Classics Activities and Events
2008-2009
Annual Classics Department Picnic
Date: Friday, May 1, 2009
Time: 4:00 - 6:00 PM
Location: TBA
Free food from our friends, the fabulous PJ's BBQ! Fond farewells to former freshmen, finally seniors! Fun flying frisbees with favorite faculty! Brave bocce-ball battles and boisterous banter! Meet many majors, minors, and miscellaneous menschen!
Parilia Conference
Date: Friday, April 17, 2009
Location: Colgate University, Hamilton, NY
Spring 2009 witnessed the fourth iteration of Parilia, the joint undergraduate Classics conference involving students from Colgate University and Hamilton, Skidmore and Union Colleges. Parilia reinforces our commitment to helping our students develop their research skills and showcase the results; and, as in 2006-2008, Skidmore sent three students plus our faculty to the conference.
This year, student presenters included Ross Jaffe ’11 on Herodotus’ philosophical outlook, Amanda Paret ’10 on a comparison between Homer’s Iliad and Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 film Troy starring Brad Pitt, and Jim Ryan ’09 on a close reading of Catullan poetry. Our students acquitted themselves superbly and Parilia yet again provided an opportunity for faculty and students from all four institutions to strengthen our upstate NY Classics community. Spring 2010 we will return to Union College with another Skidmore contingent and look forward to more exceptional work from our students.
Trip to Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
Date: Saturday, April 4, 2009
Time: Departure 7:30 AM, Returning 11:30 PM
Location: Meet at Case Center
Each spring students in CC200 The Classical World travel to NYC to study and present objects in the Greco-Roman galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This year the students began this project at our own Tang Museum, where three members of the class (one major and two first-year students, who developed their presentation skills in Prof. Mechem’s SSP Den of Antiquities class in the fall) gave faux talks on works of art in the current Oliver Herring exhibition. Those presentations, intentionally designed as excellent, mediocre and poor, illustrated to the rest of the class the key components of a successful presentation. Accordingly, the group presentations by the CC200 students were particularly strong, the result of careful collaboration and thoughtful research.
Homerathon!
Date: Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Time: 7:00 PM - ?
Location: Saratoga Room in the Spa
A marathon reading of Homer’s Odyssey with musical accompaniment provided by students in CC200 The Classical World.
XIII Annual Classical World Lecture
“Roman Law and Roman History: Debt-Bondage and Sexual Politics”
Date: Thursday, March 19, 2009
Time: 5:30 – 6:30 PM
Location: Davis Auditorium
Guest lecture by Prof. Hans-Friedrich Mueller
Prof. Mueller will examine the historical evidence for the abolition of debt-bondage in ancient Rome, visiting fundamental issues in Roman historiography, the fragments of the Twelve Tables, the introduction of metal coinage, same-sex desire, forced-sex work, and the intersections of sexual politics with the history of Roman law.
End of Study Break Get Together
Date: Sunday, October 26, 2008
Time: 3:30 - 5:30 PM
Location: Home of Professors Michael Arnush & Leslie Mechem
The Classics faculty invite you to an end-of-study break open house for apple cider, cheddar cheese, and other treats of the season.
Guest Lecture
"Derek Walcott's Odyssey and the Postcolonial Recovery of Classical Greek Texts"
Date: Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2008
Time: 5:30 - 6:30 PM
Location: Emerson Auditorium - Palamountain Hall
Guest lecture by Prof. Rachel Friedman, Classics Department, Vassar College
Prof. Friedman will examine Derek Walcott's "Stage Version" of the Odyssey, commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company and first performed in 1992, specifically Walcott's characterization of Odysseus as a wandering hero extremely ambivalent about his return home to Ithaka. Friedman will consider whether Walcott's reading of Odysseus might be seen as emerging from Homer's poem and will suggest some of the ways such a reading can help us access aspects of the ancient texts from a postcolonial perspective.