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!

UC's Classics Department has had four dissertation defenses so far in 2023: Sarah Wenner, Cecillia Cozzi, Duccio Guasti, and Andy Lund. These short news articles over the following weeks will describe their dissertation work and what they've been doing since their defense.

Sarah Wenner defended her dissertation, titled "(Re) Making a Roman City: Refuse, Recycling, and Renovation Across Empire," on January 13, 2023. Under the direction of Prof. Steven Ellis (committee members: Prof. Barbara Burrell and Prof. Jack Davis), her dissertation considered the construction of Roman cities from ca. 500 BCE - 500 CE through one of the most voluminous urban components: refuse. Wenner examined patterns of waste recycling at three Roman cities, assessing one type of excavated material culture at each site (ceramics at Petra; animal bones at Pompeii; and bulk finds at Segedunum, UK), arguing that both individuals and city administrations struggled to maintain their control of the urban resource, especially during periods of population growth.

After her defense, Wenner accepted a National Endowment for the Humanities post-doctoral fellowship to begin work on her first book, tentatively titled "As Above, So Below: Refuse and the Making of Petra." During her four months in Jordan, she analyzed hundreds of thousands of sherds from previous excavations while living at the American Center of Research in Amman, assisted in the running of the Garden and Pool Complex field school in Petra, and participated in a new field project at Khirbet edh-Khalde, just outside of Aqaba in southern Jordan.

Back in Cincinnati, Wenner has accepted a position at the Cincinnati Art Museum, where she is a research fellow in Ancient Mediterranean and Ancient Middle Eastern Art. She is also teaching two classes for the Classics department: Greek Art and Archaeology and Classics and Cinema. She says of her time at UC Classics, "When I began my PhD work in 2015, I had no idea how many worlds the department would open for me. My advisor, Steven Ellis, and all of the faculty have helped me expand my research in new and exciting ways; have encouraged me to grow as an expert in Nabataean and Roman ceramics; gave me the teaching experience I wanted and allowed me to flourish as a creative instructor; and helped me find opportunities in the museum field." Please join us in congratulating Dr. Sarah Wenner!

Myrto Garani, from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens will speak on "Seneca’s Etna: The Epicurean principle of multiple explanations, anti-sublimity and the Stoic sage (Ep. 79)" on Wednesday Nov 1, 2023 at 5:00 pm in 308 Blegen.

In his Letter 79 (probably written in c. AD 64) Seneca asks his addressee, Lucilius, who was then serving as procurator of Sicily, to send him a report on his travels around the island, including information specifically on Charybdis and Lucilius’ climb up Mount Etna. In addition to this “scientific tourism”, Seneca encourages Lucilius to attempt a new poem on Etna, “the venerated theme of every poet” (Ep. 79.5) and not to be deterred from doing so by the fact that there are already prominent literary works that offer remarkable descriptions of Etna. In my paper, I will first briefly discuss the implications of Seneca’s choice to single out Vergil’s and Ovid’s works as the specific volcanic intertexts against which not only Lucilius, but also he himself will initiate the process of literary emulation. In this connection, I will also explore the significance for Seneca of the fact that Lucretius’ volcanic passages -to which Seneca does not refer overtly- are the dominant intertexts for both Vergil and Ovid. I will then discuss the principle of multiple explanations and the notion of the sublime, two prevailing thematic themes that the Epistle 79 shares with the Natural Questions (in particular Books 3 and 4a) and which are conditioned by Seneca’s intertextual reception of Lucretius and Ovid.