Classics Department Events

Campy College Movie Night!

Come join Eta Sigma Phi and the Classics Club for a Classics-related film Thursday March 3 at 6:30 p.m.!

CLASSICS LECTURE SERIES 2020

In cooperation with the Theatre Department; made possible by generous funding by VWU's Lighthouse Center for Exploration and Discovery and Virginia Humanities.

Former British Royal Marine and Theatre and Classics professor Peter Meineck will direct a performance of the Warrior Chorus Project, a program that teaches veterans to perform works from ancient literature. Dr. Meineck will coordinate with veteran-actors recruited from community partners such as the Virginia Stage Company to craft a staged reading of scenes from Greek tragedy. This event is free and open to the public. Thursday’s talk will be followed by a performance of Greek classics by local veterans on Friday evening. More information on the Warrior Chorus Project is available at http://www.warriorchorus.org/.

Upcoming Events

Spring 2019 Events on VWU's Campus or Sponsored by VWU

VWU Classics Lecture Series 2018-2019

We are privileged to be able to host two guest speakers in the Spring of 2019 thanks to the generosity of VWU's Lighthouse Center and our co-sponsors in the History Department.

1) Dr. Georgia Irby of the College of William and Mary (Thursday, February 7, on Greek mythology in popular music--exact time TBA).

2) Dr. William Bruce of Gustavus Adolphus (Thursday April 18, 2019, on recent developments in the excavations at Sardis--exact time TBA; co-sponsored by Dr. Daniel Margolies in the History Department).

Fall 2018 Events Sponsored by Classics Club and Eta Sigma Phi

1) Classics Senior Symposium, featuring presentations of papers by Maribel Veras, Sydnie Allen, and Aline Misitis: November 26, 2018

2) Outing to View Don Giovanni at the Harrison Opera House (Mythology Class, Classics Club, and Eta Sigma Phi: see image below). November 6, 2018

3) Outing to the Chrysler Museum (Mythology Class, Classics Club, and Eta Sigma Phi), November 17, 2018.

Faculty Conference Presentations

Benjamin Haller presented the following paper on February 22, 2019 in Albuquerque, NM at the annual meeting of the Southwestern Popular/American Culture Association :

"The Surprise Endings of Lars Von Trier’s 2003 Dogville and Euripides’s Medea: Teaching an Unexpected Theodicy in the Modern Mythology Classroom."

Faculty Publications

Ben also contributed an invited book chapter entitled "Intreat them Gently, Trayne them to that Ayre:' George Sandys’s Savage Verses and Civilized Commentary at Jamestown" to the forthcoming Companion to the Translation of Greek and Latin Epic.

Thursday, February 7 at 4:30 p.m., Dr. Georgia Irby (Classics, College of William and Mary) spoke in Greer 255 on "Rhapsodes and Rock Stars: the enduring Legacy of Greek Myth in Pop Music." From modern music video renditions of Sumerian Epic to Serbian guslari to classical allusions in Suzanne Vega and Iron Maiden, Dr. Irby treated us to a fun and lively tour of how allusions to classical literature and mythology have enriched modern popular music.

Poster design by Ben Haller and Georgia Irby.

Benjamin Haller served as Area Chair for Classical Representations in Popular Culture at the 2019 meeting of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association, receiving his five-year pin for serving in this office.

He presented the following paper on February 22, 2019 at the same meeting :

The Surprise Endings of Lars Von Trier’s 2003 Dogville and Euripides’s Medea: Teaching an Unexpected Theodicy in the Modern Mythology Classroom

Abstract:

There have been many cinematic renditions of Euripides’s Medea, and while a number of these offer compelling interpretations of the Colchian princess’s story, few are tremendously helpful in making her tale more accessible to the average undergraduate.

One of the great insights offered by Denys Page’s Oxford commentary on the Greek text of Euripides’s play is his discussion of the novelty of Medea’s salient act of violence at the culmination of the tragedy: the murder of her own children. The extant testimonia and fragments which we possess for Eumelus, Neophron, Creophylus, and others suggest that Euripides may have been the first to introduce the plot element of Medea being the agent of her children’s premeditated and deliberate destruction. Further work by Bongie, Cowherd, and Cunningham has emphasized the uncanniness and unexpectedness of the tragedy’s ending, in which Medea is whisked away apo mechanes on a stage device usually reserved for the gods, only to burst from the world of myth into the world of the audience as she directs her course from Bronze Age Corinth to Athens, where the audience sits in the Theater of Dionysus. It is the 431 BCE equivalent of watching Samara from the 2002 film The Ring crawling through the television screen to suck out the souls of those foolish enough to watch the forbidden video cassette.

My contribution examines the endings of Lars Von Trier’s Dogville and Euripides’s Medea, arguing that both enlist audience expectations established by dramatic conventions, religious and ritual narrative patterns, societal moral norms, and gender expectations to induce an unusually effective state of shock corresponding loosely to the eleos and pathos specified by Aristotle in the Poetics as the desired emotional impact of viewing a tragedy. I suggest ways in which Von Trier’s film, although containing themes of sexual violence and exploitation, and hence requiring care it the manner in which it is introduced to the classroom, presents modern audiences with a refreshingly accessible window into the effects of the Medea of Euripides upon its original audience of 431 BCE. By offering a surprise theodicy which is structurally parallel to the Medea’s, but which possesses an immediacy akin to a modern cinematic horror movie or revenge tragedy, Dogville provides a useful alternative to traditional-production film versions of tragedy, which modern college-age audiences all too often perceive as an impenetrable series of vignettes of men in silly dress chanting monotone incomprehensibilities.

Maribel Veras Presents her Senior Thesis at the 2018 Classics Undergraduate Research Symposium

Sydnie Allen Presents her Senior Thesis at the 2018 Classics Undergraduate Research Symposium

Aline Misitis Presents her Senior Thesis at the 2018 Classics Undergraduate Research Symposium

Don Giovanni at Harrison Opera House

On November 6, 2018, a group of Classics Club, Eta Sigma Phi, and Mythology and Latin students, some of whom are pictured to the left, attended the Virginia Opera's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni.

Ben Haller Presents on Classical Virginia

Ben Haller presents a paper entitled, "'Intreat them Gently, Trayne them to that Ayre:' George Sandys’s Savage Verses and Civilized Commentary at Jamestown," at the Fall Meeting of the Classical Association of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA (September 29, 2018).

Recent Events

Fall 2018 Events on VWU's Campus or Sponsored by VWU

Conference and Invited Talks By VWU Classics Faculty

Dr. Haller has given the following talks during the Fall 2018 Semester:
- “'Intreat them Gently, Trayne them to that Ayre:' George Sandys’s Savage Verses and Civilized Commentary at Jamestown," Classical Association of Virginia Fall Meeting, September 29, Charlottesville, VA.
Dr. Haller has given the following conference talks during the Spring 2018 Semester
- “The Metamorphoses of George Sandys: Ovid Commentary as Self-Making in Virginia’s Jamestown Colony,” at the 114th annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South in Albuquerque, New Mexico, April 11-14, 2018.
- “Classical Counterfactuals: George Sandys’s 1632 Metamorphoses Commentary and “Good Newes from Virginia”,” February, 2018, The Annual Meeting of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association, Albuquerque, NM.

Dr. Haller gave the following community lectures during the Spring 2018 Semester
- Westminster-Canterbury Lectures
  - I. Melesigenes Meets a Monster: Homer, the Cyclops, and the Wrath of Poseidon
  - II. Dangerous Goddesses, Chaste Heroines, and Chased Heroes
  - III. Melesigenes Meets his Match: Metis, the Death of Homer, and the Homecoming of Odysseus
  - IV. "Do Not Seek to Become Zeus!" Gods and Mortals Learning to Gnothi their Sauton in the World of Greek Epic

Spring 2018 Events in our Backyard

AIA Talks at the College of William and Mary
Feb. 1, "Gold and Silver for Gems and Spices: Roman Coins in India and Sri Lanka," Dr. S.Suresh, Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, AIA National Kress Lecture, Small 110, 4:30 pm
Feb. 22, "Slavery and the Book in Virginia," Dr. Patrice Rankin, University of Richmond, Small 110, 4:30 pm
Mar. 21, "Slaves and Servants in the Villa of the Mysteries," Dr. Elaine Gazda, University of Michigan, AIA Williamsburg Lecture, ISC 1127, 4:30 pm
Apr. 2, " 'O Immortal Gods!' The Rhetoric of Anger in Cicero's Speeches," Dr. ChristopherCraig, University of Tennessee, Classical Studies Department Jones Lecture, Andrews 101, 5:30pm
Apr. 13, Title TBA, Dr. Martin Goodman, University of Oxford, jointly sponsored with Judaic Studies & Meyer-Sterns Endowment, Washington 201, 4:00 pm.

Hampton Roads Area Cultural Resources

The Chrysler Museum

The Chrysler Museum Glass Studio

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

The Hermitage Museum

Hampton University Museum

The Virginia Opera

Virginia Symphony

Seven Venues (Generic Theater, Chrysler Hall, etc.)

Virginia Stage Company

Jamestown (Reconstructed Fort)

Jamestown (Archaeological Site)

Muscarelle Museum (William and Mary)

Rare Book School (UVA)

Google Sites

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