Classics » Faculty

A New Addition!

Yurie Hong — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:20:13 +0000

Congratulations to Stewart and Ellie Flory, who welcomed their baby daughter Alexandra into the world on Monday, Oct. 26th! All members of the Flory family are doing well, as you can see.

dinner and a slide show

Yurie Hong — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:16:51 +0000

On Wednesday, Sept. 30, Eta Sigma Phi provided an Italian feast for hungry classicists. Globe-trotting Gusties Matt Panciera, Paula Wiggam, and Emma Ellingson shared slides and stories of their trips to Sicily and Florence. The event took place, fittingly, in the International Center–the perfect setting for inspiring wanderlust!

Comedy Last Month

Yurie Hong — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 03:05:10 +0000

Plautus has been in the Gustavian air this past month.

The drama department at Gustavus put on a production of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum on the last weekend of February and the first weekend of March. The play was hilarious and a smashing success–especially the Feb 29th performance, which featured a cameo appearance by our very own Will Freiert!

On May 6th students from St. Olaf performed their own adaptation of Plautus’ Mostellaria complete with songs, Latin, and clever contemporary references. The bar has definitely been set very high for the upcoming Festival of Dionysus on June 3rd!

Departmental retreat

Eric Dugdale — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 20:18:17 +0000

Zeno and his followers conversed in the shade of a stoa, Epicurus and his gang met in his garden, and the Gustavus classics faculty met to think deep thoughts in the idyllic surroundings of the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. The occasion gave us a chance for a photo opportunity with all eight of us together!

Departmental Doings

Yurie Hong — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 07:50:05 +0000

So now that the dust of the first two weeks of class has settled, itâ€™s time to get this Classics blog party started. Only thirteen days and already so much has happened.

Last Sunday was the Classics Department Opening Reception for majors graciously (and deliciously) hosted by Will and Pat Freiert, to which Mary brought her famous brownies and where Sean regaled students with tales of his undergrad days. Matt made a triumphant appearance fresh from delivering a conference paper in England, and Eric will be leaving for his year in Germany. Perhaps he will bring back some military standards to adorn our halls!

Eta Sigma Phi has put together what looks to be a most exciting and fun-filled schedule of all things classical for the coming year. Be sure to keep an eye out for events and please try to attend some future meetings to help with the suggesting and the planning. Go aheadâ€”throw in a hand and share the glory!

And if youâ€™d like to contribute a post or a link about classics-related items, please send an email to yhong@gac.edu.

Classics family growing

Eric Dugdale — Fri, 25 May 2007 19:21:19 +0000

Even as we say a fond farewell to our graduating seniors and to Bronwen, we eagerly look forward to the arrival of three new faculty who will be joining us and adding to the record number of Gustavus classicists (30 majors at the last count!). You will get to meet them properly at the fall kick-off party, but here is a sneak preview:

Sean Easton’s interests range widely; he has presented and published on Greek and Roman authors, from the most prominent (such as Ovid and Virgil) to the more esoteric (such as Lucan and Dio Chrysostom); among his interests is Greco-Roman magic, so we may soon be learning about arcana more intriguing even than Harry Potter’s expelliarmus and furnunculus spells.

Yurie Hong is currently working with a wide variety of Greek medical, poetic and historiographical texts, looking at images of pregnancy and childbirth and at ways in which these are often appropriated by male authors. Her interests in gender studies and ancient medicine will expand the range of departmental specialities. Like her husband Sean, Yurie has most recently been teaching at Arizona State University.

For many, Mary McHugh needs no introduction, having already established a devout thiasos of Gustavus groupies when she taught here in 2004-05. Her interests range from Roman history and art history to gender studies and Greek philosophy. She has studied at the American Academy in Rome and presented and published on topics from Julio-Claudian women to Roman cuisine and Latin pedagogy. Her J-term course (A Taste of Roman Food) is still frequently cited in conversation. Mary (shown here midstream) will be joining us from Hamilton College.

Bronwen heads south

Eric Dugdale — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 21:16:35 +0000

At the end of the academic year, Bronwen will be leaving us to take up a tenure-track position at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Vanderbilt University. She joins a large and growing classics department that was looking for a Hellenist “whose research explores relationships with Roman and broader Mediterranean culture as a whole”, someone who could take a leading role in expanding the introductory Greek program and foster interdisciplinary connections with other departments. In short, Bronwen is the perfect person for this position! So I have to break into a men…de construction: on the one hand, I am very sad that Bronwen will be leaving us and will miss her energy, dedication and brilliance, but on the other hand am simply thrilled that she has been appointed to this exciting position. We officially declare Bronwen a proxenos of Gustavus Adolphus College, and look forward to sending our Gustavus graduates to Vanderbilt’s well-funded classics M.A. program! For a look at Vanderbilt’s classics department and the nearby full-size replica of the Parthenon, visit http://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/classics/

Athenaze is not just a book

Eric Dugdale — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 17:54:54 +0000

A fortnight ago I had the pleasure of being invited to Athens (Athens, Georgia, that is!) to give a talk on Euripides’ Trojan Women in conjunction with a production of the play by UGA’s theatre department. My talk (”Athenian Men Watching Trojan Women: the Function Of Tragedy in Athens”) was part of their blockbuster Athenaze event. The very mention of the word Athenaze is probably conjuring up images of awkwardly drawn Dicaeopolises in the minds of Hellenists; but at this Athenaze, there was not a -mi verb in sight! This annual event brings together classics department alums, majors, faculty, and high school students for a major fest celebrating classics. In the morning, a panel of four alums in their early twenties, who are now teaching Latin in the high schools, gave presentations as part of an outreach panel. They shared ideas for recruiting minorities, for organizing study trips to Italy, for creative events like toga bowling, Latin jeopardy, interlanguage Olympics, and a game called ‘toss the Romans into the volcano’, an off-beat celebration of the ancient treasures preserved through the eruption of Vesuvius. Latin is alive and kicking in Georgia – the teacher at Brookwood High School has over 600 students enrolled in Latin and told of students beating down her door to get a spot on her summer travel courses to Italy. Incidentally, you just can’t get away from Gustavus even by journeying Athenaze! The dramaturg (Brett Rogers, who teaches at UGA) was one of Matt’s former students at the Centro who gushed about his teaching, and at intermission two young ladies came up to me and asked me if I knew Andrew Howard!

Revisiting Ancient Corinth

Bronwen — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 17:27:36 +0000

Bronwen Wickkiser returned to her graduate alma mater, the University of Texas (hook ‘em horns!), in early January to talk with archaeologists, epigraphers, numismatists, and other scholars of Classics and Religious Studies from the US, Greece, Canada, and the UK about religion and society in the ancient city of Corinth. She gave a paper on Asklepios in Greek and Roman Corinth (the Greek city was razed by the Roman general Mummius in 146 BCE, and refounded as a freedmen’s colony by Julius Caesar in 44). Bronwen excavated at Corinth in 2000, so it was a homecoming on many levels. For more information on the conference, visit Corinth in Context: Comparative Perspectives on Religion and Society.

Eric just won’t go away!

Eric Dugdale — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 06:08:27 +0000

Eric Dugdale successfully underwent tenure review and was granted tenure.Â nunc plurimos maximosque honores a senatu rogavit, inter quos ut parens patriae appellaretur et sacrosanctus ac dictator in perpetuum esset. He has changed his name with immediate effect to Rex.