William and Mary scholar to give inaugural Porter lecture in Classics

A noted scholar of classics literature will visit Skidmore College to deliver the inaugural David H. Porter Classical World Lecture on Tuesday, April 7.

Vassiliki Panoussi of the College of William and Mary will lecture on “Isis at a Roman Wedding:  Gender and Ethnicity in Ovid’s Metamorphoses” at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 7, in Gannett Auditorium, Palamountain Hall. The public is welcome.

According to her web site, Panoussi’s research focuses on Latin literature of the late Republic and early Empire, and on Vergil in particular. She is also interested in the study of women and gender in antiquity and in Greco-Roman religion. She has taught a range of courses on Greek and Roman literature and culture and all levels of Greek and Latin. She is the author of Greek Tragedy in Vergil’s Aeneid:  Ritual, Empire, and Intertext (2009, Cambridge University Press). Currently she is working on a book project on women’s religious experiences in Roman literature.

Panoussi is a graduate of the University of Athens, Greece, where she earned a bachelor’s degree, and Brown University, where she obtained a doctoral degree. She is the recipient of several research awards from the College of William and Mary.

She is the most recent scholar to participate in Skidmore’s classics lecture tradition. For nearly two decades the college’s Classics Department has hosted the annual Classical World lecture, which has featured some of the field’s luminaries during the spring semester, when the department also offers the Classical World gateway course. In honor of his tremendous contributions to the college as former president, to the department as emeritus professor, and to his continuing work in the discipline, Skidmore’s Classics Department this year renamed the annual departmental lecture to the David H. Porter Classical World Lecture.

Michael Arnush, department chair and associate professor of classics, explained, “Twenty-six years ago, when David Porter was the college’s president and Classics was “rebooted,” we asked David if he would give an occasional lecture in our courses. He did so with pleasure and brio, despite his hectic schedule, lecturing on Greek tragedy with the kind of energy, enthusiasm, and scholarship that only David can proffer. When we developed the Classical World course— the gateway to the

Classics major—David continued to participate, lecturing on the issues that tragedy confronted – sex, violence, revenge, and justice, and he was one of the first to offer the annual Classical World lecture. During his tenure as the Tisch Professor (2009-2013), David was a mainstay in the course, and as well taught Greek and Latin literature to a generation of Skidmore students. So it seemed only natural, and proper, that we codify his contributions to Classics at Skidmore by honoring him with a renaming of the lecture, which we now proudly call the David Porter Classical World lecture.”