newsletter
2017/18 DEPARTMENT OF
Classics
WELCOME 2017 marks the end of an era for the Department of Classics. Brian McGing retired in September, after almost exactly 40 years on the staff. Many readers of this Newsletter will have fond memories of Brian’s inimitable teaching style: he has inspired generations of students with a love of ancient history and literature, while at the same time forging an enviable international reputation through his published work in an extraordinarily broad range of fields: Hellenistic history, Jews and Judaism in the ancient world, papyrology and historiography. Two small celebrations were held in the Department to mark Brian’s retirement (see photos on p. 2 of this Newsletter): a lunch for current and former colleagues, and a ‘coffee and cake’ event at the end of Brian’s final Senior Sophister class. The deluge of comments posted on our Facebook page in response to the latter attests to the affection in which Brian is held by his students past and present: we wish him all the best with his current project – a new Loeb edition of the historian Appian – and hope that he will continue to be a presence in the Department for many years to come. (For Brian’s reflections of on how things have changed during his years at Trinity, see his ‘Staff News’ entry on p. 2.) But this was also a year of new beginnings: in particular, the first cohort of undergraduate students embarked on our new Single Honours pathway, in which both Latin and Greek are taught from scratch. They are joined by a further 9 new entrants in 2017-18, significantly expanding the number of students studying the ancient languages with us. This year, too, saw extensive discussion of the future of our undergraduate programmes in general, under the aegis of the Trinity Education Project. This College-wide initiative aims to introduce greater flexibility into programme patterns, to develop key skills of critical thinking, leadership, effective communication and life-long learning, and to diversify
teaching and assessment methods. The first stage, in 2018–19, will involve the introduction of a new assessment model, with fewer exams and a more varied range of continuous assessment, with substantial changes to the structure of our programmes to follow in 2019–20. Meanwhile, our graduate and postdoctoral communities continue to thrive. We were particularly delighted that two of our newest research students, Alexandra Madela and Guy Walker, were successful in securing prestigious Irish Research Council Studentships, together with alumna Elizabeth Foley (Classical Civilization, 2014), who returns to join our postgraduate community in 2017–18; meanwhile, no fewer than six successfully completed their PhDs. Our two Postdoctoral Fellows, Boris Kayachev and Jacopo Tabolli, made a substantial and very welcome contribution to the research culture of the Classics Department: you can find profiles of both Boris and Jacopo on p. 3 of this Newsletter. They are joined in 2017–18 by a third Irish Research Council fellow, Elena Spangenberg Yanes, who will be working on the early medieval grammatical treatise, De dubiis nominibus. Finally, it was a pleasure to welcome at the beginning of this academic year a new temporary member of staff, Dr Nicolette Pavlides, who will be with us for 2017–18, teaching mainly in the area of Greek history. As ever, we are always eager to hear news of our alumni: please do keep in touch, and watch out for alumni events (as well as other news) on our website and Facebook pages.
Professor Monica Gale Head of Department
Newsletter 2017 – 2018
News from the Department Anna Chahoud was on research leave in Hilary Term, which she spent in Bologna, pressing on with her early Latin Satire work and writing a paper on Lucilius’ contribution to the debate on spelling conventions in the Middle Republic. She ventured a brief incursion into the realm of Classical Latin poetry on the occasion of the Ovid bimillennium, accepting the invitation to speak at the conference Omnia Mutantur held in Genoa in May 2017. A large part of the year was spent finalising (at last!) the long-planned volume on Trinity Latin manuscripts in honour of Marvin Colker, which came out in October: Fabellae Dublinenses Revisited (Hermathena 194, special issue) features contributions by international scholars and Trinity specialists alike and acknowledges the continuing support of Hermathena and of the Trinity Long Room Hub. Ashley Clements has spent the year continuing work on his book on Anthropology and Classics. He also started some new work on the ancient aesthetics of scents and incense, and began to explore how the new anthropology of history and ‘historicities’ might help elucidate Plato’s likely-seeming historical frames in a paper on ‘Platonic historicity’ at a conference in the UK. Martine Cuypers celebrated the publication of the volume The Gods of Greek Hexameter Poetry, co-edited with James Clauss and Ahuvia Kahane, and translations of Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis produced with Andy Hinds. She contributed to the development of a new Leaving Certificate course in Classical Studies and Junior Certificate course in Classics, to be introduced in the years ahead; taught a new postgraduate module on Argonautic myth; co-ordinated the International Byzantine Greek Summer School; and co-organised the Thirteenth Groningen Workshop on Hellenistic Poetry. Hazel Dodge was back to a full teaching load this year after being Head of Department, which meant in particular catching up on recent developments in the study of Roman Britain. She had a large but tremendously enthusiastic Senior Sophister group taking her module on Entertainment and Spectacle, and would like to thank all of them for making 2
it such an enjoyable class to teach. She spent July 2016 in Rome, which was incredibly hot, but it was wonderful to have the ancient city literally on the doorstep. And she was back again for a week in early May last year. She was involved (very much in a supporting role) in the international conference organised by our IRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Jacopo Tabolli, ‘From Invisible to Visible: New Data and Methods for the Archaeology of Infant and Child Burials in pre-Roman Italy’, which was an enormous success (see later in this Newsletter). Finally, she was delighted to be nominated by the AIA as their Kress Alumni Lecturer for 2018-19 – check back in two years to see what she did! Monica Gale found her first year as Head of Department challenging but rewarding. The new role has absorbed much of her time this year, but in spare moments she has been working on several articles and book chapters on Catullus and on didactic poetry, alongside her commentary on Catullus, which continues to progress slowly. An edited volume on violence in Roman literature (with David Scourfield of Maynooth University) was completed in 2017, and is expected to appear later this year. The highlight of her year was a three-week trip to Australia in our summer (Aussie winter, but the July weather was generally better than in Dublin), a combined academic visit and family holiday. She gave papers at Monash and Macquarie Universities and taught a graduate masterclass at the University of Queensland, taking time out in between to cuddle koalas, feed kangaroos and brave the Wheel of Brisbane with her ten-year-old son. Brian McGing writes: ‘While clearing papers from my office I came across some lectures I gave in my first year of teaching (1978–9), from the introductory course on Greek and Roman History. They were horribly dense, and I can only apologize to the poor students who had to endure them! In that first year I also taught Herodotus, Historiography, Sallust and Livy, Archaic Greece, the 5th century BC. I can’t remember if I had already started taking the Beginning Latin (all AHA and Class Civ students had to do a year of language in those days). I quickly developed a final year course on Jews
Brian McGing with students from his final Jewish Society and Politics class
and Judaism (200 BC – AD 66), which has always been very enjoyable – as was certainly the case with the excellent group who took it in my last year of teaching (2016–17). The historian Appian probably does not feature on a Classics set-book course in any other university, so it was a particular pleasure to teach it too in my last year – and to a group who seemed quite capable of proceeding without me: my job was largely to act as a referee in the disputes that broke out in their discussions! It was also a pleasure to run the Greek Taster course for a second time, to a class drawn from all areas of College and aimed at communicating some of the basics of the language, but also
Brian with Vivienne O’Rafferty (former Departmental Administrator), Tom Mitchell (former Provost and Emeritus Professor of Latin) and John Dillon (Emeritus Professor of Greek)
at examining the culture that used it, and analysing how it works as a language, how it differs from other languages, and how much of it has made its way into English. Very interesting responses from the students!’
DEPARTMENT OF
Christine Morris was occupied for much of the year with the responsibilities of being Director of Postgraduate Teaching and Learning for the School (Histories and Humanities), and found it really rewarding to be involved in the academic development of a new generation of researchers. She was delighted to be elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in March 2017, and was particularly honoured to be invited to deliver the second annual Chris Mee lecture at the University of Liverpool on June 5, 2017, where she spoke on ‘Life histories of Minoan peak sanctuary figurines’. A new MPhil module (‘The Usable Past: imagining and consuming the Aegean Bronze Age’) enabled her to share her current research interests and to involve the class in the project of collecting and contextualising modern uses of Aegean images and ideas. One of the pleasures of being in Dublin is the opportunity for outreach and collaboration with the Greek (and philhellenic) community and with the Greek and Cypriot Embassies. This year Christine helped to organise a particularly special event - a world premiere of a theatrical performance of Ritsos’ Moonlight Sonata (see more overleaf). Shane Wallace writes ‘The last year was another pretty eventful one for me. My second son, Alexander, was born in April 2017. Most of my time has been spent in Dublin, where I spent my first summer since 2013. I forgot how much I miss travelling abroad for research. Academic work has been continuing apace. I published a piece on a dossier of anti-tyranny texts from the town of Eresus on Lesbos in Tyche 31, a piece on Greek inscriptions from Afghanistan and India in Greece and Rome 63, as well as a book chapter on receptions of Alexander the Great in Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Alexander the Great. My edited book entitled The Hellenistic Court, with Andrew Erskine and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, was published in December. For the time being, however, I spend most of my time trying to juggle research, teaching, and parenting.’
Classics
Research News: Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellows This year the Department of Classics once again played host to two IRC Research Fellows, Dr Boris Kayachev, from Russia, and Dr Jacopo Tabolli, from Italy, both of whom will be with us for two years. We were delighted to welcome them to Dublin and to Trinity, and have greatly appreciated their contribution to the Department’s research culture and international flavour. Here they each give a short account of their first year at Trinity.
Dr Jacopo Tabolli
Dr Jacopo Tabolli
Dr Boris Kayachev
Dr Boris Kayachev I came to Dublin in October 2016 to work on a new edition of the Ciris, an anonymous and enigmatic Latin epyllion. Itself hosting a magnificent collection of treasured manuscripts, Trinity is very supportive of textual scholarship and has provided a safe and welcoming harbour for my adventurous exploration of the extremely corrupt, but also rewarding, text of that poem. The vibrant research life in the Department gives numerous opportunities for developing and sharing ideas, and I have been very lucky in colleagues and students, who never fail to offer advice, criticism or praise. As I plunge into the second year of the fellowship, my thoughts are on Poems without Poets: Editing Anonymous Poetry, a conference which my academic mentor Professor Anna Chahoud and I are now busy organising and which the Department will host in June 2018. The event will bring together some of the leading specialists in the editing of ancient poetry from across the globe, and I look forward to it as the high point of my time at Trinity.
After having been one of the 2015–16 Visiting Research Fellows at the Trinity Long Room Hub, this is my second year in the Department of Classics, where I am carrying out a research project on ‘Childhood and the Deathly Hallows: Investigating Infant and Child Burials in Pre-Roman Italy (c. 1000500BC)’. This research project is designed as an interdisciplinary study, whose aim is the first comprehensive investigation of infant and child burials in the Italian peninsula and the islands from the Early Iron Age through the Archaic Period (c. 1000–500 BC). The project seeks to situate infant and child burials within the world of adults, while at the same time grounding them within the special sphere of childhood. In fact, the archaeological record of childhood is extremely elusive and challenging to understand (and being a father of a young daughter, I ask myself every day how ‘challenging’ it is to investigate Early Iron Age funerary rituals for infants and children while observing the beginning of a life). I organised as part of my IRC postdoctoral project the international and interdisciplinary conference ‘From invisible to visible: new data and methods for the archaeology of infant and child burials in pre-Roman Italy’, which took place on 24 and 25 April 2017, and I am currently editing the conference proceedings for Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology (publication anticipated for spring 2018). [For more on the conference, see p. 4 of this Newsletter (ed.)!
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Newsletter 2017 – 2018
Events English translation of Moonlight Sonata, and three of our Classics students – Ellen Finn, Paul Corcoran and Andrew Beazley – read the poem.
Stanford Lecturer Dr Will Wootton with Professor Emeritus John Dillon, W.B. Stanford’s daughter, Mrs Melissa Webb, and Professor Brian McGing
From invisible to visible: new data and methods for the archaeology of infant and child burials in preRoman Italy, 24 and 25 April 2017
The W.B. Stanford Memorial Lecture Series 2017 In March, we were delighted to welcome Dr Will Wootton of King’s College London as the 2017 Stanford Lecturer. The title of the lecture series, Unfinished works: Roman art in action, was explored in the traditional three lectures over three days. Will’s theme of finish, finished, unfinish and unfinished created a whole series of puns and jokes, but these only emphasised the engaging and erudite nature of the lectures. We are all looking forward to the finished book, based on the lectures, which will be published by Cambridge University Press.
Marios Iordanou and Sofia Kazantzian performing Ritsos’ Moonlight Sonata
Theatrical Performance of Moonlight Sonata (Ἡ σονάτα τοῦ σεληνόφωτος) by Yannis Ritsos, 25 March 2017 TCD Classics was honoured to host the world premiere of ‘Venceremos’, a theatrical performance of Yannis Ritsos’ poem, Moonlight Sonata, in co-operation with the Hellenic Community of Ireland. Ritsos (1909-1990) is one of the greatest Greek poets of the twentieth century. A poet of the left, he spent much of his life in prison and exile, but in later life was active in the peace movement. In the Neill theatre of the Trinity Long Room Hub, the performers Marios Iordanou (also the director) and Sofia Kazantzian mesmerised the packed audience by a dramatic enactment of the poem through music and dance. In addition, Marjorie Chambers (TCD alumna) of Queen’s University Belfast spoke about her 4
Dr Jacopo Tabolli with Italian Ambassador Dr Giovanni Adorni Braccesi Chiassi and Dr Hazel Dodge
This international and interdisciplinary conference was organised by the Department of Classics and hosted by Dr Jacopo Tabolli, Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow, and by Dr Hazel Dodge. The conference brought together over fifty distinguished scholars from around the world – Europe, USA and New Zealand – and from multiple academic disciplines, to present new insights on the archaeology of infant and child burials in pre-Roman Italy. The success of the conference, with a large attendance during the two days, was made possible through the generous support of the Irish Research Council, the Trinity Long Room Hub, the School of Histories and Humanities, the Italian Cultural Institute in Dublin and Fáilte Ireland, and thanks to collaboration with the Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies and the Trinity Research in Childhood Centre. The importance of this conference and the leading role of the Department of Classics in promoting the study of the archaeology of ancient Italy were also stressed by Dr. Giovanni Adorni Braccesi Chiassi, H. E. the Italian Ambassador, in his opening speech. Dr. Jean MacIntosh Turfa – an internationally renowned expert in Etruscan and pre-Roman Archaeology and currently a Consulting Scholar in the Mediterranean Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia – accepted our invitation to be the Keynote Speaker. As one of the pioneering scholars in pre-Roman Italy who has been truly combining the archaeological and bio-archaeological data, looking at funerary evidence also in relation to ancient medicine, her lecture focused on ‘The archaeology of Tir Na Nog
Paul Corcoran with Professor Anna Chahoud and Andrew Beazley at the Line of Enquiry launch
(The Land of the Young): understanding burials of children in ancient Italy’ and demonstrated the importance and novelty of the research conducted in Italy as well as the potential for developing a new methodological approach to the excavation of infant and child tombs, following best practice in archaeology. Line of Enquiry Launch An unprecedented book was born from the vision of our Classics graduate Paul Corcoran (Greek 2016; MPhil 2017) and fellow undergraduates John Francis Martin and Andrew Beazley. Line of Enquiry is a collection of one-line voices from the Classical World, summoned by a very special conductor – our energetic and inspiring Paul Corcoran – and ‘performed’ by fifty Trinity students and alumni, from current undergraduates to established academics worldwide, friends of Trinity Classics – including two of Ireland’s most distinguished poets, Michael Longley and Peter Fallon – and friends of Trinity alumnus Niall Rudd, to whose memory the book is fondly dedicated, in celebration of what Niall called ‘the magpie approach’. The book was launched in the Old Library Long Room on 12 June. We were delighted to welcome the Rudd family and so many friends coming from across the Irish Sea and the Atlantic to celebrate with us the inexhaustible power of Greek and Latin literature and its enduring relevance to thinking, creativity, and ethics more than three thousand years later. The book lives on in the worldwide web, enriched by the video magisterially produced by Trinity alumnus Dr Kevin McGee (PhD 2013): see www.lineofenquiry.com Honorary Degrees Highlights Activism and Peace were the recurring motif in the year’s Honorary Degree ceremonies, including, among others, Professor Louise Richardson, Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford (Winter Commencements) and Sir Bob Geldof (Summer Commencements).
DEPARTMENT OF
Classics
Alcestis 1948
Alcestis (Helen Tobias), Admetus (Godfrey Bond), Child and Chorus
We were delighted to receive from Classics alumnus Rev. Robin Boyd a long autobiographical letter with some fascinating reminiscences of Trinity and the Classics Department in the 1940s, as well as information on Rev. Boyd’s subsequent
career as a theologian and church historian, Presbyterian and Methodist minister, and Director of the Irish School of Ecumenics. Readers might particularly enjoy the photos that Rev. Boyd kindly shared with us of the 1948 performance of Euripides’ Alcestis, on the steps of the Magnetic Observatory (now in the grounds of UCD, but at that time located in the Trinity Fellows’ Garden). Rev. Boyd writes: ‘From the point of view of Classics, the great event of that year was the production, in Greek, of Euripides’ Alcestis … [Godfrey] Bond took the leading role of Admetus (“the living spit of our beloved Taoiseach”, as one member of the audience was heard to
mutter as the play unfolded on the day, and he certainly did resemble a young De Valera). We had decided that Teddy Kidd and I would be strategically employed as leaders of the two halves of the chorus. The part of Alcestis was taken by Helen Tobias who was then teaching Classics at Alexandra College, and the child’s role was taken by one of Professor Stanford’s daughters. Several members of the cast later became well known in different spheres of public life … like Niall Rudd (Professor of Latin at Bristol University), Norman Rodway (film star) and David Orr (Unilever and British Council). Jeff [Godfrey] Bond later became public orator at Oxford, and Teddy Kidd was High Commissioner for Hong Kong in the UK.’ A high-powered cast indeed!
Good Reads – recommendations from Classics staff Continuing our series in which members of staff recommend a selection of recent publications which might be of particular interest to alumni who’d like to catch up on some Classical (or anthropological!) reading. Anna Chahoud recommends: James Clackson, Language and Society in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Cambridge, 2015) and James N. Adams, An Anthology of Informal Latin 200 BC – AD 900 (Cambridge, 2016) These recommendations arise from the favourable response to the new Sophister course Anna taught on Informal Latin (title courtesy of Jim Adams). To her delight, students enjoyed their encounters with different kinds of Latin, whether from Roman Britain or Greco-Roman Campania. These two recent books really opened their eyes to the variety of Latin registers and to the broader multilingual picture of the ancient Mediterranean. Ashley Clements recommends: Eduardo Kohn, How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human (University of California Press, 2013)
How might forests think? Kohn’s ethnography of the human-animal interactions of the Amazonian Rua people repopulates the rain forest with the agency of non-human organisms bound together with humans in the shared project of interpreting, communicating with, and living by signs. Tim Ingold, The Life of Lines (Routledge, 2015) Ingold’s quietly marvelous sequel to his earlier (2005) Lines: A Brief History, traces the interwoven histories of materials, weather and humans, all inextricably tangled together by the lives of lines. Marshall Sahlins, The Western Illusion of Human Nature (University of Chicago Press, 2008; only 112 pages!) We all like short books – it’s human nature isn’t it? Or is it? Sahlins provides a wonderfully snappy deconstruction of the mistaken Western concept of a pre-social innately selfinterested human nature, from its genesis in antiquity to its most influential early modern iterations and impact in postmodernity.
Daniel Miller, A Theory of Shopping (Polity Press, 1998) Have you ever made love in a supermarket? Or performed a sacrifice in a Department store? Daniel Miller’s ethnography of 1990s consumerism reveals we do both all the time. Shane Wallace recommends: Alexander Jones, A Portable Cosmos: Revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, Scientific Wonder of the Ancient World (Oxford, 2017) This is a fascinating read. A deep discussion of the discovery, history, analysis, and reconstruction of the famous Antikythera Mechanism, the world’s earliest surviving analogue computer. More than this, it is a broader study of the history of ancient scientific technology and astronomy. I found this absolutely fascinating, if difficult in its technicality at times. It gives a wonderful sense of the extent of what we do and don’t know about the ancient world.
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Newsletter 2017 – 2018
Student News Postgraduate Awards and Successes Susie Ashton (MPhil 2017) was awarded both the George Huxley Prize for the best MPhil thesis and a Trinity Postgraduate Research
Congratulations to our BA graduates of 2017 (pictured here: Paul Corcoran, Cian Lawless, Sana Sanai and Trudy Kilgore)
We congratulate all our students on their achievements and awards over the past year! Undergraduate Awards and Successes No fewer than three students won gold medals in their final examinations – possibly a record for the Department? Congratulations to John Francis Martin (Classics), Will von Behr (Classics) and Alastair Daly (TSM Greek), who returns to the Department this year to study for the MPhil in Classics. Will was also awarded the George Huxley Prize for the best undergraduate dissertation in 2017. Congratulations to Rory O’Sullivan (TSM Greek), who successfully sat Scholarship Exams in January – he is pictured here at the announcement of new Fellows and Scholars on Trinity Monday.
Huxley prize-winner Susie Ashton with Modern Greek tutor Leonarda Prela and fellow MPhil student Susanna Pilny
Studentship: she returned to the department as a PhD student in September 2017. Six PhD students were successfully examined during 2016–17: congratulations to Dr Nilufer Ackay, Dr Constantina Alexandrou, Dr David Breeckner, Dr Bethany Flanders, Dr Barry O’Halloran and Dr Katherine Sanborn.
New Scholar Rory O’Sullivan on Trinity Monday, with Brian McGing
Congratulations to PhD graduates Dr David Breeckner (pictured here with his parents and Chancellor Mary Robinson)...
We wish them all the best in their future careers! Congratulations to Elizabeth Foley, Alexandra Madela and Guy Walker, who were awarded Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholarships for 2017–20.
and Dr Barry O’Halloran (with Brian McGing and family members)
Alumni News Sara Ayers-Rigsby (AHA 2005) is the regional director of the Florida Public Archaeology Network. Dr Jessica Blum (Classics 2005) completed her PhD at Yale in 2015, and is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of San Francisco. Dr Michael Carroll (Greek 2011; PhD Cambridge 2014) started as Lecturer in Greek Literature at St Andrews University in October 2017. Ger Egan (AHA 2016) has recently begun teaching archaeology at Pearse College. Venina Kalistratova (Classics 2013; MPhil 2015) is living in Oakland, California and working in the veterinary clinic of Oakland Animal Services; she is planning to begin training
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for veterinary medicine. Charlain Pepper (AHA 2015) has completed a Higher Diploma in Adult and Further Education, and is now working as a tutor in Marino College of Further Education, teaching various subjects and providing student support. Dave Preston (CC 2010) has completed a PhD on Plato and Comedy at Kings College London. Dr Laerke Recht (PhD 2011) holds a Marie Skłodowska-Curie European Fellowship in the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, where her project is ‘The Spirited Horse: Human-Equid relations in the Bronze Age Near East (TSH)’. Dr Pamela Zinn (PhD 2016) was appointed Assistant Professor of Classics at Texas Tech University from August 2017.
Dr Jessica Blum, with Trinity Classics Alumni Dr Donncha O’Rourke (Edinburgh), Professor Stephen Hinds (Washington) and Dr Peter Heslin (Durham) at the ‘Symposium Cumanum: Virgil and Elegy’ conference in the summer of 2017
DEPARTMENT OF
Classics
Alumni Profiles Siobhán Hargis (AHA 2009) and Stroll Dublin background as an archaeologist, researcher, and lecturer, Siobhán offers tours of the city that are personalised to the interests of the client, and has designed and delivered itineraries for multi-national CEOs, ambassadors, politicians, and corporate global leaders.
Stroll Dublin was found by Siobhán Hargis in 2016. Stroll Dublin provides bespoke luxury tours of Dublin with a focus on the history and archaeology of the city. Working predominantly with visitors from North America, Siobhán works closely with the 5 star hotels of Dublin and international luxury travel agents. Using her
Since its foundation Stroll Dublin has gone from strength to strength, and in May 2017 Siobhán was nominated in the Best Newcomer Category at the Inner City Enterprise Awards, presented by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. Stroll Dublin is now in its second year of trading and Siobhán continues to build the brand both nationally and internationally.
One of Siobhán’s tailor-made tour parties on site
For more information on Stroll Dublin, or to contact Siobhán, see her website, www.StrollDublin.com
In memoriam: Dr Garry Fagan, 15 January 1963 – 11 March 2017 parents’ house for dinner with Roger Wilson one night, and Roger declaring, as we staggered back to College after limitless hospitality, that Garry’s parents were even more riotous than he was.
Garry Fagan, 1963–2017
Those readers who studied in the Classics Department in the early 1980s will remember Garry Fagan, who died earlier this year. He did Ancient History and Archaeology with Biblical Studies, taking his final year with us in Classics and graduating in 1985. People will remember him because he would be very difficult to forget, being one of the liveliest and most enjoyable people you could meet. And it wasn’t from the wind he got it. I remember going out to his
After his undergraduate degree Garry did an M.Litt. with me, the first research student I had (there were far fewer of them in those days). The M.Litt., although rarely taken now, can be a good way of honing skills before deciding whether you want the extra commitment of doctoral work. Garry used it to improve his Greek, and wrote an excellent thesis on the succession in the early Roman imperial period. I had thoughts on the subject; and Garry developed further ideas, which he worked on later in his scholarly career. After Trinity, Garry went to study with Richard Talbert in McMaster, Canada, and was awarded his Ph.D. in 1993. I won’t repeat all the details of his already distinguished academic career – you will find a lovely appreciation by his colleague, Stephen Wheeler, at classicalstudies. org/scs-news/memoriam-garrett-g-fagan – but I would emphasize what a fine social historian he became; and anyone who went
to his lecture last year in UCD will also have witnessed his superb lecturing skills. Indeed I’m embarrassed that I failed to get him to talk at Trinity, although it was my intention to book him on one of his visits back home, when we used to catch up over a pint or two (approximately). I was, like everyone else who knew him, shocked when he sent me an email to say that he had pancreatic cancer, and had very little time left. He did want to come home one more time, and astonishingly, given the advanced state of his illness, managed to do so. I went to visit him on February 6 at his brother Mark’s house. He was clearly a dying man, but was delighted to chat for a couple of hours and talk about old, and indeed present, times. The spirit and sense of fun were still there, as always, and I was struck by his dignity and complete lack of self-pity – no consolation, I’m afraid, for his children and family, but perhaps something they will in time remember with pride. He was hoping to come back to Ireland again in the summer, but died shortly after returning to the United States. (Brian McGing, November 2017) 7
Leventis Gift to Classics We are deeply grateful to the A.G. Leventis Foundation for their continuing support of Classics at Trinity. Over the past sixteen years their philanthropic support has allowed us to
develop new strengths in Greek and Cypriot studies, and more recently it has enabled us to make a new appointment in Late Antique and Early Byzantine Studies. In recognition of
their most recent philanthropic gift, the Regius Chair of Greek (1761) has now been renamed as the Regius Chair of Greek (1761) and A.G. Leventis Professorship of Greek Culture (2017).
to 1980, and Chancellor of the University of Dublin from 1982 to 1984. The lectures are published by Cambridge University Press.
This conference will be organized by Professor Anna Chahoud and Dr Boris Kayachev, with the support of the Irish Research Council, and hosted by the Department of Classics.
Upcoming events The Stanford Lectures 2018–19 Will be given in autumn 2018 by Dr Jenny Bryan of the University of Manchester. Further information to follow. This lecture series was established, by public subscription, to honour the memory of William Bedell Stanford, Regius Professor of Greek in Trinity College Dublin, from 1940
Poems without Poets: Editing Anonymous Poetry An international conference to be held in Trinity College Dublin on 14 and 15 June, 2018.
Remember. The power of a legacy to Trinity There’s an old saying that the true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade one does not expect to sit. When you leave a legacy to Trinity however big or small, you’re planting a tree which will grow to provide shelter to many. You’re empowering ground-breaking research which will benefit people in Ireland and all over the world. You’re supporting students from all backgrounds to access a Trinity education. You’re helping preserve our unique campus and heritage for new generations.
When you remember Trinity in your will, you join a tradition of giving that stretches back over 400 years – and reaches far into the future. For more information about leaving a Legacy to Trinity, please contact Carmen Leon.
Get Involved
Upcoming Alumni Events
Class Notes
Trinity has a long tradition of outreach and community engagement. To find out about the numerous ways you can get involved with Trinity both at home and abroad, please visit www.tcd.ie/alumni/volunteer
Alumni Weekend 2018 25-27 August 2018
Do you have any news or updates that you’d like to share with your fellow alumni? Submit your news with an image, subject of study and year of graduation to alumni@tcd.ie For more information please visit www.tcd.ie/alumni
Oregon Maple Library Square Planted early 1800s
Other upcoming events: www.tcd.ie/alumni/news-events/events/
T. +353 1 896 1379 E. carmen.leon@tcd.ie www.tcd.ie/development
Please also keep in touch with us through the Classics Facebook page at: www.facebook.com/TrinityCollegeDublinClassics/
www.tcd.ie/classics @tcdalumni
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Ms. Winifred Ryan, School of Classics, Trinity College, Dublin 2 T. +353 1 896 1208 Facebook @TrinityCollegeDublinClassics E. ryanw1@tcd.ie tcdalumni