridgewater, New Jersey, and is also pursuing a certificate in Roman language and culture among others. She has been awarded a Goldwater Scholarship, an annual award for outstanding undergraduates interested in careers in mathematics, the natural sciences or engineering. See also a longer article in the Prince.
On the evening of Tuesday, April 16th, Page duBois, Distinguished Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at UC San Diego, spoke on Princeton’s campus, delivering a thought-provoking Faber Lecture entitled “The Politics of the Swarm.”
Our colleague Dan-el Padilla Peralta has once again been the target of an attack, this time disseminated by the National Association of Scholars, that repeats at greater length the substance of the one made against him in person at the Society for Classical Studies. The author’s basic premise seems to be that the simple elimination of any ‘race consciousness’ in academics can suffice to…
Assistant Professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta shares his thoughts about the AIA-SCS 2019 meeting in an article on Medium and in an interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Earlier this year, at the national meeting of our major scholarly society, a member of this department was subjected to a racist verbal attack in a public forum. I write as chair to deplore and refute the sentiments directed against him and to commit our department to working to eliminate the conditions that make such incidents possible in the professional lives of colleagues in our, or any other, academic discipline. For other responses, please see this roundup.
—Andrew Feldherr
