Kal. Nov. MMVI

The VCLA/UVM Annual Fall Newsletter

And on the web at: http://www.uvm.edu/~classics/VCLA

Mark Usher reporting…

NOTE: If you’re reading this via email and know someone who might be interested, please feel free to forward this annual update on the activities of the Vermont Classical Languages Association and the UVM Department of Classics.

*** Recently we received emails from members of the VCLA listserv stating that since joining they have received numerous SPAM messages.  To stop this from happening we have disabled the VCLA listserv.  To do this we have removed everyone from the list and have kept a private list here in the office that we will use to get important information out to everyone.  If you would like to be removed from that list please email rdocksta@uvm.edu with that request.  Also, if you have a message that you would like to have sent to the list please forward your request to rdocksta@uvm.edu.

It is really a shame that this has happened because it was a very useful way of communicating but when individuals decide to harvest email addresses this is usually one of their methods of SPAMMING.  So I would like to apologize to anyone who has received SPAM and this measure should resolve the issue.

****Latin Day will be Friday, April 13, 2007, and the Latin Day Planning Meeting will take place Saturday, December 9, 2006, 10 a.m.-12 noon (see below for more details)****

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The VCLA Annual Meeting took place on Friday, October 20, 2006, at Bellows Free Academy in St. Albans. It was organized this year by Cliff Timpson, President, who provided a delicious Ientaculum and organized a fine program, complete with party favors provided by local businesses, shops, and the St. Albans Chamber of Commerce. The Italian, family-style lunch was also delicious at “Chow” Bella. A hearty thank you to Cliff for his impeccable facilitation and planning of these details! As for the Program, John Franklin, a new faculty member at UVM, gave us a fascinating audio-visual introduction to ancient music (a subject in which he is expert), and Brian Walsh offered some excellent pedagogical advice (with copious examples) on how to incorporate Greek into the Latin curriculum. The impetus for this topic came from Cliff, who crafted a survey for Latin teachers to begin to take stock of their use of Greek language and culture in the classroom. If you are interested in filling out the survey and seeing the material Cliff distributed at the meeting, please contact him at ctimpson@bfasta.net. Thanks to all, but especially to Cliff, Brian and John, for helping make this year’s program such an enjoyable success!

Present at this year’s meeting (in no particular order): Cliff Timspon (BFA, St. Albans), Don Hall (BFA), Noralee Cartier (Burlington High School), Martha Dalton (longtime friend of VCLA and CANE, St. Albans), Leanne Morton (CVU), Meg Holland (Lamoille), Lydia Batten (Mount Mansfield Union HS), Chandra Hansen (Rice), Joshua Knox (Essex Jct HS), Phil Ambrose, John Franklin, Barbara and Robert Rodgers, Brian Walsh, and Mark Usher (all UVM faculty), Andrew Van Buskirk, Lauren Ajamie, Daniel Houston, Charles Blume (grad students at UVM).

New amongst the above: John Franklin, new tenure-track Assistant Professor at UVM, Joshua Knox, who is filling in for Anne Brossard this year, Chandra Hansen, the new Latin teacher at Rice, and Don Hall, Cliff’s new assistant at BFA.

Business Meeting (Cliff Timpson, President, presiding):

The following officers were elected and/or reappointed:

President and Co-Program Chair: Noralee Cartier (ncartier@bsdvt.org)

Vice President and Co-Program Chair: Meg Holland (mholland@luhs.k12.vt.us)

Treasurer: Barbara Saylor Rodgers (bsaylor@uvm.edu)

Representative to CANE: Lydia Batten (lydia.batten@cesu.k12.vt.us)

A heartfelt thanks to Leanne Morton for her many years of dedicated service as CANE representative, and a warm welcome to Lydia Batten, who will be assuming that role this year. Thanks, too, to everyone else who stood for office—Meg, Barbara, Noralee—and who will be serving VCLA in the coming years.

Financial Report: Treasurer Barbara Rodgers reported a balance of $1100.00 (round figure) in the VCLA fiscus and urged payment of dues (only $10). If you have not paid your dues for the current year, please send them to: Prof. Barbara Saylor Rodgers, The University of Vermont, Department of Classics, 481 Main Street, Burlington, Vermont 05405.

An additional reminder: the VCLA Directory of Members is available online at http://www.uvm.edu/~classics/VCLA/directory.html. Please send any changes, corrections or additions to this Directory to Robert Dockstader, 802-656-3210, or email to Robert.Dockstader@uvm.edu (NOTE: current and correct email addresses are especially important to have for the VCLA e-distribution list; please notify Robert of any changes or updates.)

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CANE News:

The 101th Annual Meeting of CANE will take place March 9-10 at University of New Hampshire. For further details about this meeting and about the CANE Summer Institute (including the call for papers) go directly to the CANE webpage at: http://www.wellesley.edu/ClassicalStudies/cane/

The CANE Student Writing Contest: The topic for 2006-07 is Metamorphosis: Mythmaking through Changed Bodies. See the August issue of the NECJ or the CANE webpage for guidelines. Note: Cash prizes of $50, $30, and $20 are awarded by the VCLA to the best three submissions from Vermont. Vermonters have fared very well in this competition. Encourage your students to enter! The deadline for submission of entries is December 15. Please send submissions to Lydia Batten, Mount Mansfield Union High School, lydia.batten@cesu.k12.vt.us).

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The 31th Annual Vermont Latin Day:

Date: Friday, April 13, 2007

Place: Patrick Gymnasium, UVM, Burlington

Theme: De Agricultura

This year’s theme celebrates a pursuit at the heart of the economies, lifestyles and values of both Vermont and ancient Italy, namely the cultivation of the land in all its many forms. While the program is still in the development stage, common readings could include passages from Cato the Elder, Vergil (the Georgics, of course, but also the Eclogues), Columella (a techincal writer on agricultural practices), Ovid, and others. Skits could focus on the many myths and historical vignettes that contain an agricultural component or flora/fauna motifs (Ceres/Demeter and Proserpina/Persephone, Triptolemus, Dionysus/Bacchus and the vine, Athena/Minerva and the olive, plant, flower, and tree metamorphoses, Cadmus sowing the dragon’s teeth, the Golden Fleece, Longus’s novel Daphnis and Chloe, the story of Romulus and Remus, the salination of Carthage in 146, etc.). Displays and projects could explore the techniques and products of Roman agriculture, villa culture, cooking, slavery, animal husbandry, markets and distribution, and the physical landscape of the ancient Mediterranean. The possibilities seem endless! More details to follow . . .

Possible theme for 2008: Musica! Apollo, Dionysus, Pan, Orpheus, the Muses, religious ritual, warfare, dinner parties, lyric poetry, dramatic performances, triumphs . . . Music played a huge part in both Greek and Roman culture and this is our chance to revel in it.

Planning Meeting for Latin Day 2007: Saturday, December 9, 2006, 10 a.m.-12 noon, at the Department of Classics, UVM, Burlington, 481 Main Street, Room 207 (Telephone 802-656-3210). Please come! Bagels, cream cheese, coffee and tea provided. (You may park behind the building.)

The Vermont Sight Translation Contest, generously sponsored by Professors Robert Rodgers and Barbara Saylor Rodgers, is open to all Vermont students of Latin from public or private schools. The Contest pays cash prizes for sight translation of Latin texts at two levels: the Junior Level, for students with one or two years of Latin, and the Senior Level, for students with three or four years of Latin. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd prizes may be awarded at each Level, of $100, $75, and $50 respectively. Teachers should let the Rodgers know by mid-January if anyone in their school is interested in taking these exams. Packets with texts and instructions will be sent out to participating schools by February 1st. Exams are to be completed and returned by the first week in March. Winners will be honored at Latin Day.

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News from the Department of Classics at UVM:

After 43 years at UVM, Phil Ambrose is now officially retired, but fortunately for all of us, he frequently stops by the department, and even did some fill-in teaching for us this semester. Phil is busy working with a translation and commentary of Vergil's Georgics by Bernardino Daniello, 1545, and attended a conference in Oxford this Fall on the Pronomos Vase (the depictions on which provide important evidence for the performances of satyr plays). Before passing the baton last year, Phil won the honorific Kidder Outstanding Faculty Award, named after a beloved UVM Dean and Professor of Classics, George Kidder, who was himself—appropriately—a Classicist.

It took two people to replace Phil’s broad interests and expertise, and we are very pleased to welcome two new faculty members, Angeline Chiu and John Franklin. Angeline Chiu earned her M.A. in Greek and Latin right here at UVM in 2000 (B.A. from Baylor in English and History), and has just completed a dissertation at Princeton on female figures and generic conventions in Ovid’s Fasti, which she will defend this December. Angeline has presented various papers and published on Latin Augustan poets, Roman Comedy, and Greek Tragedy, and she is particularly interested in the classical tradition and also in the relationship of Latin literature to Roman history, monuments, and topography. Her dissertation is appropriately titled Calendar Girls: Women, Genre, and Roman Identity in Ovid's Fasti. John Franklin comes to us from the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington D.C., by way of series of other prestigious grants and fellowships. John first studied Classics at the University of Washington and subsequently earned his PhD from University College London in 2002. (Though he is a New England native.) John is working on putting his considerable expertise in ancient Near Eastern and Greek poetry and music into book form with the title The Middle Muse: Mesopotamian Echoes in Archaic Greek Music (under contract with Oxford University Press). John also holds a degree in composition from the New England Conservatory of Music and part of his research programme involves “realizations” or “recompositions” of ancient Greek music. In fact, he has just released a CD of such called The Cyprosyrian Girl: Hits of the Ancient Hellenes. (For more information, visit his website at www.kingmixers.com)

In other faculty news, Brian Walsh will be reappointed for two more years as Lecturer (something we are all very, very happy about). In spite of a Herculean (Sisyphean?!) teaching load, Brian has made considerable progress on his innovative new Latin textbook, Universitas Latina, has transcribed and identified the source of a 10th century Greek MS that came into his possession, and published two reviews in Vergilius. In addition to his Classics duties, Robert Rodgers has been appointed Director of the Center for Research on Vermont, and continues his painstaking work on his commissioned edition of Columella for the Oxford Classical Texts series, which is slated to appear in 2009 or 2010. He recently gave a paper on Legal Issues Relating to Management of Rome's Aqueducts at "An Integrated View of Managing Water Resources: Traditional Practices and New Perspectives" conference Université Laval in Quebec City. Barbara Rodgers has a student commentary on the Pro Roscio forthcoming from Bryn Mawr this year. In January she co-organized a panel and delivered a paper at the APA meeting on the text of Symmachus’ orations, and will begin work on the Byzantine hymnist, Romanos, while on sabbatical next year. (Both Barbara and Robert will be on sabbatical together.) Jacques Bailly continues to work on the UVM Letters web site (accessible from www.uvm.edu/~jbailly), and is currently teaching Greco-Roman Political Theory, Latin Prose Composition, and a first-year seminar on Greek Tragedy. He also continues his high profile work as chief pronouncer for the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and has been featured recently (as himself!) in the documentary Spellbound and the feature film Akeelah and the Bee. Mark Usher, the newly minted Chair of the Department, published an article on the Skeptic philosopher Carneades in the journal Oral Tradition and translations of several Greek lyric poems in two recent issues of NECJ. He has another article coming out early next year in Classical Philology on Longinus’ quotations from Homer and the biblical book of Genesis. He is most excited, however, about the sequel to his children’s picture book debut. (That was called Wise Guy: The Life and Philosophy of Socrates, with illustrations by William Bramhall). The new project is DiOGENES, a serio-comical account of the life of Diogenes the Cynic in which the philosopher is cast literally as a dog (“Cynic,” of course, meaning “dog-like” in Greek). The illustrations are being done by Michael Chesworth and the book will be appearing late next year with Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

News from and about UVM Students

We have four grad students this year. Andrew Van Buskirk, who received his BA in Literary Studies from Middlebury College, will be finishing up this year and is interested in teaching high school Latin. (Notate bene omnes!) Daniel Houston, who earned his B.A. here in Classics last year, is newly admitted into our Masters program. Dan researched and wrote an interesting history of the Classics Department at UVM, which will be appearing soon on our website. He also runs a literary “salon” called the University Institute, where participants read Great Books (like, recently, Milton’s Paradise Lost). Charles Blume comes to us from UPenn’s fine post-bacc program. He is a lawyer by training but is fascinated with the agrarian cultures, economies, and worldview of ancient Greece, and will probably pursue that topic in his thesis. Lauren Ajamie, a native of St. Johnsbury, VT, earned her B.A. in Classics at Bard College. She is interested in the visual culture of antiquity, in particular the depiction of hermaphrodites in Roman sculpture.

As for a couple of notable undergraduates, Charles (Chase) Collins, of Chester, Vermont, and Rachel Thomas (John Dewey Honors Student and President of the Goodrich Classical Club), both undergraduate seniors, are writing Honors theses this year—Chase on the Theban military unit known as the “Sacred Band,” and Rachel on gender and grief in the Consolationes of Seneca.

NOTE: The Department will be offering two summer online courses this year:

Latin 001 Elementary. Students read whole passages in Latin by the end of the first semester. Your English vocabulary and grammar should improve markedly with this course, which is the first half of a two-part sequence. The sequence covers the basics of Latin  vocabulary, grammar, and reading. Students who continue will be able to read most Latin authors by the end of the second semester.

Dr. Brian T. Walsh. 4 credits.
Tentative Dates: May21st – June 22nd

Latin 002 Elementary Latin. In Latin 002 students will master the basics of Latin grammar, build their vocabulary (English and Latin), and be able to read original Latin texts by the end of the semester. Dr. Brian T. Walsh. 4 credits.
Tentative Dates: June 25^th – July 27th

Here follows a list of the undergraduate students enrolled in courses in Greek and Latin at UVM. Some of them were yours, and for them we thank you:

Latin 1A: Elementary Latin (Brian Walsh)

Calla Bischoff

Kathryn Boolukos

Michael Ciarla

Keith Coakley

Alexandra Cronin

Rachael Downey

Jessica Hearn

Tanner Lake

Leo Marley

Cailin McLoughlin

Sara Meigs

Alana Oudekerk

Darrell Purviance

Andrew Richard

Laura Sadlier

Thomas Shea

Latin 1B: Elementary Latin (Angeline Chiu)

Lee Bayner

Erna Becirovic

Gregg Bonazinga

Michelle Demers

Kathryn Doyle

Jessica Fisher

Henry Hobbs

Benjamin Krisher

Danyelle Leaderman

Nicolas LeClair

Laura MacKinnon

Andrew Murphy

Chinh Ngo

Jennifer Sanders

Dana Shimko

Jessica Spiltoir

Brian Wendt

Keith Williams

James Wyckoff

Latin 3: Self-Paced Latin (Brian Walsh)

Thomas Abdelnour

Megan Alderfer

Alexander Castleton

Steven Fenton

Paul Flannery

Julia Foster

Daniel Kirk

Michael Kirk

Emma Kopecky

Nicholas Kovacs

Leah Porter

Alysa Procida

Miles Sturm

David Tyburski

Holly Webster

Latin 51: Intermediate Latin (Brian Walsh)

Christopher Allard

Christine Brauch

Vanessa Brigham

Eric Carlson

Zoe Chapman

Sarah Doubleday

Steven Fenton

Hal Friday

Daniel Gillette

Elizabeth Hedding

Carly Holgerson

Rachel Kingsley

Rebecca LaFay

Alex Link

Daniel Maroti

Tyler Mayo

Christopher Miller

Courtney Millette

Christopher Nelson

Alana Smith

Megan Wheaton

Latin 101: Survey Latin Literature (Barbara Saylor Rodgers)

Kristin Cichon

Katie Cohen

Willia Harrigan-Anderson

Jordan Lewis

Kellie Saunders

Amanda Scarfo

Bronwyn Stippa

Sarah Wiebe

Latin 111: Latin Prose Style (Jacques Bailly)

Kaleigh Brook

Alice Chanthasensak

Rosemary Grundhauser

Katherine Rupp

Bronwyn Stippa

Alison White

Latin 271: Silver Latin (Angeline Chiu)

Lauren Ajamie

Charles Blume

Rene Bouchard IV

Daniel Houston

Heather McLaughlin

Katherine Rupp

Greek 1: Elementary Greek (John Franklin)

Sarah Doubleday

Sarah Greenlee

Tyler Mayo

Elizabeth O'Rielly

Cailin Riggs

Katherine Rupp

Kellie Saunders

Caroline Schaefer

Landon Schettini

Rachel Thomas

Samantha Weinberg

Greek 51: Intermediate Greek (Mark Usher)

Benjamin Beck

Eric Byrnes

Kate Johannesen

Nicholas Light

Sarah Wiebe

Greek 95: Introductory Special Topics (Mark Usher)

Kaleigh Brook

Greek 202: Greek Comedy (John Franklin)

Lauren Ajamie

Charles Blume

Charles Collins

Daniel Houston