A painting of Antigone performing funeral rites on her slain brother

In early October UC Classics and the College-Conservatory of Music co-sponsored a Zoom presentation of "Antigone in Ferguson," a production by the acclaimed Theater of War. The production featured readings from Sophopcles' "Antigone" followed by a public forum which focused on relevance to today's issues of social justice. The production also featured performances by a choir composed on civic leaders from Ferguson, Missouri. The Theater of War aims to create discourse and healing regarding the death of Black Americans at the hands of the police. Dr. Brant Russell of CCM and Dr. Caitlin Hines of the Classics Department worked with Harvard, Georgetown, and Emory Universities to bring this production to students.

Valia Tsikritea, a graduate student at the UC Department of Classics, received a GSG Research Fellowship Award for research she will be conducting this summer at the BSA Research Center at Knossos, Crete. The Fellowship supports study towards her dissertation degree, titled "An Archaeology of Cult on Mt. Juktas, Crete in the Early Iron Age: Tradition, Pottery, and Figurines from the 'Tomb of Zeus.'" Her research focuses on the Greek archaeological site of Mt. Juktas, Crete, during the 12th-7th centuries BCE. It aims at producing one of the few comprehensive studies of material from an Early Iron Age sanctuary on Crete, a period in which the island underwent major changes in material culture and religious activity. Mt. Juktas, the peak sanctuary of Knossos, was one of the sanctuaries with the most long-lasting cultic activity in Crete and was frequented without interruption during the 12th-7th centuries. Through the study of pottery and ceramic figurines Tsikritea investigates the changes in cult practices during the Early Iron Age period and the role of Mt. Juktas in the formation of local identity. While on Crete this summer she will use the award to support her study of the pottery from the site at the Stratigraphical Museum at Knossos.

The Griffin Warrior cake from the top

The tenth annual prospective graduate students weekend saw 19 strong candidates from Canada, Greece, the UK, Italy, and Austria, in addition to the US. They were presented with discussions of current research by faculty and graduate students, as well as the advantages of our department.

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Maria Gaki looks at camera

Philology graduate student Maria Gaki was awarded the Graduate School Dean's Dissertation Completion Fellowship for the 2020/2021 academic year. Gaki's dissertation is about the role of sound – particularly sweet sound, called euphony – in the ancient literary theory of the Hellenistic period. The most important source for the study of euphony is the treatise On Poems of an ancient Greek Epicurean philosopher, Philodemus. This treatise is a work of early literary criticism on poetry. Philodemus who wrote his work in the 1st century B.C., criticizes the theories of some earlier literary critics of the 3rd and 2nd century B.C., the euphonists. These critics dismissed the importance of the poetic content and argued that a poem should be judged primarily on the sound of the words, which should be selected and arranged properly to achieve a euphonious effect and “tickle the hearing”.

Gaki is the fifth Classics graduate student since 2014 to win this award. Other awardees include Christopher Miller, Christopher Motz, Kathleen Kidder, and Emily Egan.

Agrimonti takes measurements of a stele attesting an arbitration between Messene and the Arkadian city of Phigalea
Agrimonti takes measurements of a stele attesting an arbitration between Messene and the Arkadian city of Phigalea

Simone Agrimonti, a Ph.D. candidate in the UC Department of Classics, has received a Graduate Student Government Research Fellowship for interdisciplinary research. The award supports his dissertation project, “Interstate Arbitrations in Hellenistic Messenia.” This study examines a specific type of diplomatic interaction between Greek city-states and sheds new light on their use. Third-party arbitrations were not only an instrument of peace-keeping among the litigious city-states. Through them, ancient Greeks made powerful ideological statements about their communities and their political and cultural identity. Simone’s dissertation is the first scholarly project to focus on the traditionally-overlooked ideological aspects of these documents. This award will support his research by allowing him to travel to Greece during the summer of 2020. There he will visit several museums, archaeological sites, and mountainous areas (Messene, Olympia, Taygetos), to examine in person Greek legal documents inscribed on stone.
This year, the Graduate Student Government Research Fellowship is also funding another UC Classics dissertation project by Valia Tsikritea.