News
Congratulations to PhD candidates Belisi Gillespie (Classical Archaeology) and Claire Healy (Classics), who have been named winners of 2024 Outstanding Graduate Instructor Awards! This is a campus-wide award program that recognizes outstanding graduate student teaching at Berkeley.
Congratulations to Susanna Faas-Bush, PhD candidate in Classical Archaeology, who is the 2024 recipient of the Olivia James Traveling Fellowship of the Archaeological Institute of America. The award will support research in Italy, France, and the US on her project “The Real Boscoreale Treasure: a socio-economic analysis of the Villa Pisanella and its contents.”
We are excited to report that Marissa Henry (PhD Classics, 2022) has accepted a three-year position as a visiting assistant professor of Classics at Williams College and that Rebekah McKay (PhD in Classical Archaeology expected May 2024) has accepted a tenure-track position as assistant professor in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Evansville. Congratulations to Marissa and Rebekah!
The Library has posted a news item highlighting the important and fascinating work going on at the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri; the report features perspectives from CTP director and DAGRS faculty member Todd Hickey, AHMA doctoral student Leah Packard-Grams, and alumnus Will Sieving (BA Ancient Greek and Roman Studies ‘22).
The entry of Berkeley alumnus Shao-Qian Mah (BS ‘22 EECS, BS ‘22 Business Administration) was one of three winners of runner-up prizes in the 2023 Vesuvius Challenge. Congratulations to Shao-Qian, who took AGRS Professor Ted Peña’s course on the Roman economy during his time at Berkeley.
For more on this exciting project to recover the contents of hundreds of carbonized books recovered from the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, see the project page!
The Department reports with sorrow that Robert Knapp, Emeritus Professor of Classics and of Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology, passed away on Sunday, 17 September 2023. Please see our appreciation here. More information will be posted here in the days to come.
The Department has been authorized to search for a scholar of Greek literature at the level of assistant or associate professor. For full details and to apply, please follow this link.
The faculty of the Department is delighted to welcome in Fall 2023 its new member, Prof. Grace Erny. An expert in the archaeology of Greece and the Mediterranean world in the first millennium BCE, Erny received her PhD from the Department of Classics at Stanford with a dissertation entitled “Landscapes of Inequality: Social Differentiation in Geometric through Classical Crete.” Erny arrives in Berkeley after a postdoctoral year in Athens; this fall, she will be teaching AGRS 17A: "Introduction to the Archaeology of the Ancient Greek World."
Congratulations to Erin Lam (PhD Classics '22) on the award of a University of California President's and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship. Erin will hold the fellowship in the Department of Classics at UC Santa Barbara, researching a project on “Queer Futurities in Ovid’s Heroides.”
The department is glad to share the news that Will Sieving, BA Classical Languages 2022, will be pursuing a postbaccalaureate course of study at Wolfson College, Oxford, as the 2023-24 holder of the Lionel Pearson Fellowship of the Society for Classical Studies. Congratulations, Will!
For more on the Lionel Pearson Fellowship, please follow this link.
Congratulations to Emily Mullin, who has been awarded a Chandler-Ott Fellowship by Wellesley College! The fellowship will support Emily’s dissertation research on speech representation in Latin poetry of the Augustan period.
The Department is delighted to report that Classics PhD student Dylan Kenny has accepted a tenure-track position in ancient Greek language and literature in the Department of Classics at the University of Cincinnati, to begin in Fall 2023. Congratulations, Dylan!
The Department reports with grief that Andy Stewart, Petris Professor Emeritus of History of Art, Ancient Greek and Roman Studies, and Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology, passed away in the early hours of the morning of Friday, 13 January 2023. Please see our celebration of Andy's life and accomplishments here.
Congratulations to Prof. Kim Shelton, who has been elected to the Governing Board of the Archaeological Institute of America as Vice President for Research and Academic Affairs!
The faculty of the Department of Ancient Greek and Roman Studies have endorsed this statement:
The Department recognizes the vital contributions of its graduate student instructors to its mission and to the mission of the university. Its faculty have long been acutely concerned about the difficulty of getting by as a graduate student in expensive California. It is the faculty’s fervent hope that the university and the UAW will be able to reach a fair agreement through negotiation.
The Department affirms without question the right of UAW members and others to engage in lawful strike activity, which includes picketing and the withholding of labor. For their participation or non-participation in lawful strike activity the Department will not engage in retaliation against students, whether in their capacity as instructors present and future or in their capacity as graduate students enrolled in its PhD programs. The Department will approach with concern and compassion the circumstances of undergraduate students whose courses are affected by the strike, while fully recognizing and crediting the right of GSIs to withhold their labor while on strike.
Kristina Chew, Lecturer in AGRS, has published a powerful two-part essay on her life in Classics, "Loving the Impossible: Greek, Latin and Autism," on the blog of the Society for Classical Studies. You can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
The department of Ancient Greek and Roman Studies will be hosting an information session during the campus Graduate Diversity Admissions Fair, which aims to demystify the process of admissions especially for first-generation students and those from underrepresented groups. Join us by Zoom on October 17, 2-3pm (see site for instructions on how to preregister), to hear from faculty and current students and to get your questions answered. Contact Kathleen McCarthy (kmccarth@berkeley.edu) or Duncan MacRae (duncanmacrae@berkeley.edu) if you have any questions.
Kim Shelton's book, Well Built Mycenae, Fascicule 14: Tsountas House Area, was published in late spring 2022. This book at long last publishes results of 19th- and mid-20th-century excavations in the Cult Center of Late Bronze Age Mycenae.
Tony Long's latest book, Plotinus, Ennead II.4 On Matter, has just been published by Parmenides Publishing. His recent books on Seneca and Epictetus have also just come out in Korean, Japanese, and Arabic translations. Congratulations, Tony!
Bloomsbury Academic is producing a podcast about the volume Queer Euripides, co-edited by DAGRS faculty member Mario Telò. Listen to the first episode here.
Congratulations to DAGRS faculty Ellen Oliensis and Kim Shelton, recipients of Loeb Classical Library Foundation fellowships to support research leave in 2022-23, and Duncan MacRae, selected for a Townsend Center Fellowship to be held in 2022-23!
The department has cheerful news to report about DAGRS PhD students completing their degrees in 2021-22. Joshua Benjamins will be taking up a Visiting Assistant Professorship at Hillsdale College. Marissa Henry will be Visiting Assistant Professor at Tulane beginning in Fall 2022. Esther Ramer is already Accommodations Coordinator in our campus’ Housing Assignments office. Finally, Andrew Wein will be going to Pittsburgh for a position as Visiting Assistant Professor at Pitt. Congratulations to Joshua, Marissa, Esther, and Andrew!
We are delighted to announce that graduate alums Athena Kirk (Cornell), Virginia Lewis (Florida State), and Naomi Weiss (Harvard) have recently earned tenure at their respective institutions. Congratulations to all three!
On June 3-4 DAGRS will host an in-person conference organized by Leslie Kurke (Berkeley) and Boris Maslov (Oslo) and supported by the Peder Sather Center, entitled "Telling Stories in Ancient Greece," featuring lectures by Berkeley faculty and distinguished visitors. For full details, see the "Events" listing.
The Department is delighted to announce that Grace Erny will be joining the faculty of Ancient Greek & Roman Studies. An expert in the archaeology of Greece and the Mediterranean world in the first millennium BCE, Erny will receive her PhD this spring from the Department of Classics at Stanford with a dissertation entitled “Landscapes of Inequality: Social Differentiation in Geometric through Classical Crete.” Erny will arrive to begin teaching in Berkeley in Fall 2023 after a postdoctoral year in Athens.
The Department has received the sad news of the passing of Professor of Classics Emeritus W. S. “Bill” Anderson (16 September 1927-22 March 2022). Please see our appreciation here.
SYNDICATE SYMPOSIUM on Mario Telò, Archive Feelings: A Theory of Greek Tragedy: The symposium ran from Thursday, March 10 to April 13, with one essay and its corresponding response published per week. The panelists were Richard Armstrong, Sean Gurd, Daniel Orrells, Karen Bassi, Paul Kottman, and Helen Morales. The essays, responses, and further posts can be read here.
Congratulations to Lindsey Mazurek, assistant professor of Classical Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington and 2008 UCB BA in Classical Languages, on the publication of her first book, Isis in a Global Empire: Greek Identity through Egyptian Religion in Roman Greece (Cambridge University Press 2022).
Congratulations to AGRS student Carolyn Engargiola, who is co-author of an edition of the Passion of Perpetua that has been awarded the 2022 Ladislaus J. Bolchazy Pedagogical Book Award from the Classical Association of the Middle West and South.
Congratulations to Andy Stewart, the 2023 recipient of the Archaeological Institute of America’s Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement, the highest honor awarded by the Institute. Please see the announcement on the AIA’s website.
The department is sad to report the death of Federica Micucci, a postdoctoral scholar at The Bancroft Library’s Center for the Tebtunis Papyri. Federica brought exceptional training to this work from the Università Statale in Milan (BA 2011, MA 2014) and University College London (PhD 2019) but also possessed a preternatural gift for deciphering difficult ancient texts. Her colleagues at CTP will sorely miss her enthusiasm and her generous and collaborative spirit.
In case you missed it, the panel discussion of Paul Allen Miller's new book, Foucault's Seminars on Antiquity, can now be watched here.
Congratulations to Mark McClay (PhD 2018), who has joined the faculty at Hillsdale College as Assistant Professor of Classics. His first book, The Bacchic Gold Tablets and Greek Society: Memory and Performance, is forthcoming at Cambridge University Press.
Nicholas C. Petris Professor of Greek Studies & Director of the Aleshire Center for the Study of Greek Epigraphy, Dr. Nikolaos Papazarkadas, introduced American School of Classical Studies at Athens members to the epigraphy of ancient Boeotia at the Archaeological Museum of Thebes last Thursday, guiding members through some of the morphological and temporal highlights of these monumental dedications.
Congratulations to Ellen Oliensis, whose 2019 book Loving Writing/Ovid's Amores has been awarded one of this year's three C.J. Goodwin Awards of Merit by the Society for Classical Studies. Please follow the link to read the Goodwin Committee's citation.
The Department has received with grief the news of the passing of professor emeritus Ron Stroud on Thursday, 7 October. Please read our tribute here.
Congratulations to Nelly Oliensis, who is delivering the 2021 J.P. Sullivan Memorial Lecture in Classics at UC Santa Barbara on October 8. Her lecture is entitled "What's Past is Prologue: Plautus' Menaechmi."
Graduate student Sophie Cushman has just arrived in Athens, where she will be attending the American School of Classical Studies with the support of the Emily Townsend Vermeule fellowship.
We are delighted to announce the publication of Jim Porter's latest book, Homer: The Very Idea.
The Department of Ancient Greek and Roman Studies (formerly Classics) at the University of California, Berkeley seeks to appoint an Assistant Professor (tenure track) or Associate Professor (tenured) in Ancient Greek Studies.
The Department seeks a specialist in Greek art/archaeology and/or literature, from the beginnings to the 3rd century CE, whose expertise complements the range of subjects and approaches covered by current faculty. Appropriate training and competence in ancient Greek and Latin is a further desideratum.
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regards to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, or protected veteran status.
Please follow this link for the full position description and application process:
https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF03076
The Department has received the sad news that Professor Emeritus Stephen Miller has passed. The Nemea Center for Classical Archaeology has posted an appreciation of Steve’s contributions and achievements.
Congratulations to David Youd, PhD student in Classics, for the publication of a new article, "Getting Bronze in the Sun: Making Sense of the Remains of Plautus’ Vidularia" in the July issue of the journal Classical Philology. Through clever textual and historical detective work, David brings to light a long-lost joke from Republican Rome; check out the article here.
For our series honoring 150 Women at Berkeley, Emily Mullin, a graduate student in our department, had a wide-ranging conversation with two Berkeley alumnae, Sarah Olsen (PhD 2016) and Kate Gilhuly (PhD 1999). Read excerpts from their conversation here.
We are delighted to announce the publication of a new book by Athena Kirk (PhD Classics 2011); read more here.
Congratulations to Joshua Benjamins, who has won a Townsend Dissertation Fellowship to support his work on "Augustine's Rome: Redrawing Roman History and Roman Time after 410 A.D.," and to Dylan Kenny, who has been awarded the Frank E. Ratliff Fellowship to support his work on “The Fruit of Wisdom: Pindar’s Poetry in its Intellectual-Historical Context."
If you missed the recent premiere of Talos Dreams by the Greek Chamber Music Project, you can experience it here, along with the post-performance discussion with Mario Telò (and a remarkable demonstration of the resources of the "ghostplate" by the composer).
Congratulations to Sasha-Mae Eccleston (Berkeley Classics PhD 2014; John Rowe Workman Assistant Professor, Department of Classics, Brown University), who has just been awarded the NEH/Mellon Foundation Rome Prize to support her book project "Epic Events."
Congratulations to Professor Kim Shelton, who has just been honored with Berkeley's Extraordinary Teaching in Extraordinary Times Award, in recognition of her unwavering commitment to students and to maintaining excellence in teaching in these difficult times.
Mario Telò is co-organizer of the panel "The Before and the After: Arche and Avenir in a Time of Crisis," which is taking place April 9-11 as part of the annual convention of the American Comparative Literature Association. The program of the third day (including an abstract of his paper) can be found here.
It is with great sadness that the department announces the death of Emeritus Professor Leslie Threatte, who passed away on March 25 at his home in Greece. See our tribute here.
Congratulations to Erin Lam, who has been awarded the Consortium for Faculty Diversity Fellowship at Bryn Mawr College; this includes one year of dissertation fellowship, which Erin will spend finishing her dissertation, “Realness through Relationality: A Queer Reading of Ovid's Heroides,” followed by a post-doc year. And congratulations also to Joshua Benjamins, who has been awarded a Townsend Dissertation Fellowship for 2021-22 to support his dissertation project, “Augustine's Rome: Redrawing Roman History and Roman Time after 410 A.D.”
We are happy to announce the publication of a special issue of Classical Antiquity in celebration of Mark Griffith with articles from former students Maud Gleason, Erik Gunderson, Jim Porter, Jonathan Ready, and Naomi Weiss.
Many will remember the fabulous international epigraphy conference held at Berkeley in January 2016. We are delighted to announce the publication of a collection of papers from that conference, Greek Epigraphy and Religion, edited by Nikolaos Papazarkadas and Emily Mackil. The volume is dedicated to the memory of Sara B. Aleshire, who endowed Berkeley's Center for the Study of Greek Epigraphy.
This coming Monday, March 8, at 10am PST, Kim Shelton will be speaking at a webinar on "Women in Greek Archaeology," sponsored by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. More information + registration link available here.
Congratulations to Marissa Henry, who has been awarded an SCS Classics Everywhere grant for an outreach project. Marissa is using the grant to lead a myth and creative writing class (virtually) at the Berkeley Public Library. The project is featured on the BPL site as well as a recent SCS blog post.
David Youd delivered a paper, "Polymorphously Per-verse: Queer Metrology in Euripides' Orestes," at the recent Oxford conference on "Queer and the Classical." Conference paper abstracts are available to be read here.
Nandini Pandey (Berkeley Classics PhD 2011) delivered a lecture on Feb. 23 entitled "Roman Diversity: Modern Lessons from an Ancient Empire" at the American Academy in Berlin, where she is currently Gorrissen Fellow in History. The lecture is archived here.
The Center for the Tebtunis Papyri is delighted to announce the inauguration of a lecture series featuring presentations of new texts as well as papers concerning the society and culture Graeco-Roman Egypt. The first paper in the series will be delivered by Professor Lucia Prauscello this coming Friday, January 29; full details here. Additional speakers in the series will include Andrew Connor (Monash), Micaela Langellotti (Newcastle), and Michael Zellmann-Rohrer (Oxford); details TBA.
Mario Telò was recently interviewed for the New Books Network podcast, discussing his new book Archive Feelings: A Theory of Greek Tragedy. You can listen to the interview here.
The department is delighted to announce the Spring 2021 Sather Series, a set of four lectures by former Sather Professors who are rejoining our community, albeit virtually, on four Saturday mornings this semester. The series will be kicked off by a lecture by François Lissarrague. More details here.
Ellen Oliensis delivered the 2020 Housman Lecture for University College London, not in person as originally planned but via zoom; the lecture, entitled "The Trials of Latona in Ovid's Metamorphoses," is available here.
We are excited to report that Marissa Henry's article "Epic's Bastard Son: The Importance of Being Nothos in the Dionysiaca of Nonnus" just appeared in the Fall 2020 issue of the American Journal of Philology.
Classics is joining the campus-wide celebration of 150 Years of Women at Berkeley by launching a series of occasional conversations with alumnae of the department, starting with Mario Telò's conversation with Gertrude Allen (BA 1967). Read the conversation here.
Graduate Admissions update: Berkeley Classics currently plans to run its regular admisssions process this year. More information on how to apply may be found here.
We are excited to report that Kelsey Turbeville (PhD Classical Archaeology 2019) is now a User Experience Writer at UserTesting, a UX research company based in San Francisco. As a writer on the design team, she collaborates with designers and other writers to create digital interfaces; another component of her work is researching how people understand and interpret language in context. Kelsey tells us that this work draws on the skills she developed in graduate school: "I spend a lot of time analyzing language in a detailed, rigorous manner and considering its impact in the context of a visual environment."
We are delighted to report that Marissa Henry has been awarded a Frank E. Ratliff Fellowship in Classical Antiquity, to complete her dissertation, entitled “Raw, Cooked, Rotten, Sweet: The Pleasures and Politics of Food in Archaic Hexameter" and that Andrew Wein has been awarded both a Dissertation Fellowship from the Townsend Humanities Center and a Mabelle McLeod Lewis Fellowship, for the completion of his dissertation, entitled “Kosmos and Confusion: Political and Aesthetic Value in the Greco-Roman World.”
Our congratulations to graduate alums Margaret Foster and Jonathan Ready, who are taking up positions this fall as Associate Professor and Professor, respectively, in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan.
In June, Maria Mavroudi gave a public lecture (sponsored by the Hellenic American Cultural Foundation in New York), entitled "How Byzantine Civilization Influenced Modern-Day Culture," including the reception of Byzantine art by African Americans and political activists after the Civil Rights movement. The lecture was broadcast via Zoom and can be enjoyed here.
The department offers its warm CONGRATULATIONS to the fabulous class of 2020!
We are excited to announce Release 1 of Donald Mastronarde's open-access online edition of the scholia on Euripides, Orestes 1-500, available at EuripidesScholia.org.
The Department of Classics will be offering its summer curriculum remotely in Summer 2020. Though Berkeley did not make the news official till early April, our instructors have been planning for this change since early March. Please join us for our virtual classical summer!
