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Senior Classics Majors Presentations

2016 Senior Presentations 25On December 8th 2016 seniors in Trinity’s department of Classics presented the fruits of their research that they conducted in Dr. Gary Reger’s senior seminar.
1. Caroline Mann on the depiction of leaders in antiquity and at the present moment.
2. Grace Gill on racism in antiquity.
3.  Olivia Gibson on Italian dictator Mussolini’s use of the ancient Roman practice of the triumphal procession.
4. Joy Kim on elite Roman women in the public sphere.
5. Matthew Reichelt on the interactions between native cultures in Babylon and Uruk and Greek culture in the Hellenistic period.
6. Maura Griffith on the use of Latin in the nomenclature of a species of algae in the early nineteenth century.

Great job, everyone!

Trinity College Classics at ClassConn!

2017 Class Conn 15On Saturday April 8th 2017 the Classical Association of Connecticut (http://classconn.org/) held a saeclum event at the Wadsworth Atheneum museum in downtown Hartford. To celebrate 110 years as an organization in the state, ClassConn convened at the museum for two presentations by Trinity faculty, followed by a perusal of the museum, and a reception. ClassConn counts as its members high school Classics teachers as well as university professors.

The first presentation was by Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Trinity, Dr. Lauren Caldwell. Dr. Caldwell employed her expertise in ancient Roman domestic life to elucidate four sections of painting that come from what she conjectured was the same villa in Italy. The scenes included one of nature scenes (ducks swimming and a fish swimming) and one of cupids. Dr. Caldwell speculated about the (unknown) placement of these paintings in the house, their audiences, and significance.

Hydria Greece, Athens, c. 530–500 B.C.E. Psiax Clay, wheelmade, black-figure painted; 18 1/2 x 15 1/2 in. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 1961.8The second presentation was by Assistant Professor of Classics at Trinity, Dr. Vince Tomasso. Hespoke about the reception of the figure Heracles, or Hercules as he’s most well-known in 2017 Class Conn 16modern cultures. Linking a fifth-century BC Greek vase, a fourth-century BC Etruscan figurine, and a late nineteenth century painting of Hercules wrestling the god Death, Dr. Tomasso explained how Hercules’ meanings transformed in the different cultures that appropriated his image.

 

 

Trinity’s Classics Club made quite a showing as well and impressed other ClassConn attendees.

2017 Class Conn 7Dr. Janna Israel, the Adult and Academic Programs Manager at the Wadsworth, and Geraldine Kuenkler, longtime member of ClassConn, coordinated the tour, which is part of a year-long series of events celebrating the organization’s anniversary. For more information about the Classical Association of Connecticut, including membership, grants, and upcoming events, check out http://classconn.org. For images of Greek and Roman antiquities in the Wadsworth’s permanent collection, see https://thewadsworth.org/collection/.

Dr. Karen Foster on Monkeys in Aegean Art and Imagination

2017 Foster Lecture 1

On Thursday March 27th at 5PM in the Rittenberg Lounge of Mather Hall, Dr. Karen Foster  spoke to us about monkeys in Aegean art and imagination: “Karen Pollinger Foster (Ph.D., Yale University) specializes in the art and archaeology of the Bronze Age Aegean, with particular interests in interconnections with Egypt and Mesopotamia and studies of walling painting programs from Thera. Her most recent book, Civilizations of Iraq (2009), co-authored with Benjamin R. Foster, received the 2010 Felicia A. Holton Book Award from the American Archaeological Institute of America. She has recently completed a trilogy dealing with volcanic imagery in art and literature, beginning with the Thera eruption and concluding with the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii. Her current major research project involves the final preparation of Strange and Wonderful: Exotic Flora and Fauna in Image and Imagination, a comprehensive study of this material from ancient to modern times.”

2017 Foster Lecture 2

Talk by Dr. Bovet-Fischer on Hellenistic and Roman Egypt

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On April 23rd 2017 at the Common Hour in Rittenberg Lounge Dr. Christelle Fischer-Bovet spoke to us about “Identifying People in Hellenistic and Early Roman Egypt – A Comparative Perspective.”
“Hellenistic rulers and the Roman government were already exposed to the issue of identifying people for juridical and fiscal purposes. The systems that were used in Egypt at both periods have been variously interpreted and often contrasted. By looking at legal and fiscal documents preserved on papyri, this paper explores how official categories of persons allowed both states to single out groups that were particularly valuable to the state formation process and whose loyalty was essential. It suggests that both systems are more similar than usually thought and that the Roman system in Egypt can be understood as a systematization of developments already occurring in the last century of Ptolemaic rule. However, in contrast to the early period Ptolemaic, this systematization did not create new elites, but rather maintained the privileges of most of the same families.”

Wonder Woman at Trinity College

Vince

Vincent Tomasso

moore-lecture-2016-page-0On Thursday, November 3, 2016, students and faculty packed Rittenberg Lounge in the Trinity College Mather Student Center to hear a lectured by Vincent Tomasso, Assistant Professor of Classics. Tomasso’s talk, “Greek for Amazons. Wonder Woman’s Words Through the Ages,” discussed the curious use of Greek letters and words in the film and original comic book versions of the Wonder Woman story. Tomasso noted that Greek was required for admission to Trinity in the earlier twentieth century, and the connections between classical mythology and the creator of the original Wonder Woman character.

You can view a videotape of the whole lecture here.

Tomasso’s talk was supported by the Classics Department’s Moore Fund, a small endowed fund devoted to promoting the study of classical Greek at Trinity. Students excited about learning Greek can take Greek 101 in the coming spring 2017 semester.

Conference in Honor of Elizabeth R. Gebhard

On Friday and Saturday, October 21 and 22, 2016, Trinity College hosted a conference in honor of Elizabeth R. (“Betsy”) Gebhard. Scholars convened from all over the world to give papers on topics dear to Betsy’s heart, from theaters at ancient Stobi in Macedonia to Cybele and Attis at Corinth; a list of participants and their topics follows. The conference was organized by Trinity’s own Martha Risser, who has known and worked with Betsy for over thirty years, and Virginia Anderson-Stojanovic, another of Betsy’s long-time collaborators and friends.

Conference Participants

Silvana Blazevska, “Theaterical Entertainments: Evidence on Terracotta Oil-Lamps and Figurines from Stobi”

Matthew Dickie, “The Mysteries of Palaemon in Late Antiquity”

Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, “Some Athletic Imaginary at the End of Antiquity”

Jonathan Hall, “Telesilla and her Afterlife”

Goce Pavlovski, “The First Phase of the Cavea of the Roman Theatre at Stobi”

Kathleen Warner Slane, “Gifts for Demeter”

James Wiseman, “Cybele, Attis, and Regilla at Corinth”

Virginia, Betsy, and Martha:Martha at Betsy Conference

Bonnie Honig -- Brown UniversityBonnie Honig, Professor of Modern Culture and Media and Political Science at Brown University and author of Antigone, Interrupted (2013), a well-received study of the way Sophokles’ play has been interpreted and used in the 2500 years since its first performance, reflects on the interconnections between the Antigone and the Black Lives Matter movement in a moving and timely post on her blog, The Contemporary Condition. Her reflections show once again how relevant the Greek and Roman classics remain as touchstones for thinking about the human condition, even in this day of cell phone cameras and Facebook.