News - Archive

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."

Princeton University has launched a new podcast series to share the personal stories and expertise of students, faculty, staff and alumni during the COVID-19 pandemic. The second episode comes from a Classics major, who talks about her experiences of online learning and shares lessons from a 2000-year old letter about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

Princeton University is actively monitoring the situation around coronavirus (Covid-19). The latest University guidance for students, faculty and staff is available on the University’s Emergency Management website.

The department's annual newsletter is now available online and paper copies have been mailed. Inside you can find updates from faculty and students, an article by alumnus Rosa Andújar, Ph.D. ’11, and the story of last summer's Dolia/Pithoi in the Mediterranean study by Professor Caroline Cheung.

Kirsten Traudt, a senior studying Classics at Princeton, has been awarded the Keasbey Scholarship to study in the UK. Traudt, who is from Morristown, New Jersey, will pursue an M.Phil. in Greek and Latin Languages and Literatures at the University of Oxford.

Roger Bagnall, distinguished papyrologist and Emeritus Professor of History at NYU, delivered a lucid and thought-provoking Prentice Lecture in Princeton on Thursday, November 21st, entitled 'Roman Names and Roman Citizenship in Egypt.’

On the evening of Tuesday, October 24th, Ishion Hutchinson, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry and Associate Professor at Cornell University, delivered the second in the recently inaugurated series of Fagles Lectures for Classics in the Contemporary Arts, entitled “The Classics Can Console?”

With classes beginning this week, a new crop of Junior classics majors arrives on campus ready to embark on the next phase of studies. We are pleased to introducing the promising cohort of Classical scholars of the class of 2021 – or rather, to allow them to introduce themselves.

Rising senior Grace Sommers was recognized with the Class of 1939 Princeton Scholar Award on Sunday September 8th, at Opening Exercises.

Sommers is a physics major from Bridgewater, NJ, who is pursing a certificate in Ancient Roman language and culture.

Hutchinson was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, and is the author of two poetry collections, Far District and House of Lords and Commons. He is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Writers Award, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award and the Larry Levis Prize from the Academy of American Poets, among others. He teaches in the graduate writing program at Cornell University and is a contributing editor to two literary journals.

As the new academic term threatens arrival, many of our undergraduate and graduate students will be returning to campus refreshed and enlightened by their experiences travelling abroad this summer.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

The AAACC is a professional organization that fosters the interests of students and scholars of classical antiquity who identify as Asian and Asian American by promoting scholarship that explores issues of classical reception in Asian and Asian American culture, and striving to bring together the vibrant community of Asian and Asian American classicists. Founding member Caroline Cheung serves as a faculty liaison.

Ancient Rome met 21st-century game show at the second annual Princeton Certamen on March 2, organized for middle and high school students by undergraduates interested in classics. The word certamen means “contest” in Latin — an appropriate name for this quiz bowl focusing on the language, literature, culture and history of Ancient Rome. About 200 students from 13 schools traveled to Princeton’s campus to compete, some coming from as far away as Wisconsin.

Professor Michael Flower will deliver the third lecture in the Old Dominion Public Lecture Series on Wednesday, March 13th, at 4:30 pm, in 010 East Pyne.

The department’s annual newsletter is now available online and paper copies have been mailed. Inside you can find updates from faculty and students, an article by alumnus Kevin Moch ’10, and stories of last summer’s “Plato’s Republic” study program in Paris.

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…

Interested in speaking Latin or ancient Greek? Speaking is an excellent way to solidify your grasp of grammar and vocabulary and to learn how to understand Latin and Greek as what they are — languages and not puzzles. It's also great fun! The Latin table meets at 6:30pm on Mondays in Whitman dining hall, and the Greek table meets at 6:30pm on Thursdays. All are welcome. If you have any questions, please contact Kevin Duraiswamy ’19.

The sculptor Allyson Vieira spoke in last year's Postclassicisms series, “The Place of Greece,” about her project interviewing marble workers working on the decades-long restoration of the Parthenon, and also took part in the panel, “The Case of Concrete.” Her book, On the Rock: The Acropolis Interviews, is being released by Soberscove Press. There will be a book launch on Feb. 27^th at 7pm, at McNally-Jackson in Brooklyn, where she will be in conversation with Jarrett Earnest and Brooke Holmes.

Emily Wilson, Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, visited Princeton’s campus on the evening of Monday, February 4^th, to deliver a lecture on her experiences producing a translation of the Odyssey (Norton, 2017).

At the Jan. 19 meeting of the board of trustees of Princeton University, President Eisgruber presented each attendee with a copy of Professor Barbara Graziosi's Homer (OUP 2016), signed by the author. The president has made a tradition of presenting the trustees with a recent book by a faulty member at each board meeting and selected Professor Graziosi's concise introduction to Homeric poetry for this meeting.

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

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.