Yelena Baraz teamed up last fall with Jhumpa Lahiri to teach a class called “Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities: Ancient Plots, Modern Twists". Offered through the Humanities Council, the seminar examined how today’s writers reimagine classical narratives so as to illuminate contemporary issues.
Dan-el Padilla Peralta thinks classicists should knock ancient Greece and Rome off their pedestal — even if that means destroying their discipline.
The Society for Classical Studies is delighted to announce that the TAPA Editor Search Committee has selected Joshua Billings and Irene Peirano Garrison as the new co-editors of TAPA. This is the first time in its history that TAPA will be led by two co-editors. Professors Billings and Peirano Garrison will cover TAPA volumes 152-155 (2022-2025). Volume 153 will include a themed issue, as previously announced, on race, racism and Classics, edited by Professors Sasha-Mae Eccleston and Patrice Rankine.
‘Der “Oxforder Boethius”. Studie und lateinisch-deutsche Edition’ is published by Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin, as part of the series ‘Texte des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit’ (TMA, no. 58). The book, a co-production between a medieval Latinist and a medieval Germanist, focuses on the reception of Boethius's Consolatio philosophiae (ca. 524) in the later Middle Ages. One of the most influential late-antique texts, the Consolation was extremely widespread in the Middle Ages. The rendering of the text into vernacular languages commences almost as early as the glossing and commenting of it.
On a momentous day in which much of the country was watching the polls, the Princeton community was also fixated by another extraordinary event: the Fagles lecture. In the third iteration of the recently-established lecture for Classics in the Contemporary Arts, Tony award-winning director and MacArthur fellow Mary Alice Zimmerman took students and faculty through her extraordinary career in direction and adaptation as part of a talk called ‘Bodies I Have in Mind’.
On the evening of Tuesday, November 3rd, Tony-award winning director and MacArthur fellow Mary Alice Zimmerman, delivered third in the recently inaugurated series of Fagles Lectures for Classics in the Contemporary Arts, entitled “Bodies I have in Mind: Embodying Myth on Stage”. To view a full recording of the event click here.
Yelena Baraz is the Kennedy Foundation Professor of Latin Language and Literature, Professor of Classics, and Behrman Professor in the Humanities Council. Her latest book “Reading Roman Pride” is published by Oxford University Press. Here, the Humanities Council interviews her about the book.
What do a stand-up comedian, a museum curator, an essayist, a public engagement manager, an online publisher, a journalist, an IT consultant, and a high school teacher have in common? After studying Classics at university, they are channeling their degrees into work outside academia. Professor Barbara Graziosi and graduate student Jermaine Bryant interviewed these Classicists to produce videos for 'Beyond the Academy,' a RapidResponse MagicProject from the Princeton University Humanities Council.
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.
Marina Di Bartolo, M.D., works as a primary care practitioner in Camden, New Jersey, where she treats patients in the crosshairs of the coronavirus. On the latest episode of Princeton's “We Roar” podcast, she shares her journey from Venezuela to Princeton University to last week’s ruling that protected the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program — at least for now.
In the 25 years since the Humanities Sequence was established at Princeton, those who have taught and studied the course have singled out its close-knit community for its transformative power. With this sense of community so strongly part of the HUM Sequence experience, how would the isolation of lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic affect the teaching and the discussions that are the lifeblood of the course?
Princeton’s seniors were honored last month at a virtual commencement ceremony that marked the end of their time as undergraduates. As the Class of 2020 prepare for the next stages of their lives and careers, we asked some of those who chose to major in Classics about their work and plans for the future.
Three classics majors have been elected to Phi Beta Kappa: Leina Thurn, Christopher Howard and Kirsten Traudt. Election to this chapter is based on scholastic standing and generally includes the highest-ranking tenth of each graduating class.
The Princeton University chapter of Phi Beta Kappa is giving its annual awards for excellence in undergraduate teaching to Melissa Haynes, lecturer in classics, and Wyatt Lloyd, assistant professor of computer science.
Erika Valdivieso will join the Department of Classics as a Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Princeton. She and fifteen other scholars across several disciplines will join the twelve fellows selected last year with the aim of enhancing diversity in the professoriate.
This Fall, Princeton will offer language classes in Akkadian, Latin and Ancient Greek. Here are some of the other courses from the Classics department next semester.
2019-2020 Spring
Princeton has named Nicholas Johnson, an operations research and financial engineering student from Montreal, valedictorian for the Class of 2020. Grace Sommers, a physics student from Bridgewater, New Jersey, has been named the Latin salutatorian.
Seminars, language classes and office hours are now being held over video conferencing software, with assignments and tests carried out remotely. Staff and faculty are organizing team meetings from home to discuss administrative and academic matters. Here, members of the department share their experiences of life online.
"We’re facing major moral and psychological crises right now, and a lot of the pain is not biological. That’s where I think that the ancient material is so important."