Department News and Events
On Tuesday, October 20th, the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students hosted “Documenting Privilege” a FOCUS Speaker Series event featuring Dan-el Padilla Peralta ’06, associate professor of classics at Princeton University, and Anthony Jack, assistant professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Dr. Padilla Peralta’s bestselling memoir, Undocumented: A Dominican Boy’s Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League(link is external) was released in 2016. Dr. Jack’s book, The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students (link is external) was named one of NPR’s Favorite Books of 2019. Undergraduate attendees were provided with a free copy of either of the panelists’ books, purchased locally from Source of Knowledge, an independent, Black-owned bookstore in Newark, New Jersey.
The annual Innovation Forum highlights the broad set of innovations developed at Princeton University and celebrates the faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students conducting this impactful work. The 2020 forum was held remotely on September 29th and featured nine STEM and four cultural and societal advancements.
Tony-award winning director and MacArthur fellow Mary Alice Zmmerman, will deliver Princeton’s 2020 Fagles lecture. Professor Zimmerman has directed and adapted dozens of performances during an extraordinarily rich and creative career. These productions include Metamorphoses, Arabian Nights, Pericles, The Jungle Book, The White Snake and Armida, as well as an opera collaboration with Philip Glass and a new opera based on Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice, due to be presented next year. In addition to her creative work, Professor Zimmerman is the Manilow Resident Director of Goodman Theatre, a member of Lookingglass Theatre Company and holds an endowed chair as Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University.
This winter, Princeton University will join the University of Notre Dame and Stanford University to co-host the Global Digital Palaeography Workshop. Made possible through a Rapid Response Magic Grant from the Princeton University Humanities Council, the workshop aims to provide graduate students from any university in the world with an intensive introduction to Greek palaeography.
This September, the Humanities Council will partner with the Keller Center to showcase humanities and social science innovation at the annual Innovation Forum. This is the first time since its inception in 2005 that the Forum will feature Princeton’s humanities and social science community. The inaugural participants include Classics professors Brooke Holmes and Dan-el Padilla Peralta, who will join others to present on innovations with potential cultural and societal applications outside of campus gates.
Princeton’s Graduate School has launched a new pre-doctoral fellowship, which will fund students to study at Princeton for a year before they enroll as first-year Ph.D. students. Students from groups historically underrepresented in higher education are especially encouraged to apply for the new fellowship, which is among University efforts to increase diversity on campus and within academia.
Despite significant disruptions to academic work this year, a number of graduate students have made exceptional progress in their research and completed their doctorates in Classics. Here we celebrate three who have recently defended their dissertations.
In response to the recent and ongoing violence against persons of color and the renewed struggle against inequality in which this country is now engaged, Princeton’s Department of Classics reaffirms its commitment to diversity, equity, and justice within our field. We add our voices to those calling for an anti-racist, inclusive society for ourselves, our students and, indeed, for all. We affirm our belief that Black Lives Matter as do the lives of all those who suffer from discrimination (whether based on gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, disability, or religious affiliation). We pledge ourselves to defend, in word and deed, the oppressed and vulnerable within our society.
Froma I. Zeitlin retired from Princeton University in 2010, where she was the Charles Ewing Professor of Greek Language and Literature in the Department of Classics and Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature. In this interview for the Society for Classical Studies she talks about her experience as a woman in Classics in the 1970s and after.