On Saturday, March 2, the UC Classics Club staged a Roman comedy, Plautus’ Amphitruo, using a new translation by Prof. Caitlin Hines and Ph.D. candidate Allie Pohler. Prof. Anna Conser directed a cast of students and faculty, including Classics undergrads Alyssa Hoffman, Jaimee Booth, and Meara Couvillon; CCM actor Patrick Comunale; Ph.D. candidate Alessandro Battaglia; and professors Marion Kruse and Kathleen Lynch. Classics students filled many production roles, including stage managing (Meara Couvillon), producing (Matt Wabler and Michael Shobe), creating the poster and program (Sarina Duncan), and arranging original musical accompaniment (Amanda Stokes and Hunter Torosian). The evening was filled with mischief. As Prof. Marion Kruse narrated a battle scene, musicians came in with a military drum beat that eventually – and hilariously – culminated in sampled guitar riffs from Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust.” At a point where several pages are missing from the manuscript tradition, Prof. Caitlin Hines stepped on stage to explain, only to be interrupted by the characters Mercury and Jupiter, in what turned out to be a very clever meta-theatrical scene. Around 70 people attended the performance, held at Probasco Auditorium. The show was followed by a lively Q&A addressing translation and production choices, as well as the historical context of Roman comedy more generally. Classics Club plans to make this an annual tradition, so stay tuned for Fall 2024!

On Tuesday, February 20, UC Classics celebrated Peter van Minnen’s J. M. Burnam Professorship, which included a panel and the presentation of a festschrift in his honor, titled "Unending Variety. Papyrological Texts and Studies in Honor of Peter van Minnen." The panel included remarks from Drs. Rebecka Lindau (John Miller Burnam Classics Library), Valerio Ferme (Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs), Jay Twomey (Associate Dean), and Daniel Markovich (Head of the Classics Department). Papers were presented by Drs. Matthijs Wibier, Andrew Connor, and Cisca Hoogendijk. After the presentation of the papers and the festschrift, attendees joined Peter at a reception in the Blegen Library. Please join us in congratulating Peter on his Professorship and festschrift! You can find out more about Unending Variety at Brill's website. 

Anna Belza, a Ph.D. candidate in the UC Department of Classics, has received the Archaeological Institute of America’s Harriet and Leon Pomerance Fellowship for AY 2024-2025. The award supports her dissertation project, entitled "The Cyclades in the Mycenaean Period: A View from Ayia Irini, Kea,” which is a study of the pottery, small finds, and architecture dated to Late Bronze Age IIB–IIIC from the port town of Ayia Irini, on the Cycladic island of Kea in Greece. Her study provides the first site-wide presentation of Mycenaean period activity at Ayia Irini, Kea, which is contextualized within the Cyclades in order to provide an up-to-date understanding of the efficacy and reach of maritime distribution systems in the Late Bronze Age, ultimately contributing to debates about the role of the Cycladic islands in the Mycenaean Aegean.

Our alumna Kathleen Kidder (University of Houston) received the Mary White Prize for Best Article in Phoenix, the journal of the Classical Association of Canada, for her recently published article on “‘Like a Mole (?)’: Proteus’ Subterranean Journey (Alex.118–127) and the Poetics of Hidden Space,” Phoenix 75.3–4: 181-202. 

We are pleased to share that Lyvia Morgan has been awarded the Archaeological Institute of America’s 2024 James R. Wiseman Book Award. The Wiseman award honors an academic book on an archaeological topic from the past four years. Morgan’s book, Keos XI: Wall Paintings and Social Context. The Northest Bastion at Ayia Irini, published by INSTAP Press in 2020, considers the miniature frescos from the department’s excavations. The volume is gorgeously illustrated and includes some of Morgan’s own watercolors.

UC Classics excavated Ayia Irini, Keos, Greece from 1960-1972 under the direction of John (Jack) Caskey. His and subsequent work revealed Ayia Irini to be a town with a long history of settlement from the late Neolithic to the Classical period. After Caskey’s death in 1981, Elizabeth Schofield (Ph.D. University of Cincinnati Classics Department) took over the direction of the study and publication of the material. Schofield assigned Morgan publication of the Bronze Age wall paintings from the Northeast Bastion; the results of Morgan’s study, which she began in the 1980s, are presented in this book, in which she also contextualizes the paintings within the wide context of the Aegean world.

Be sure to check out the publication, available on Jstor, and please join us in congratulating Dr. Lyvia Morgan!

In the second of our recent graduates series, we honor Dr. Cecilia Cozzi. In 2017, Cecilia started the PhD program. She notes that, “it has been an incredible journey. At Cincinnati, I have learned the importance of having a multidisciplinary approach for the development of research questions and ideas. This mindset helped me immensely for the development of my PhD thesis, which employed modern psychoanalytic categories to investigate the negotiation of inheritance between fathers and sons on the Tragic stage.”

Cecilia also tested the benefits of multidisciplinarity through her involvement in the UC Classics Outreach Program, where we experimented with a new kind of presentations, combining classical contents with analysis of operatic arias and musical performances. 

Cecilia is now continuing on this path in her appointment as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas. While teaching both language and culture classes, she is also  venturing in the creation of a series of events for the general public: panels of scholars from across different departments at KU alternate with live performances of students of the Theater and Music departments. The discussion of ancient dramatic texts becomes a starting point for broader discussions on the role of music, music therapy and its emotional implications. Mindful of her great experiences with the Study Collection, she remarks that “I have also insisted on the creation of specific class activities at the Wilcox Classical Museum and Spencer Art Museum, so that students can enjoy a less frontal and more experiential approach to Classical Art and witness its reception beyond the chronological scope of our discipline.” 

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Cecilia Cozzi!