Department News and Events
In the 2022 Prentice lecture, ‘The Moon and the Map in the Ancient World,’ Karen ní Mheallaigh, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Classics at Johns Hopkins University, charted the long history of our fascination with the moon. Through a series of close readings of Lucian, Plutarch and other ancient thinkers, she unraveled an ancient phenomenology in which the moon was understood as an “optical prosthesis” that could supplement earthly vision and enhance the numinosity of space.
The Society of Fellows is very much delighted to announce that Yelena Baraz, the Kennedy Foundation Professor of Latin Language and Literature and Professor of Classics, has been appointed as its faculty director, beginning in fall 2023. She is to succeed Michael D. Gordin, Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, who has led the Society since 2017.
In 2022, the third year of the SCS Erich S. Gruen Prize, the selection committee received 18 submissions from graduate students across North America treating aspects of race, ethnicity, or cultural exchange in the ancient Mediterranean. The committee was impressed by the papers’ quality and range of disciplinary perspectives, methodologies, types of evidence, and time periods across the multicultural ancient world.
The Harold W. Dodds Fellowship was established in 1957 by an anonymous donor to provide a fellowship fund in honor of Harold Dodds, fifteenth president of Princeton. The fellowship recognizes exceptional students in their later years of study.
This year, the annual Fagles lecture was delivered by theater director and MacArthur “genius” grant winner Luis Alfaro. Alfaro, one of the most inventive adapters of Greek tragedy for the modern stage, is known for plays and performances including Mojada, a retelling of Euripides’s Medea set in Los Angeles, Oedipus El Rey, a Chicano retelling of Oedipus Rex, and Electricidad, based on Sophocles’ Electra.
The American Historical Association is pleased to announce the winners of its 2022 prizes, to be awarded at the AHA’s 136th annual meeting, which will take place in Philadelphia from January 5–8, 2023.
The AHA offers annual prizes honoring exceptional books, distinguished teaching and mentoring in the classroom, public history, and other historical projects. Since 1896, the Association has conferred over 1,000 awards. This year’s finalists were selected from a field of over 1,300 entries by nearly 150 dedicated prize committee members. The names, publications, and projects of those who received these awards are a catalog of the best work produced in the historical discipline.
This summer, as a recipient of funding from the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies and the Princeton Classics Department, I was able to attend the course in Modern Greek at the Princeton Athens Center, taught by Lelia Panteloglou, as well as a three-week French course through LSF in Montpellier, France. Department funding also supported my travels to other sites in Greece as well as visits to museums and sites within Athens relevant to my research and coursework.
Theater director and MacArthur “genius” grant winner Luis Alfaro will deliver Princeton’s 2022-2023 Robert Fagles Lecture for Classics in the Contemporary Arts. Alfaro works in theater, performance, poetry and journalism, and is known for plays and performances including three adaptations of ancient Greek dramas: Mojada, a retelling of Medea set in Los Angeles, Oedipus El Rey, a Chicano retelling of Oedipus Rex, and Electricidad, based on Sophocles’ Electra.
The 2022 Princeton Department of Classics News Letter has arrived!
The department's annual newsletter is now available online and paper copies have been mailed.
Inside you can find exciting updates from faculty and students, as well as articles highlighting Classics Department events!
A daylong demonstration of medieval-style smelting, the workshop showcased an iron-producing technique that began in the Iron Age, persisted through the Classical World and the Middle Ages to Colonial America. It is also a tradition that has been intentionally preserved by smiths in West Africa, where the unique type of iron it produces holds cultural importance. Dr. Andrew Welton, a medieval archaeologist specializing in early medieval Britain, hazarded the 16-hour drive from the University of Florida, where he teaches, to lead the demonstration. The event, as part of a guest lecture for CLA247 “The Science of Roman History,” was hosted by the Environmental History Lab in Medieval Studies and co-sponsored by the Humanities Council, the Council on Science and Technology, the Department of Art & Archaeology, the Program in Archaeology, and the Department of Classics.
Emma Treadway ('22) used her senior thesis to explore how some of the basic tenets of Stoicism — a school of philosophy that dates from 300 BCE — can help address problems in K-12 public education. She examines how an emphasis on social and emotional learning, as opposed to purely academic learning, “when combined with a Stoic twist,” can teach students to engage empathetically with the world and address in the classroom inequalities that disproportionately harm children of color, girls and children with disabilities.