CFP: CUNY Graduate Student Conference in Classics

Weaving Words, Sculpting Sentiments: Manipulating Emotions in Public Spaces of the Ancient Mediterranean

The graduate students of the Department of Classics at the CUNY Graduate Center are pleased to announce the call for papers for our 16th annual Graduate Student Conference. The conference will be held in person and via Zoom on Friday, April 5th, 2024 at the Graduate Center (365 Fifth Ave, New York, NY). This year’s Keynote Speaker will be Prof. David Konstan (NYU).

Click here to view/download the CFP in PDF format or here for Word format

Emotions play a large role in even basic decision-making, as recent research continues to demonstrate.  Fear, sadness, pride, guilt, shame, awe, joy, and disgust all inform our decisions and influence our participation in social movements. Emotional responses can arise from our relationships with other people, impacted by their own decisions that affect us, but also from our relationship with institutions. For various reasons, these institutions often manipulate emotional responses across the entire public through rhetoric, iconography, space, religion, or architecture.

In this conference, we would like to explore the interplay in antiquity between the manipulation of emotions through public displays (written, spoken, material, or visual mediums) and the collective or individual responses to these manipulations.

  • What are the modes of emotional control imposed upon the public?
  • What degree of success did these methods of control see, or to what degree was resistance to emotional manipulation present?
  • Were there emotional responses that were more commonly evoked in people collectively, and in what contexts do these appear?

Possible topics include but are not at all limited to:

  • Speech as a form of emotional persuasion and/or manipulation in ancient epic
  • Appeals to renew empathy and religious duty in prophetic and other religious texts
  • Weaponization of shame and outrage in epideictic, deliberative, and forensic rhetoric
  • Collective processing of the trauma of war and plague in Greek theater
  • Public responses to iconography and architectural space in Roman Republican and Imperial Fora, including pride, fear, and awe
  • Fear and disgust in mythic depictions of monsters and the unknown
  • Rebuilding, reimagining, and continued use of public spaces into the modern era in efforts to manipulate or erase collective memory
  • Philosophical approaches to emotion and emotional manipulation in the civic realm
  • Any other literary, visual, or historical engagement with emotions in public space

We invite papers from a variety of disciplines beyond Classics, such as Comparative Literature, History, Philosophy, Art History, Political Science, Gender Studies, Psychology, Near Eastern studies, and others. We welcome and encourage submissions from individuals of all underrepresented backgrounds.

Please send anonymous abstracts of up to 300 words, along with an optional bibliography, for a 20-minute presentation to cunyclassicsconference@gmail.com in PDF format, no later than January 19, 2024. Please send personal details, such as full name and affiliation, in the body text of your email. Notifications to all applicants will be given by mid-February 2024. Questions may be sent to the co-organizers, Nan Coffey, Kevin Nobel, and Jen Ranck at the same email address.

We look forward to an engaging and diverse exploration of the topic.

Guidelines for Latin Teacher Preparation

(borrowed from the SCS post: https://classicalstudies.org/education/guidelines-latin-teacher-preparation)

The American Classical League (ACL) and the Society for Classical Studies (SCS) are pleased to present the Guidelines for Latin Teacher Preparation.

This document, which is a 2023 revision of the 2010 Standards for Latin Teacher Preparation, sets out what a beginning-career Latin teacher should know and be able to do, and includes the addition of an Addendum of Resources.

The document organizes a beginning Latin teacher’s knowledge, skills, and understanding under four main guidelines:

  • Content Knowledge
  • Pedagogical Knowledge, Skills, and Understanding
  • Other Areas of Responsibility
  • Professional Development and Lifelong Learning

The Guidelines will be useful to:

  • College & university faculty and students of Classical Studies
  • Faculty of Latin teacher preparation programs and schools of education
  • Students in Latin teacher preparation programs
  • K-12 Latin teachers

Below you will find links to the Guidelines for Latin Teacher Preparation, the Addendum of Resources, and a one-page flyer available for printing and display in departments or for sharing online. Please share the Guidelines with students and colleagues:

Guidelines for Latin Teacher Preparation (PDF)

Addendum of Resources (Google Doc)

One-Page Flyer (PDF):

In Memoriam: Janet Martin

Janet Martin, associate professor of classics, emeritus, and an expert in medieval Latin, died of cardiovascular disease at home in Princeton, New Jersey, on Aug. 30She was 84.

She joined the Princeton faculty in 1973, where she taught for 37 years, and transferred to emeritus status in 2010. She served as CAAS President in 2013-2014.

Click here to read more: Janet Martin, medieval Latinist and ‘gracious, generous mentor,’ dies at 84 (Princeton University) or Princeton Classics mourns the loss of Janet Martin (Princeton Classics)

Presidents of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States

PRESIDENTS OF THE CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION OF THE ATLANTIC STATES

This document (attached and posted below) was produced to provide a single and accessible list of CAAS presidents as part of the organization’s history and commitment to transparency. Information for 1906 through 2007-2008 comes from “Presidents of CAAS,” CW 75.1 (1981) 38-40 and Heverly, W. Gerald, “The Last Twenty-Five Years of CAAS,” CW 101.1 (2007) 7-20. Ronnie Ancona, CAAS Past President, added the data for 2008-2024 and created the single list. Updates will be made by CAAS.  

Click here to view the list page

Click here to view/download list in PDF format

This will soon be expanded from this introductory post to a permanent section of the website.