In accordance with the Board’s decision at the April 2023 meeting, CAAS recognizes the excellence of papers delivered in person at the annual meeting by means of monetary awards. Presiders nominate outstanding individual presentations in their sessions. Members of the Awards Subcommittee and/or members of the Program Committee with expertise in the subject nominate outstanding presenters at organized panels refereed by the Program Committee.
The Awards Subcommittee of the Program Committee is delighted to announce the winners for 2023 in the following categories:
- Undergraduate Student: Jasmine Bao
Jasmine Bao, an undergraduate student at Swarthmore College mentored by Professor Jeremy Lefkowitz, won an award for her presentation “Animal Cognition in the Collectio Augustana.” Conducting close readings of the Aesopic fables contained in the collection, Jasmine analyzed the concept of animal implied by the fables’ figures under the categories of cognition, learning, and self-reflection. Her well-organized, clear, and thoughtful examination of how the fables conceptualize animals prompted especially lively discussion among the audience.
2. Graduate Student: Paul Eberwine
A Ph.D. candidate in the Princeton University Classics Department, Paul Eberwine won an award for “Reading Death in Aeschylus’s Libation Bearers,” an original and insightful examination of the drama’s reflection “on ancient slavery by highlighting the essential role of the socially dead in shaping the political claims of the free, as well as that role’s subversive potential.” Demonstrating mastery of the text of the play, of pertinent scholarship in German and English, and of bibliography outside of the field of Classics, Eberwine adventurously but judiciously explored the contours of the “dangerous kind of power” social death confers on enslaved people in the play.
3. Post-Ph.D.: Elena Giusti
Dr. Elena Giusti, Associate Professor in Latin Literature and Language at the University of Warwick, UK won an award for “Ethnographic Discourses: Rome’s Racialized Africa.” Offering wide-ranging and convincing evidence in texts and images, Giusti argued that racialized discourse depicting Africa as a land of marvels, desolation, and monsters emerged in the early Roman imperial period and served to distort perceptions of Africa during the age of European explorations in the 15th and 16th centuries. Giusti built on the work of the African philosopher and classicist Valentin-Yves Mudimbe to challenge credibly Frank Snowden’s contention that race was inapplicable to Greco-Roman antiquity. The evidence and argument presented in Dr. Giusti’s paper are sure to be relevant to disciplines outside of Classics.
Program Committee Awards Subcommittee: David Rosenbloom (Chair), Andrea Kouklanakis, Karin Suzadail, Konstantinos Nikoloutsos (ex officio).