In Memoriam: Dr. Elizabeth Ann Fisher

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We are sorry to share the recent passing of Dr. Elizabeth Ann Fisher, professor and department chair at the George Washington University’s Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. Dr. Fisher received a CAAS ovatio in 2019. Her obituary is available at https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/washington-dc/elizabeth-fisher-12935205. The text of the 2019 ovatio can be found below Dr. Fisher’s photo.

Ovatio: Elizabeth A. Fisher

Nunc est ovandum, nunc grato animo pulsanda mensa, ut laudemus hanc feminam, humilem sed eruditissimam, sodales. Adepta gradum Baccalaureae Artis apud universitatem quaerentem quaecumque sint vera, propinquam ventosae urbi in horto, tunc attinuit apud universitatem Veritate insignem, propinquam fabarum oppido, gradus Magistrae Artis Doctorisque Philosophiae. Illuminavit opera scriptorum Byzantinorum luculentissime, apud docta domicilia consecrata investigandis et explicandis litteris Graecis per multa saecula, et in scribendo dicendoque. Multas per gentes, multa per aequora vecta, summo studio servivit universitati proclamanti deum nobis fiduciam, fulciens et fovens disciplinam non solum linguarum sed etiam sententiarum Romanorum Graecorumque. Sustinendis magistris linguae Latinae et studiis classicis ipsis locuplevit et discipulos et professores in hac regione, et in nostra societate. Plaudamus igitur Elizabeth A. Fisher.

Now, companions, an ovation must be delivered, now with grateful hearts our tables must be pounded, so that we may praise this woman, modest but extraordinarily learned. Having received her BA degree at Northwestern University, she then obtained her MA and PhD degrees at Harvard. Her scholarship—recognized as distinguished by fellowships from Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies and the Center for Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks; and shared in numerous publications, conference papers, and invited talks—has brilliantly cast light on the writings of such authors as Michael Psellos and Maximus Planudes. Exploring remote classical and Byzantine sites, she has also traveled extensively throughout eastern Turkey and Syria. As department chair, she invested immense energies in keeping the Classics program alive and well at The George Washington University; she also has taught its courses in both ancient languages and on literature and culture in translation. Her support for secondary school Latin at the School Without Walls, and for university-level research through her leadership of the Washington-area Ancient Mediterranean Seminar, has greatly enriched our region and organization. Let us thus applaud Elizabeth A. Fisher.

Judith P. Hallett and Denis Sullivan, University of Maryland, College Park, and John Ziolkowski, The George Washington University

The 2026 Fall Annual Meeting of The Classical Association of the Atlantic States

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When: Thursday, October 8, to Saturday, October 10, 2026

Where: The Hotel Du Pont, Wilmington, DE

Registration: The deadline to register for the 2026 Fall Meeting is September 15, 2026. Register at this link:  https://caas.press.jhu.edu/membership/conference

You can also register by navigating to the Members’ Area and clicking on “Conference.” 

Please note that breakfast is included with the cost of registration.  

All other meals are not included in the cost of registration and must be selected immediately below the registration section of the form.

Hotel Reservations:  The Hotel Du Pont, 42 W 11th St, Wilmington, DE 19801

  • Direct Booking Link:  https://bit.ly/3LFqI1g 
  • Phone Booking: (302) 594-3100 and request the room block set aside for CAAS
  • Cut-off Date to Book: 09/07/2026

Program: Coming soon!

Exhibitors & Vendors: For information about signing up as an exhibitor or vendor, please contact our Executive Director, Denise Flood, at ed@caas-cw.org.

We look forward to seeing you in Wilmington this October!

CAAS Announces Slate of Candidates | Petitions Due July 1, 2026

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During its recent meeting, the Board approved a slate of candidates for all elective offices and directorships and is announcing the slate on the CAAS website and via the CAAS members listserv. Members may nominate an additional candidate or candidates through a petition signed by at least fifteen CAAS members eligible to vote. The petition must be received by the Executive Director no later than July 1, 2026, and nominees must be CAAS members who reside and/or work in the CAAS region. Nominees with a valid petition will be added to the slate of candidates. This slate, along with materials for the Annual Business Session of the Corporation/Membership, will be sent to members. The Session will be held at the Hotel Du Pont, Wilmington, DE on October 10, 2026, when the candidates’ names will be presented for election.

Officers

President: Lauren Petersen
First Vice-President: James Capreedy
Second Vice-President: Andrea Kouklanakis
Officer-at-Large: David Rosenbloom

Regional Directors (Second Term)

New Jersey South: Evan Jewell (2027-2028)
Pennsylvania Eastern: TJ Bolt (2027-2028)
Pennsylvania Central and Western: Christian Wildberg (2027-2028)
Pennsylvania (Philadelphia): Meghan Quinn (2027-2028)

CANE Summer Institute: July 6-10, 2026

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CANE’s Summer Institute is just a few weeks away, July 6-10. It is virtual, and you do not need to be a member of CANE to attend!

CSI’s theme this year is Xenia, Community, and Solidarity in the Ancient World. Under this theme we might ask such questions as: what makes up a polis or a res publica? Who gets included, and who gets excluded, and why? Can that boundary of inclusion and exclusion be crossed, and if so, how? What other kinds of communities do we see in the ancient or late antique world, like churches, mystery cults, or patronage networks? How big is that gap between an ideal community and the nitty gritty every day workings of that community in practice? How does a community even get created in the first place, and what is necessary for that to happen?

This year features courses from Mark Thatcher and Matthew Aumiller. Lecturers include Hanne Eisenfeld, Peter Machinist, Kathleen Coleman, and Caitlin Gillespie. There will also be pedagogical workshops by Jacqui Carlon and Maureen Lamb.

You can find more information, including tuition and registration, at www.caneweb.org/csi.

Sharing some recent Philadelphia-area Classics news!

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Former CAAS Executive Director Mary Brown recently wrote two articles about successful Philadelphia-area Classics programs. Both articles may be of interest to CAAS members throughout the Mid-Atlantic region:

CUNY Graduate Student Conference in Classics: Thalassocracy and the Power of the Sea | April 24, 2026

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The Classics Department at the CUNY Graduate Center invites you to the 18th Annual Graduate Student Conference in Classics, Thalassocracy and the Power of the Sea, on Friday, April 24th, 2026. The event is free and open to the public.

The conference will take place in the Skylight Conference Room at the CUNY Graduate Center (365 Fifth Ave, right across the street from the Empire State Building), from 9:30 AM to 6:00 PM, and will feature a keynote address by Columbia University’s Elizabeth Irwin, as well as three panels of graduate student speakers on nautical matters ranging from the Assyrian Empire through the Roman hegemony in the Mediterranean.

Registration for the event can be found on our website, https://thalassocracy.commons.gc.cuny.edu/. While registration will remain open up to and including the day of the event, we encourage those interested in joining us for lunch to register by April 10th so that we can order a sufficient amount of food. 

For questions, please email cunyclassicsconference@gmail.com.

Call for Proposals: 2026 CAAS Annual Meeting – EXTENDED to April 19, 2026

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Deadline for all proposals: EXTENDED to Sunday, April 19, 2026 (11:59 p.m.)

Meeting dates: October 8-10, 2026

Meeting location: The Hotel Du Pont, Wilmington, DE

Submit here: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=caas2026

We invite proposals for individual papers, panels, and workshops/roundtables on all aspects of the ancient world and its afterlife. Especially welcome are submissions that propose innovative approaches to established scholarly debates on classical antiquity; that integrate the interests of K-12 and college faculty; that explore new strategies and resources for improved and inclusive teaching; that share fresh ideas about communicating the importance of ancient Greece and Rome beyond our discipline and profession; that explore connections between the Greco-Roman world and other civilizations, both ancient and modern; and that reflect on the past, present, and future of Classical Studies in the CAAS region and beyond. All submissions should aim for maximum audience engagement. We will strongly encourage panels and presenters to develop their presentations into full-length manuscripts for submission to Classical World, the official publication of CAAS.

SUBMISSION DETAILS 

Eligibility to submit a proposal: All submitters must be members of CAAS when they submit their proposal. The CAAS membership year is January 1-December 31. Organizers of panels and workshops must verify participants’ membership status before submitting the proposal. Undergraduate students making an individual submission must ensure their mentors have paid the CAAS membership fee for 2026 before making a submission. Membership status can be checked by contacting the Program Coordinator (pc@caas-cw.org).

Single appearance policy: Each submitter may not submit more than one abstract (whether single- or co-authored). Authors of individual paper proposals also may not simultaneously submit a proposal as part of a panel or workshop proposal. Panel and workshop organizers should ensure that participants in their proposed sessions do not intend to appear anywhere else on the program as speakers.    

Individual Paper Proposals should be drafted for a presentation of 15 minutes in length. When the Program is finalized, additional time may be granted depending on the number of papers included in each session. Proposals of no more than 300 words should be submitted. Only Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) files are acceptable. Proposals should do the following: 

  1. Begin with a clear statement of a thesis and indicate the paper’s original contribution(s) by situating it in a larger scholarly context. The Program Committee expects to see these at the outset of the proposal.  
  2. Include a bibliography of five items, typically major and/or recent publications. These items are not included in the word count. The Program Committee expects these references to appear both in parentheses at appropriate points in the proposal to support the argument and at the end as works cited. Submitters of pedagogical abstracts may refer to innovative teaching approaches in progress.
  3. Be anonymous. The author’s name should not appear anywhere in the submission. Make references to the author’s own publications or pedagogical techniques in the third person. Proposals that include the names of authors, their institutional affiliations, or any other identifying information cannot be accepted.    

If you are an undergraduate student, please first select “Individual” under Type of Submission and then “Undergraduate Paper.”   

Panel Proposals must be drafted for a session of either 2 hours in length (3 speakers) or 2 ½ hours (4 speakers). A respondent may be included in the latter category as a fifth speaker. Especially welcome are proposals that showcase the research of (under)graduate students of a department and include at least one paper to be read by a faculty member who serves as advisor. Proposals of no more than 1000 words should be submitted by the organizer(s) as a single Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) file and include the following:   

  1. The title of the panel.
  2. The titles of each individual presentation. 
  3. An introductory paragraph that establishes the coherence of the panel as a whole and indicates its original contribution, situating the panel in a larger scholarly context. 
  4. Abstracts of the individual presentations. 
  5. Include a bibliography of five items, typically major and/or recent publications. These items are not included in the word count. The Program Committee expects these references to appear both in parentheses at appropriate points in the proposal to support of the argument and at the end as works cited. Submitters of pedagogical panels may refer to innovative teaching approaches in progress.
  6. Be anonymous. The author’s name should not appear anywhere in the submission. Make references to the author’s own publications or pedagogical techniques in the third person. Proposals that include the names of authors, their institutional affiliations, or any other identifying information cannot be accepted.    

Workshops/roundtables are typically allocated 2 hours and expected to be devoted, for their most part, to a discussion between the organizer(s)/presenter(s) and the audience. Presentations, if any, must, therefore, be shorter than those included in organized panels. All the above guidelines for panels apply to workshop/roundtable proposals except that the limit for the proposal as a whole is 700 words, excluding bibliographical references. Authors will be notified about the status of their submission by mid-May. If their submissions are accepted for presentation, all speakers and organizers must register online through Johns Hopkins University Press. 

Submission of an abstract is a commitment to present the paper in person. If a paper must be read in absentia due to extenuating circumstances, the author must inform both the presiders of the panel and the Program Coordinator as soon as they can. They must also arrange for a reader to read the paper on their behalf. Both the author and the reader must register for the Annual Meeting in the respective category (faculty or student). Mentors of undergraduate students are expected to attend in person. If this is not possible due to extenuating circumstances, they still must register in order for their name to feature in the Program.  

All submitters are advised to read the CAAS Anti-Racism Committee statement on condemning the use of the texts, ideals, and images of the Greek and Roman world to promote hateful ideology, as follows: 

“The Classical Association of the Atlantic States is committed to fighting against all forms of racism and bigotry, including anti-Blackness, anti-Semitism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment, ableism, and all other kinds of bias, in order to make our discipline fairer and more inclusive for all, as we strengthen the position of Classics through the development of better methods of teaching and the fostering of public support of the Classics. In addition, CAAS expects that all Annual Meeting participants treat each other with respect and afford everyone the dignity of being included in presentations and public discussions and not target, disrespect, or exclude anyone. The Program Committee therefore asks authors to be mindful of the language used in preparing abstracts and papers and to edit for biased phrasing and diction that are discriminatory or harmful to historically marginalized groups — be they racial, class, ethnic, financial, gendered, religious, or social. We call to the attention of all authors CAAS’s statement on anti-racism; the Society for Classical Studies’ statement on systemic racism, which CAAS also endorses; and the Principles of Antiracist Teaching and Reflection curated by the Multiculturalism, Race and Ethnicity in Classics Consortium (MRECC), which offers pathways for educators to advance learning and scholarship while building equity and inclusivity for historically marginalized groups in furtherance of the mission of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States. Abstracts and proposals that run counter to these values will not be accepted. Authors seeking additional information about language of equity in their submissions are invited to contact the Program Coordinator.”

Submit here: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=caas2026

For questions, please contact CAAS Interim Program Coordinator Lawrence Kowerski (pc@caas-cw.org). Please contact the CAAS Webmaster (webmaster@caas-cw.org) with technical questions regarding submission through EasyChair.  

CAAS Conference Travel Subsidies: CAAS offers need-based travel subsidies (up to $600) to speakers and members planning to attend the Annual Meeting. The call for applications will be announced by the Chair of the Program Committee Travel Subsidies Subcommittee in late Spring 2026, after the circulation of the first draft of the Program by the Program Coordinator.   

CAAS Presentation Awards: CAAS recognizes the excellence of papers delivered in person at the annual meeting by means of monetary awards in four categories: Post-Ph.D.; Graduate Student; Undergraduate Student; and K-12 Educator. Presiders who will receive advance copies of papers to be read in their sessions are asked to nominate outstanding individual presentations after the annual meeting, submitting detailed commentary on the content, argument, and delivery of the paper. The Chair of the Program Committee Awards Subcommittee will announce recipients of awards before December 31.