Activities and Events
2017-18

Academic Festival
On May 2nd, from 1200-250pm, the Department hosted two successive sessions, one with individual papers reflecting research conducted in fall or spring semester, the other two panels reflecting on work done the spring semester.
The first session, labelled āWomen, Monsters, and The End of Days,ā included papers from courses on ancient sex and gender, apocalyptic literature, and Ovidās poetry: Marley Amico ā10, āItās all Greek to Me: An Examination of the porne/hetaira Binaryā; Kat Berg ā18, āLooking Towards the End Times: Eschatological Imagery in Hieronymus Boschās Painting and John of Patmosā Revelationā; Sophie Heath ā18, āDealing with Monstrosity: Receptions of Ovidās Metamorphosesā; and Sarah Smith ā20, āSpartan and Athenian Women.ā
The second session, titled āDesigning Students: Letting the Students Take Over,ā included two panels, one on the design of an original Greek tragedy, and the other on the crafting of an IdeaLab, role-playing History course. The first, āOpening Pandoraās Box: Ancient Women, Modern Tragedy,ā presented by Maisie Bernstein ā21, Shelby Fairchild ā21, Hannah Gross ā21 and Emily Schwartz ā20, addressed the spring production of Pandora, staged by students in Prof. Dan Curleyās Greek Tragedy course. The second panel, āPothos: Alexander the Great and āWorldā Conquest,ā analyzed by Nora Barry ā19, Zoe Ousouljoglou, ā20, and Erika Petersen, ā19, focused on Prof. Michael Arnushās semester-long role-playing course on Alexander.
Parilia
Parilia, the annual undergraduate Classics conference, on Friday, April 20th, was hosted by Union College, which welcomed students and faculty from Hamilton College and 91°µĶų. The following students presented their work as either papers or posters:
Papers: Ben Cail ā18, āCiceronianus es, non Christianus: Ciceronian Invective in the Writing of St. Jerome ā and Kelly Platt ā18, āDuality of Woman: Ancient Greek Conceptions of the Feminineā
Posters: Phoebe Burton ā18, āThe Wandering Womb,ā Zoe Ousouljoglou ā20, āIrregular Bowel Diseases in Antiquity,ā and Erika Petersen ā19 and Nora Barry ā19, āPothos: Alexander the Great and āWorldā Conquest: A Student-designed Role-playing Courseā
David Porter Classical World Lecture
The annual David H. Porter Classical World Lecture, one of the year's most anticipated events, was delivered by Andrea Eis, Professor and Director of Cinema Studies, Oakland University (Rochester, MN): screening and discussion of her film, Penelopeās Odyssey. Tuesday, February 20th, 600pm, Davis Auditorium.
Shot on location in Greece, this provocative work projects a journey of homecoming (nostos) onto Penelope, the wife of the well-traveled Homeric hero, Odysseus. Quotes from Homer's Odyssey and authorial commentary anchor segments that fluctuate between cinematic subjectivity and invasive camerawork. Penelopeās "home" is both a tangible, comforting habitat and an internalized dwelling of estrangement.
The David H. Porter Classical World Lecture honors David Porter for his contributions to the College as former president, to the Classics Department as emeritus professor and inaugural holder of the Tisch Family Distinguished Professorship, and to the humanities at large. The event is a highlight of the spring term and part of the Department's gateway course, CC 200: The Classical World. The lecture was co-sponsored by the Film & Media Studies and Gender Studies programs.
Homerathon 2018
The Classical World students hosted the annual Homerathon! on February 8th, 600pm, in Murray-Aikins Dining Hall. A wonderful turnout, superb readings, and a lovely dinner filled out the evening for a sizeable and enthusiastic audience.
Homerathon! (a marathon reading of the Greek poet, Homer) is a time for students, faculty, staff, and other friends to gather in celebration of our earliest Western poet. Coupled with our Classical World course (CC 200), the Homerathon! reminds us that the ancient art of storytelling is alive and well.
Classics Department Honor Society Induction
The Department hosted the annual Dinner and Induction into the Iota Chapter of ĪΣΦ (Eta Sigma Phi), the national Classics Honor Society, Murray-Aikins Dining Hall, Wednesday, November 29th, 600pm. This yearās inductees: Kat Berg ā18, Ben Cail ā18, Emma Griffin ā19, Emily Gunter ā19, hosted by Sophie Heath ā18 and Kelly Platt ā18.
Drunken Poets and Fallen Philosophers
On Wednesday, Oct. 18, 530pm, in the Somers Room in the Tang, we welcomed Bret Mulligan, Associate Professor and Chair of Classics at Haverford College, to deliver a lecture. Titled "Drunken Poets and Fallen Philosophers: Gout and Pathographic Identity in Antiquity," Prof. Mulligan's addressed disease as a metaphor. Here's how he described his talk:
āDisease has often been understood as a manifestation of more than simply bodily infirmity. In the most stigmatizing circumstances, the presence of disease can become an external marker of deficient character or even just retribution for the moral failure of the afflicted." Prof. Mulligan explored what it means when a literary or historical figure in antiquity is characterized as suffering from gout. The attribution of gout carried with it a moralizing charge that enmeshed the subject in familiar categories of excessive consumption and loose moral character.
Prof. Mulligan works on late antiquity, which he describes as āthe twilight of classical culture.ā His publications focus on Roman poets and biographers of the later Roman Empire, and the lecture was part of a larger project on gout as a metaphor of disease.