newsletter
2018/19 DEPARTMENT OF
Classics
Welcome 2017/18 was very much a year of transition for the Department of Classics. Following the retirement of Brian McGing, we were delighted to be able to advertise for the newly renamed Regius Chair of Greek and A.G. Leventis Professorship of Greek Culture. The new title reflects our long-standing relationship with the A.G. Leventis Foundation: we are deeply grateful for their support over a period of some seventeen years, and in particular for their most recent philanthropic gift, which enabled us to appoint our newest member of staff, Dr Rebecca Usherwood, to an Assistant Professorship in Late Antique and Early Byzantine Studies. Rebecca joins us from the University of St Andrews, and is a specialist in the political and cultural history of the Roman and later Roman Empire. A second philanthropic donation enabled us to appoint one of our recent PhD graduates, Dr Charlie Kerrigan, to a Research Fellowship. As well as carrying out his own research, on Virgil’s Georgics and its modern receptions, Charlie has a brief to explore possible ways of expanding our outreach activities, and serves as a research assistant for our Latin language-learning app, Tabella, currently under development and due to be launched later this year. Full profiles of both Rebecca and Charlie, and much more on Tabella, in the next edition of this Newsletter! Returning to the subject of Brian’s retirement, some of our readers will have been present at a splendid day of celebration held in Trinity’s Long Room Hub in February, for which many of Brian’s former students and colleagues returned to College. This was a hugely enjoyable event, and I think all participants were delighted to have the opportunity to celebrate Brian’s long and distinguished career, in a light-hearted and informal way, yet one that also provoked and stimulated: a fitting tribute to our dear friend and colleague. May he continue to flourish for many years to come! (See full report on p. 4.) Our three Postdoctoral Fellows were busy over the course of the year: Boris Kayachev and Elena Spangenberg Yanes organized a very successful conference and workshop respectively (see p. 6 of this Newsletter). We were very sorry to say ciao in December to Jacopo Tabolli, but were thrilled by his success in securing a permanent post on the Soprintendenza Archeologica of Tuscany (not to mention the subsequent birth of his second child). Our undergraduate and graduate students continue to do well, too (see p. 7): four doctoral students gained their PhDs over the course of the year, and two more were awarded Irish
Research Council Studentships. And we were very glad to award the new Ferrar Memorial Studentship to our own Susie Ashton. Congratulations to all on their successes! We hope that readers will want to join us in congratulating ourselves, too, on a Departmental success. In the 2018 QS University Rankings, Classics Departments were rated for the first time. TCD Classics was ranked 28th in the world, a considerable achievement for a department which is small by international standards. We would like to thank all our alumni and current students for spreading the word about their positive experience of TCD Classics, and helping to make our community such a rewarding one to be part of. I end with a trailer for new developments in 2019 and beyond. 2019 sees the launch of our new integrated Single Honors programme in Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology (CLAHA); and in 2020 we plan to launch a new, dual degree programme with Columbia University in New York. I hope to report fully on both these exciting developments in our next issue. As ever, we are keen to hear news of our alumni: please do keep in touch, and take a look at our website and Facebook pages for forthcoming events and other news.
Professor Monica Gale Head of Department
Newsletter 2018-19 2014 – 2015
News from the Department Anna Chahoud continued her work on Early Latin, seeing the publications of two articles on Lucilius for Oxford Bibliographies and for the volume Lucilius and Satire in Second Century Rome, edited for CUP by B. W. Breed, Rex Wallace, and E. Keitel. With Jim Adams and Giuseppe Pezzini, she undertook a large new project, involving 27 contributors, on the language of Early Latin, for which a book contract was secured with CUP and a workin-progress conference held at the University of St Andrews in July 2018. A special issue of the Trinity journal Hermathena, Fabellae Dublinenses Revisited and Other Essays in Honour of Marvin Colker, was published in October 2017 (and was launched in the Long Room in February: see p. 6). In her role as Theme Lead for Manuscript Book and Print Cultures, Anna was delighted to support the research initiatives of Marie Curie and IRC postdoctoral fellows, and headed the design of a Trinity Elective entitled ‘A World to Discover: Travel Writing at Trinity’, to be launched in 2019. Watch this space! Ashley Clements further delved into the use of the Classics in nineteenth-century ethnology and explored the ethnographic and natural history displays of London's Crystal Palace exhibition (1854–1936), which pioneered natural history museum dioramas and informed London Zoo’s innovation of keeping live animals in conditions as close as possible to their natural habitats. Martine Cuypers helped finalise the new Junior and Leaving Certificate courses in Classics (first enrolment 2019) and Classical Studies (2020). Work on LC Latin and Greek will start soon. Martine completed her last entries for Brill’s New Jacoby, revised older entries for BNJ’s second edition, and spoke at events in Belfast, Bellaghy, Cambridge and Galway, and at Trinity’s Editing Anonymous Poetry conference. She enjoyed coordinating and teaching on the International Byzantine Greek Summer School, which continues to bring students from all over the world to Trinity to study late antique and medieval Greek.
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Hazel Dodge was on leave in the first semester, which was very welcome! She was working on a number of projects, including Roman circus mosaics and stone technology. In February she was delighted to give a paper, ‘From quarry to metropolis: the journey of an Egyptian granite column to the Pantheon’, as part of the first symposium of the TCD-based research project Making Victorian Ireland, jointly directed by Christine Casey (Art History) and Patrick Wyse Jackson (Geology). She was appointed to the Kress Alumni Lectureship of the American Institute of Archaeology for 2018–19, to be taken up in April 2019 (see next Newsletter for more news!). Monica Gale continued to be kept busy by her role as Head of Department, but managed to keep the research and publications ticking over, aided by a term’s research leave in Hilary. Texts and Violence in the Roman World (edited with David Scourfield of Maynooth University) was published in April (see p. 6), and articles/ book chapters on the well-known (?) Augustan poet Grattius and his slightly more familiar predecessor Catullus also appeared during the course of the year. She gave an invited lecture on Catullus and Roman Epicureanism at the University of Pittsburgh in March, and spoke at conferences on Ovid’s Exile Poetry (at the Freie Universität, Berlin, in December) and on ‘Learning in the Late Republic and the Augustan Age’ (the Virgilian Society Symposium Cumanum, held at the Villa Vergiliana near Naples in June). Back in College, she has been serving as departmental lead on a proposal for a new dual degree with Columbia University in New York, an exciting initiative which we hope to open for the first applications in 2019/20.
Christine Morris Much of Christine’s time in College this year has revolved around her new role as Head of the School of Histories and Humanities, which has proved both challenging and rewarding. Happily, that has not prevented her from doing new things, and she much enjoyed designing a new MPhil postgraduate module ‘Saving the Past: Contemporary Issues in Cultural Heritage’, as well as running a series of Saturday morning mythology seminars for our extramural students, together with Sue O’Neill. Another highlight of the year was participating, in May, in a celebration of the Arts and Humanities at Trinity; this College event was hosted by Lady Dufferin in London, and participants were each tasked to tell a compelling story about their area of research - in three minutes! Shane Wallace writes ‘The 2017/18 academic year was, for me, a time of Alexanders. I published three book chapters on Alexander the Great during the year, and also co-edited a book – The Hellenistic Court: Monarchic Power and Elite Society from Alexander to Cleopatra – which examines the court as a royal institution in the Hellenistic period, from Macedon to Egypt. I was happy also to see published another volume of the journal Classics Ireland, of which I am the Editor. Conferences are a great chance to travel and I was delighted to take part in a conference on communication and legitimisation under Alexander, generously hosted by the Villa Vigoni on Lake Como in May 2018. The other Alexander in my life – the most important one – is my second son, born in April 2017. If the holes he digs in our garden are anything to go by then he has decided to become an archaeologist! Much as I love teaching, I am looking forward to research leave in Michaelmas Term 2018.’
DEPARTMENT OF
Classics
Research News New Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow Once again in 2017–18 the Department of Classics hosted three IRC Research Fellows: Dr Boris Kayachev, from Russia, Dr Jacopo Tabolli, from Italy (both in the second year of their fellowships), and Dr Elena Spangenberg Yanes, from Italy, who will be with us until 2019. As ever, our postdocs are a huge asset to the department, and contribute significantly both to the breadth of our research activities and expertise, and to our international profile. Dr Kayachev and Dr Tabolli were profiled in the last edition of this Newsletter; here, Dr Spangenberg Yanes gives a short account of her research and her first year at Trinity. Dr Elena Spangenberg Yanes I came to Dublin in October 2017 to work for two years on De nominibus dubiis, an anonymous Latin grammatical treatise dating back to 7th-century Gaul. This work, composed at the very end of Late Antiquity,
when the Roman education system was collapsing, witnesses to the efforts made by the author to preserve the eight-centurylong tradition of ancient Latin grammatical teaching, but at the same time already shows several features of Latin phonetic and morphological evolution. Correspondingly, it is the source of several valuable literary fragments from lost works of the Republican and Early Imperial Age, but also the first Latin grammatical treatise incorporating quotations from Christian and late antique authors (for more details you can see my entry on the #LoveIrishResearch Blog: http:// research.ie/what-we-do/loveirishresearch/ blog/teaching-latin-at-the-sunset-ofantiquity-innovation-and-continuity/) My research aims to provide a new critical edition, with commentary, of De nominibus dubiis and is based on the thorough investigation of its manuscript
tradition, structure, and sources. The publication of the volume is planned for autumn 2019 in the series Collectanea Grammatica Latina of Georg Olms Verlag. At the Department of Classics I have found not only an ideal host institution for my research and training, where I have had several occasions to share ideas with colleagues and to learn from them new ways to see the scientific problems I have to face in my project, but also a very supportive and stimulating environment for further initiatives by postdoctoral fellows. With a view to building up an international network of (mostly) early career experts in Latin grammarians, I organised the workshop Editing Ancient Latin Grammarians: Textual and Linguistic Challenges, which took place in May 2018 [For more on the conference, see p. 6 of this newsletter (ed.)] A second edition of the initiative will be held, on a rather larger scale, at Trinity College in May 2019.
Dr Elena Spangenberg Yanes
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Newsletter 2018-19 2014 – 2015
40 Years at Trinity: Classical Conversations for Brian McGing At the end of September 2017, Professor Brian McGing retired – accompanied by cries of, ‘How can he retire – he isn’t old enough!’. On Saturday 24 February 2018 the Department marked Brian’s retirement as well as his role in the development of Classics at Trinity over the last 40 years with a day of celebration in the Trinity Long Room Hub. Nearly one hundred colleagues, friends, students and alumni attended the event. The event was opened by the Provost, Professor Patrick Prendergast. The first session took the format of a Discussion Panel exploring the issues and aims of the discipline of Classics in the past, present and future; Professor Paul Cartledge (Cambridge), Professor Duncan Kennedy (Bristol), Professor Judith Mossman (Coventry), Professor Mark Humphries (Swansea), Dr Jon Coulston (St Andrews) and Dr Christine Morris (TCD) provided some
stimulating insights into their particular part of the Classical World. The second session took the form of short papers inspired by different aspects of Brian’s academic interests and activities. Dr Peter Liddel (Manchester) discussed a ‘A New Inscription from Liverpool and Captain McNab's Shady Lady’; Professor Andrew Erskine (Edinburgh) talked about ‘Having Fun with Polybius’; Professor Willy Clarysse (Leuven) reported on ‘Trouble with the Sacred Cats’; Dr Ellen O’Gorman gave insights on ‘Mithridates, Brian, and the Changing Face of Ancient History’; Professor Stephen Hinds (Washington State) ‘sang’ ‘Ovid’s Pontic Blues’; Dr Zuleika Rodgers (TCD) informed us about ‘Josephus, Brian and the Tug of Love’; Professor Anna Chahoud (TCD) discussed ‘The Playful Public Orator’; and Professor Jane Ohlmeyer (TCD) reported on ‘Brian: Fundraiser and Public Humanist’. In the afternoon, there was a discussion about innovative methods of teaching Latin. Anna Chahoud and Kevin McGee presented Tabella, an app being developed in the Department for use in Schools. Professor Kathy Coleman (Harvard) gave the view from North America. Both presentations stimulated lively discussions! The final session of the day took the form of An Audience with …. Professor Brian McGing. Duncan Kennedy channelled Graham Norton and explored with Brian his career at Trinity and his thoughts on Classics. The event was followed by a Reception in the Senior Common Room, which was attended by friends from the broader College community and by Brian’s family.
Professors Kathy Coleman and Paul Cartledge, with students Paul Corcoran (left) and Andrew Beazley
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DEPARTMENT OF
Classics
Brian and colleagues
Stephen Hinds performs
Christine Morris speaking, with (L–R) Damien Nelis, Mark Humphries, Jon Coulston
Hazel Dodge with alumnae (L–R) Maureen Dunne, Sylvia Bond and Veronica English
An enthusiastic greeting from alumna and friend, Kate Higgs
With Classics contemporaries Stephen Anderson and Duncan Kennedy
Brian in full flow at the evening reception
An Audience with … (Duncan Kennedy interviewing)
With former Provost Hegarty and Professor Paul Cartledge
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Newsletter 2018-19 2014 – 2015
Events Book Launch I: Fabellae Dublinienses Revisited and Other Essays in Honour of Marvin Colker In February we were delighted to welcome the contributors of this special issue of the Trinity College journal Hermathena, guest edited by Anna Chahoud and published in October 2017, for a launch of the volume in the Long Room. The launch was timed to coincide with a splendid exhibition of stunning medieval Latin manuscripts mounted by Librarian Leanne Harrington, which is also enjoyable online: https://www.tcd.ie/library/ exhibitions/illuminating-middle-ages/
Professors Anna Chahoud and Brian McGing with Leanne Harrington and Melissa Webb at the launch of Fabellae Dublinienses Revisited
Book Launch II: Texts and Violence in the Roman World This volume, edited by Monica Gale and her partner and fellow-Classicist, David Scourfield, and published by Cambridge University Press, was launched at a well-attended event held in Maynooth University on 27 April. Anna Chahoud gave a wonderfully warm and animated appraisal of the volume, for which the editors were enormously grateful. The book includes contributions from leading scholars of Latin literature, and considers the representation and construction of violence in a range of authors and genres from Plautus to Prudentius.
Professor Anna Chahoud with David Scourfield and Monica Gale at the Texts and Violence launch
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Honorary Degree Notes
Distinguished recipients of honorary degrees in 2017–18 included Olivia O’Leary, Brian O’Driscoll (Winter Commencements) and Hillary Clinton (Summer Commencements). Public Orator Anna Chahoud presented each of the honorands in her usual eloquent Latin.
Participants in the ‘Editing Ancient Latin Grammarians’ workshop (L-R): Dr Anna Zago (Pisa), Dr Tommaso Mari (Bamberg), Dr Claudio Giammona (Rome Sapienza), Professor Michela Rosellini (Rome Sapienza), Dr Elena Spangenberg Yanes, Professor Anna Chahoud, Professor Costas Panayotakis (Glasgow), Andrea Bramanti (Paris Sorbonne - Roma Tre) Public Orator Professor Anna Chahoud with Hillary Clinton
Stanford Memorabilia
We were delighted to receive the gift of Professor W. B. Stanford’s memorabilia from his daughter Dr Melissa Webb. The donation includes the insignia of the Higher Commander of the Order of the Phoenix, an immensely prestigious honour bestowed on Professor Stanford by the Greek Government on 8 March 1980.
In June 2018 the Department hosted a two-day conference on Poems Without Poets: Editing Anonymous Poetry, which brought together over twenty specialists from across Europe and beyond. In the course of an exceptionally intense programme, participants explored a broad range of ancient ‘authorless’ poetry that often remains outside the margins of mainstream classical scholarship: from Homeric hymns to Virgilian centos, from inscribed and oracular poetry to literary forgeries and supplements. In the wake of this successful and enjoyable event, organisers Boris Kayachev and Anna Chahoud are now working towards the publication of an edited volume to share the insights and ideas generated by the conference with wider audiences.
Participants in the ‘Poems without Poets’ conference
Editing Ancient Latin Grammarians A workshop on Editing Ancient Latin Grammarians: Textual and Linguistic Challenges, organised by Postdoctoral Fellow Elena Spangenberg Yanes, took place on 11 May 2018 with the participation of scholars from Italy, Germany, France and the United Kingdom. Part two – on a larger scale – is due to follow in May 2019, within the frame of a Trinity Long Room Hub Research Incentive Scheme project (Latin Grammarians Forum: Ancient Teaching, Medieval Transmission, Digital Editorial Practices) led by Elena and her academic mentor Professor Anna Chahoud.
Poems Without Poets
Insignia of the Order of the Phoenix and certificate of award to Professor Stanford
Professor Anna Chahoud with Chancellor Mary Robinson, Brian O’Driscoll and Olivia O’Leary
DEPARTMENT OF
Classics
Student News Postgraduate Awards and Successes
We congratulate all our students on their achievements and awards over the past year!
This was another bumper year for PhD awards, with four doctoral students successfully examined during the year. Congratulations to Dr Olaf Almqvist, Dr Clara Felisari, Dr Adrian Gramps and Dr Charlie Kerrigan. Adrian and Charlie both return to the Classics Department in 2018–19 as Postdoctoral Fellows.
Undergraduate Awards and Successes Congratulations to Will von Behr (Classics), who was awarded a Gold Medal for outstanding performance in his final exams in 2017, and to Andrew Beazley, winner of the George Huxley Prize for the best undergraduate dissertation of 2018. Also to Rory O’Sullivan (TSM Greek), who was awarded the Tyrell Memorial Prize, after sitting a special exam on the Homeric Hymns in May.
Congratulations to our Classics graduates of 2017 (pictured here: Zoe Boland, Conor Phelan, Will von Behr, John Francis Martin)
Congratulations to our TSM graduates of 2017 (pictured here: Luke Fitzgerald, James Evans, Lisa Doyle, Emily Gallagher, Amy Coldrick, Kathryn Gaitley, Anna Murray (with Evie!) and Dylan Duke, with Prof. Monica Gale)
Congratulations to PhD graduate Dr Charlie Kerrigan (pictured with Anna Chahoud and Chancellor Mary Robinson)
Congratulations to Susie Ashton, who was awarded the inaugural Ferrar Memorial Studentship, which will support her in her postgraduate studies until 2021; and to Sean McGrath and Ralph Moore, who were awarded Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholarships for 2018–21.
Congratulations to PhD graduates Dr Adrian Gramps and Dr Clara Felisari
Alumni News Ellen Barnicle (CC 2015) did an MA in Archaeology at Durham and since 2016 has worked as tour guide at the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich and Churchill War Rooms, London, and now at Kilmainham Gaol. Dr David Breeckner (PhD 2017) has been appointed as Director of Museum Operations and Chief Curator at the Imperial Valley Desert Museum, California. Simon Deignan (AHA 2016) is working as a Translation Proofreader & Copy Editor for Smartbox Group in Dublin. Dr Stella Diakou (IRC Postdoctoral Fellow, 2015–16) published a monograph on The Upper Geometric Cemetery at Lapithos: University of Pennsylvania
Museum Excavations 1931–1932 (Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology, Uppsala, 2018).
the University of Toronto, and has two young children, Finn and Rosie.
Dr Siobhan Hargis (PhD 2009) now works for the Civil Service.
Dr Brendan O'Neill (AHA 2012) has been appointed as Assistant Professor in Experimental Archaeology at University College Dublin.
Dr Barry O’Halloran (PhD 2017) has been busy turning his PhD thesis into not one but two books: the first, The Political Economy of Athens: A Naval Perspective was published by Brill in December 2018. Dr Cillian O’Hogan (Classics 2006) has been appointed to a tenure-track post in the Center for Medieval Studies at
Sana Sanai (TSM Latin 2016) is studying for a Masters in Modern Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford. Hazel Scully (CC 2016) is working as a gallery assistant at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, while applying for graduate programmes in Art History. Lucy Withrington (Classics 2014) is working as an Account director for marketing agency KHWS in London.
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Good Reads – Recommendations from Classics Staff Ashley Clements recommends: P. Bloom, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion (Harper Collins, 2016; Vintage paperback, 2018) Stand a moment in another's shoes... what if you were them? Does exercising our empathy for the plight of others lead to good decisions? In arguing a case instead for compassionate reason, psychologist Paul Bloom's study engagingly demonstrates how empathy in fact biases us in favour of those with whom we can identify and promotes indifference to those with whom we cannot,
revealing that empathy for all its good press is often merely prejudice in another guise. Martine Cuypers recommends: E. Wilson (trans.), Homer: The Odyssey (New York: Norton, 2018) and P. Barker, The Silence of the Girls (London: Hamish Hamilton/Penguin, 2018) You think you know the Odyssey? Think again. Emily Wilson’s fresh new translation defamiliarizes Homer’s epic in a way that few translations achieve, leading even experienced readers on a journey of rediscovery – starting in line 1 where Homer’s hero has become
‘a complicated man’. Pat Barker has cast her gendered perspective on the Iliad in a different mould. Silence of the Girls centralizes the experience of the epic’s female characters, telling a thoughtprovoking story of grief and loss which ‘could have felt preachy’ (The Guardian) but thanks to Barker’s powerful style carries a momentum similar to Alice Oswald’s 2010 Memorial. Shane Wallace recommends: Angelos Chaniotis, Age of Conquests: The Greek World from Alexander to Hadrian (Harvard University Press, 2018)
The really interesting and original thing about this book is that it avoids breaking history up into the same traditional periods. Instead, Chaniotis looks at the Hellenistic period and the early Roman Empire together. What unites the ancient world from Alexander to Hadrian is, for him, the Greek character of the Mediterranean world during the years 336 BC to AD 117, be it political theory, science, the city-state, literary culture, art, etc. I don’t think there was a single page where I didn’t learn something new.
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Class Notes
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Alumni are warmly invited to the launch of the new Latin language-learning app Tabella in the Trinity Long Room Hub on 23 May 2019.
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Ms. Winifred Ryan, School of Classics, Trinity College Dublin Dublin 2, Ireland T. +353 (0)1 896 1208 E. ryanw1@tcd.ie F: www.facebook.com/TrinityCollegeDublinClassics/