Classics and Semitics @ GWU

It’s that time of the year again when students are home resting from the end of semester whirlwind and professors are scrambling to get some research done and prepare syllabi and materials for next semester. I thought it would be good to do a little end of term note.

Let’s begin with something somewhat sad–after 40 years, Dr. Z retired from GWU last spring but decided to stay on in a part time capacity this year (he had a hard time letting go). Well, his time here is now officially ending as Z heads off on a new set of adventures including continuing his study of the double bass and learning Spanish. He will be missed by everyone here.

In other news, the terms seems to have come off successfully.

• Enrollments in Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and Latin continue to rise and our literature and history classes are as over-enrolled as ever. Thanks to all of you who keep coming back semester after semester!
• We welcomed 7 new Classics majors and a handful of minors into the fold. The new Semitics minor (Hebrew and Arabic language and culture) has been catching on and soon we may be able to offer a Semitics Languages major as well–it would be possibly the first in the country of its kind.
• The Classics and Archaeology club sponsored 2 movie viewings and a guest lecture on Greek sculpture. Thanks to all of you who came!
• We held the first ever Classics major fair this semester. Thanks again to those of you who came and enjoyed pizza and conversation.
• We attempted to use the university’s new wait-list system for spring registration. To all of you who tried to play along, thanks. Wasn’t that fun?
• We began our search for a new faculty member specializing in Classical Archaeology and languages. With any luck, we’ll be able to start offering courses in Greek and Roman archaeology next year.
• We welcomed 2 new permanent Arabic language specialists (Jennifer Tobkin and Nashwa Taher), a new permanent Hebrew language specialist (Shoshana Marcus) and are searching now for another permanent Arabic specialist.

Looking forward to next term:

• More Classics Club events: We plan on showing more movies next term (Life of Brian, Indiana Jones, maybe History of the World) and we are planning a museum trip to the Sackler to see their exhibits on Alexander and on painted sculpture from ancient Greece (only around until Jan. 20th).
• A number of our majors will be studying abroad next term in Greece, Scotland and England. Lucky students.
• The year end party will be coming in May and prizes for the top Greek and Latin students will be awarded. You know you all want your own copy of the Life of George Washington in Latin!
• Dr. Cline will be offering History of Egypt and the Near East for the first time in 3 years. Due to demand, the class size was doubled from 60 to 120. Maybe we should try to offer it more often?
• Thanks to our search for a new classical archaeologist, the department will be sponsoring a series of lectures next semester. We look forward to seeing many of our students there!
• Last, but not least, a shameless plea: Due to Dr. Z’s departure and Dr. Fisher’s continued sabbatical, Professors Lupu and Kennedy will be working especially hard next term covering all language sections among other classes. Please be gentle with them.

There are a lot of exciting things happening here in the department and we want to thank our majors, minors and other interested students for continuing to support the study of Classics, Arabic and Hebrew. We the faculty are working hard to make sure that our classes continue to be interesting and challenging.

Hope you all enjoy your time off. See you In January!

Catherine Keesling (Associate Professor and Chair at Georgetown University) will talk on “Greek Portrait Statues: Who, When, and Why” on Thursday, November 1 (see below for more information):

The study of ancient Greek portraiture has been treated as a question of origins since the Roman author Pliny the Elder, who was concerned to show that the characteristics of portraiture most familiar to his contemporary Roman audience in fact had an ancient and distinguished Greek pedigree.  Modern scholarship, hampered by the lack of preserved Greek originals and relying heavily upon Roman marble “copies” of lost Greek portraits, has often taken a similar tack. The result is that most modern studies of Greek portraiture concentrate on the fifth century B.C., a period in which portraits were seldom identified as such by their accompanying inscriptions.

Herodotus, writing in the 420s B.C., mentions more than 60 sanctuary dedications in his Histories, but only a handful of portraits; only a few of the public monuments commemorating the Greek victories in the Persian Wars of 490 and 480-479 B.C. included portrait statues.  The epigraphical evidence of inscribed statue bases strongly suggests that a real explosion in the practice of portraiture in both the public and private spheres in the Greek world took place in the fourth century B.C.  The epigraphical evidence also sheds new and surprising light upon the complex histories of Greek portrait statues.  In addition to being copied by Roman sculptors, Greek portraits were also literally recycled as portraits of Roman subjects.  Retrospective honorific portraits of the fourth century and later—that is, posthumous portraits of subjects long deceased—have also obscured the history of Greek portraiture, making it more difficult to see that Greek “portrait culture” is largely a phenomenon of the fourth century and later.