Monday, December 6, 2010

New on the APA Web Site

Awards to be Presented at the San Antonio Meeting.

Acknowledgments of Annual Giving Contributions in 2010 Fiscal Year and Gateway Campaign Pledges through September 30, 2010. An updated Campaign News page describes a successful fund-raising event in New York City and "Friends" groups honoring revered classics teachers.

APA Office hours during the upcoming holiday period.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Annual Meeting Hotel Reservations

December 20 is the deadline to book hotel rooms at the convention hotels, the San Antonio Marriott Rivercenter & Riverwalk Hotels. Book online or call 1-800-266-9432 between 8:00am and 5:30pm CST.


The AIA and APA are financially able to hold the Annual Meeting by reserving a large block of guest rooms within the hotels. In exchange, the hotels offer registrants their lowest possible group rate and provide us with complimentary meeting space. If we are unable to meet our guaranteed minimum number of registered guests, the AIA and APA will have to pay for the unused rooms as well as room rental for the meeting space, which would amount to a severe financial penalty. We request your support by booking within our reserved blocks and appreciate your cooperation.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Capital Campaign Matching Grant Deadline Extended

The National Endowment for the Humanities has given the APA additional time to claim matching funds available under its current challenge grant. Just last week the APA took a big step towards obtaining the necessary donations by holding a successful fund-raising event at New York University featuring the Aquila Theatre Company. See details on the APA web site.

New APA Information Architect

Read about the appointment of Samuel Huskey of the University of Oklahoma as the APA's new Information Architect. In January he will succeed Robin Mitchell-Boyask of Temple University who provided extraordinary service to the APA as Editor of the web site since 1998.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Proposals for a Performance Archive Invited

The Board of Directors invites members to consider submitting a proposal for the creation of an archive of performances of classical works. The idea for such an archive was one of the suggestions growing out of a Committee on Research retreat in September, 2009, with input from the Committee on Outreach as well. It was developed into a more detailed concept by a task force chaired by C. W. Marshall; the report of this task force can be found at http://apaclassics.org/index.php/research/fellowship/performance_archive/. The task force suggests a number of characteristics that an ideal archive project would have.

The Directors have now asked the task force to evaluate proposals from institutions and individuals interested in being the home of such an archive. If you would like to pursue this opportunity, please see the link given above for details.

Roger Bagnall

Vice President for Research

roger.bagnall@nyu.edu

Sunday, September 19, 2010

APA Office Move

We have successfully moved into our new offices at the following address:

American Philological Association

University of Pennsylvania

220 S. 40th Street, Suite 201E

Philadelphia. PA 19104-3512

Telephone: 215-898-4975

FAX: 215-573-7874

E-mail: apaclassics@sas.upenn.edu

Telephone, FAX, and e-mail services are all working, and we apologize for any difficulties members have experienced in reaching us during the past month.

New This Week on the APA Web Site

September Job Listings

Hotel Reservation Information for Annual Meeting in San Antonio. (Registration Information Coming Soon)

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

TAPA 140.2 Sneak Preview

Transactions of the American Philological Association
Autumn 2010 / Volume 140 / Number 2

Contents

I. Presidential Address

Josiah Ober

Wealthy Hellas

II. Papers

Alex Gottesman

The Beggar and the Clod: The Mythic Notion of Property in Ancient Greece

This paper calls attention to the need to think about Greek property based on the evidence available. While scholars note the absence of relevant legal or economic sources, I argue that certain mythic texts reveal important aspects of the ideology of property and, specifically, that property relations tended to be understood in terms of exchange relations. Being an owner meant engaging in certain kinds of exchange, and abstaining from other kinds of exchange. The myths that I consider here reveal this notion by suggesting that property is destabilized when property owners conduct exchange in the wrong way.

Alex C. Purves

Wind and Time in Homeric Epic

This paper examines the relationship between wind, narrative, and time in Homer. It begins by considering Fränkel’s observation that weather rarely occurs outside the similes in the Iliad, and goes on to show that wind plays a subtle but fundamental role in shaping the narratives of both the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Owen Goslin

Hesiod’s Typhonomachy and the Ordering of Sound

I argue that Hesiod shaped his Typhonomachy with a particular interest in the relationship between sound, communication, and authority. Typhon’s defeat results in the reordering of the sonic world of the Theogony, and as such is a necessary precursor to the birth of the Muses. Hesiod thereby shows how the conditions for song are not a natural element of the cosmos, but result from Zeus’s suppression of Typhon. This victory is significant for the Theogony as a whole, in so far as it enables communication between gods and men, and thus renders the structure of the cosmos intelligible to mortals.

José M. González
The Catalogue of Women and the End of the Heroic Age (Hesiod fr. 204.94–103
M-W)

The Catalogue of Women supplies the crucial link between Hesiodic poetry and heroic epic. The heroic world of archaic poetry cannot be fully understood without it. But the interpretation of fragment 204 M-W, which describes the end of the heroic age, has long been burdened with misleading and unnecessary assumptions. This article challenges three particularly influential ones: that the passage contrasts demigods to “ordinary” mortals; that Zeus only feigns to destroy the demigods; and that [βίοτον κα]ὶ̣ is an acceptable supplement to line 103. My analysis shows that the Catalogue does not represent a departure from, but a creative reappropriation of, traditional epic material.

William Hutton

Pausanias and the Mysteries of Hellas

Instead of being an amorphous collection of useful facts for travelers, Pausanias’s Description of Greece offers a carefully structured meditation on the state of Greece in the Roman period. By mustering certain narrative themes and techniques around the pivot-point of his description of Olympia, Pausanias compares and contrasts the Roman conquest of Greece with the Spartan conquest of Messenia and offers his own text as an affirmatory parallel to a sacred document that was restored to the Messenians at the time of their liberation. Appreciation of the author’s ambitious program of structural and thematic patterns explains many aspects of the text that previous scholars have found perplexing, including its abrupt and enigmatic ending.

Dunstan Lowe

The Symbolic Value of Grafting in Ancient Rome

Some scholars have read Virgil’s grafted tree (G. 2.78-82) as a sinister image, symptomatic of man’s perversion of nature. However, when it is placed within the long tradition of Roman accounts of grafting (in both prose and verse), it seems to reinforce a consistently positive view of the technique, its results, and its possibilities. Virgil’s treatment does represent a significant change from Republican to Imperial literature, whereby grafting went from mundane reality to utopian fantasy. This is reflected in responses to Virgil from Ovid, Columella, Calpurnius, Pliny the Elder, and Palladius (with Republican context from Cato, Varro, and Lucretius), and even in the postclassical transformation of Virgil’s biography into a magical folktale.

Issue 141.1, to appear in late spring 2011, will feature the following articles:

James Porter, "Making and Unmaking: The Achaean Wall and the Limits of Fictionality in Homeric Criticism"
Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui, "Priam’s Catabasis: Traces of the Epic Journey to Hades in Iliad 24"
John Heath, "Women's Work: Female Transmission of Mythical Narrative"
Mary Boatwright, "Women in the Forum Romanum"
Randall J. Pogorzelski, "Orbis Romanus: Lucan and the Limits of the Roman World"
Timothy Stover, "Unexampled Examplarity: Medea in Valerius Flaccus"
Giovanni Ruffini, "Village Life and Family Power in Late Antique Nessana"

Thursday, August 19, 2010

New This Week on the APA Web Site

August Job Listings


Spring 2010 Newsletter

APA Office Move

On August 20, 2010, the APA Office will move to another location on the University of Pennsylvania campus. Our new address is

American Philological Association
University of Pennsylvania
220 S. 40th Street
Suite 201E
Philadelphia, PA 19104-3512

Our telephone and FAX numbers as well as our e-mail addresses will remain the same. We hope to have our computers set up and connected to the Internet by Monday morning, August 23, and we expect our FAX line to be installed by the end of the day on Tuesday, August 24. For a variety of reasons, however, we do not expect to have regular telephone service until about September 1. During that period we should be able to check voice mail, and we will do so regularly, but the best ways to be in touch with us will be e-mail and FAX. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Adam D. Blistein
Executive Director

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Minority, Pearson, and TLL Calls for Applications

The APA has published updated information for three of its fellowship programs:

  • Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae supported by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities

Preliminary Program for 2011 Annual Meeting

The APA Program Committee has scheduled paper sessions for the upcoming annual meeting in San Antonio.

2010-2011 Placement Service Information and Forms

See the APA web site for Placement Service information and forms for the upcoming academic year. Forms can now be completed online before you print them and submit them to the APA Office.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Editor of APA Web Site

The American Philological Association seeks to appoint an Editor of the APA Web Site for a term of four years, to begin with the January 2011 meetings in San Antonio. The prospective Editor, who serves as a volunteer, will be a member in good standing of the Association with experience in developing and maintaining web sites and an interest and experience in new media of publication and publicity. His/her task is to maintain the integrity and coherence of the APA Web Site and linked pages under APA control and to work with APA officers and committees to provide timely information in electronic form that is useful to members and others interested in Classics. The Editor is empowered to arrange, link, and add materials on the APA site, as well as to remove materials no longer useful. The Web Editor receives complimentary registration, travel, and housing to attend the Annual Meetings of the Association. The successful candidate will contribute substantive ideas to ongoing discussions concerning the best forms of publication for the Association. In conjunction with the Editor for Textbooks, the Editor for Monographs, the editor of TAPA, and the Vice President for Publications, the Editor will play an important role in developing and implementing alternative forms of publication, distribution and publicity. The Ad Hoc Committee on the Web Site and the Newsletter will advise the Editor on matters of substantial policy, but the Editor will have primary responsibility and authority on a day-to-day basis. Candidates should submit, and nominees will be invited to submit, a current c.v. and a statement outlining the strengths and goals that the applicant would bring to the position. Applications and nominations may be submitted to the Vice President at provost@georgetown.edu. Consideration of candidates will begin on or after July 31, 2010 (note extended deadline).

Editor of APA Monographs

The American Philological Association seeks to appoint an Editor for Monographs for a term of four years, to begin with the January 2011 meetings in San Antonio. The prospective Editor, who serves as a volunteer, should be a member in good standing of the Association, with a record of scholarly accomplishment and with some editorial experience. His/her task is to identify scholarly work of distinction and bring it to publication. The APA expects to continue its relationship with Oxford University Press (New York) for publication of such works in print form, but seeks an editor willing to explore alternate forms of publication for appropriate scholarly works. The incoming editor will also work with the Editor for Textbooks, the Web Editor, the Editor of TAPA, and the Vice President for Publications to improve distribution and publicity for APA publications. Candidates should submit, and nominees will be invited to submit, a current c.v. and a statement outlining the strengths and goals that the applicant would bring to the position. Applications and nominations may be submitted to the Vice President at provost@georgetown.edu. Consideration of candidates will begin on or after July 31, 2010 (note extended deadline).

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Awards for Excellence in Teaching at the College Level

The nomination deadline for the APA Awards for Excellence in the Teaching of Classics at the College Level has been extended to June 1, 2010. For further details, see

http://apaclassics.org/education/awards/teachaward.html.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Improved User Interface for APh Online

We are very pleased to announce that L' ANNÉE PHILOLOGIQUE on the Internet (APh Online) now has a new and more powerful user interface. APA President Dee L. Clayman provides details in this announcement.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Classics at Leeds (UK) under threat

Leeds Classics has a new blog to inform the public about its future.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

APA Elections in Summer 2010

See the slate of candidates for this Summer's election and note the April 15 deadline for nomination of additional candidates by petition.

Major NEH Grant to Aquila Theatre Company

The APA is pleased to participate in the Aquila Theatre Company's new project Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives which has just received a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. This Fall the Outreach Division will issue a call for APA members wishing to serve as lecturers and discussion leaders for the public programs to be funded by this grant.

Roundtable Discussion Sessions

The deadline for submission of Roundtable Discussion Session proposals to the APA Program Committee has been extended to May 14, 2010. See these instructions for online submission.

Instructions for Submission of Individual Abstracts

Submission instructions are now posted on the APA web site. Abstracts must be submitted online by 11:59 p.m. (Pacific Time) on May 14, 2010.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

APA Preliminary Bibliography on Caesar in support of AP Latin Teachers

In response to the upcoming addition of Caesar to the Advanced Placement Latin curriculum, the APA Board in January endorsed the development of a preliminary bibliography to help AP Latin teachers prepare for their future teaching. As APA Vice President for Education, I appointed Board members John Marincola and Ann Vasaly to take on this task and am very appreciative of their efforts.
Ronnie Ancona

ACL-APA Standards for Latin Teacher Preparation Now Available

The following is a link to information on the new ACL-APA Standards for Latin Teacher Preparation.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

APA Awards

Now available: full information on the 2009 winners and calls for nominations for 2010, including the new President's Award

Friday, February 19, 2010

New APA Newsletter

The October-December 2009 APA Newsletter is now available as a pdf and in html

Instructions for Submission of Proposals for 2011 and 2012 Annual Meetings

It is now possible for members to submit proposals and reports for review by the APA Program Committee at its April meeting. By action of the APA Board of Directors, all submissions listed below must be made electronically through the web site of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) and are due no later than 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on Friday, March 12. Instructions for the submission of individual abstracts (which will be due in May) will be posted in April. The submissions now being accepted are

FOR THE 2011 ANNUAL MEETING IN SAN ANTONIO
A. Proposals for an At Large Panel, Committee Panel, Seminar, or Workshop

B. Proposals for a Roundtable Discussion Session

C. Reports on Sessions Organized by a Previously Chartered Affiliated Group or Organizer-Refereed Panel

FOR THE 2012 ANNUAL MEETING IN PHILADEPHIA
D. Application for a New Organizer-Refereed Panel or a New or Renewed Affiliated Group Charter

See the Program Guide at

http://apaclassics.org/AnnualMeeting/2011_Program_Guide.html

This document contains much of the information that used to appear in the Program Guide insert (yellow pages) of the October Newsletter. Please examine the General Requirements section of this document closely before beginning the submission process. Note in particular that members wishing to make a submission

  • must obtain a free account from SSRN,
  • must be in good standing (i.e., have APA dues paid through 2010),
  • and must have a working password for the members only section of the APA web site.

The paragraphs entitled "SSRN Registration" and "APA Membership" of the Program Guide explain how to register with SSRN and resolve membership or web site access problems and give contact information for SSRN and Johns Hopkins University Press staff who can assist with these tasks.

We are very pleased to offer this online submission facility this year and welcome suggestions for improvement next year.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Classicists with backgrounds in musical performance and the history of music

The APA Division of Outreach and the APA Committee on Ancient and Modern Performance are creating a list of classicists with backgrounds in musical performance and the history of music.

We are especially eager to identify colleagues who would be willing to share their knowledge of both music and classical antiquity with individuals writing or performing works that are set in the ancient Greco-Roman world, draw on ancient Greek and Latin literary texts, or feature classical figures and themes.

If you would be willing to lend your expertise to this project, particularly by responding to queries from denizens of the musical world, please send a brief (200-300 word) biography describing your credentials" and interests in both classics and music to Judith P. Hallett, jeph@umd.edu. The deadline for inclusion in the initial list is February 28, but it will be updated regularly.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Temporary Change in Publication Schedule for Amphora

Over the last three decades the APA has built up an endowment, its General Fund, that generates income to supplement publication revenue; grants and contributions; and membership, annual meeting, and placement fees. This investment income allows the APA, despite its relatively modest size, to offer programs and services that are usually offered only by much larger disciplinary societies like the Modern Language Association, the American Historical Association, and the American Academy of Religion.


To preserve the endowment in the General Fund, the APA's Finance Committee has developed guidelines that limit our withdrawals to 5% of the Fund's average value over the previous three years. The recent declines in financial markets have therefore reduced the amount that it is prudent to withdraw from the General Fund. As a result, when it approved the budget for the current fiscal year (July 2009-June 2010), the APA Board instituted a number of changes in programs that would reduce expenses. These changes included suspension of automatic mailing of the Newsletter and the annual meeting Program to members, a major reduction in the amount of food to be offered at the President's Reception in Anaheim, and a reluctant decision to publish only one issue of Amphora during the current fiscal year.


The next issue of Amphora will therefore be published in March 2010 rather than the customary December 2009. APA members in good standing for 2010 will receive that issue by mail only if they have checked the box on their 2010 dues bills requesting a printed copy. Nonmember subscribers will, of course, receive a printed copy as usual. The issue will also, as usual, appear on the APA web site.


The publication schedule for the subsequent issue of Amphora will be determined in Spring 2010 when the Association develops its budget for the next fiscal year. In the interim, we appreciate the support of both members and nonmembers for this effort to bring the excitement of the Classical world to the widest possible audience.


Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Calls for Papers for 2011 Annual Meeting

Calls for abstracts from Organizer-Refereed Panels and Affiliated Groups have been posted on the APA web site since December

http://apaclassics.org/AnnualMeeting/2011_CFPs.html

The abstract deadline for many of these calls is next Monday (February 1).

With the assistance of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), the APA will soon offer a mechanism for online submission of both panel proposals and individual abstracts for the 2011 meeting. Instructions for using this mechanism will be posted in a few weeks. In the interim, APA members should make sure that their dues are paid for 2010 and should register with the SSRN if they do not already have an account. Members paid up for 2009 but not for 2010 should have received an e-mail message to that effect last week and can expect to receive printed reminders in early February. You can register for SSRN at

http://hq.ssrn.com/login/pubSignInJoin.cfm?

and you can find more information about this organization at

http://www.ssrn.com/

as well as Josh Ober's President's Letter about preprints in the February 2009 Newsletter.

http://www.apaclassics.org/Newsletter/2009newsletter/February_2009.pdf

Coffin Fellowship Deadline Approaching

The receipt deadline for applications for the David D. and Rosemary H. Coffin Fellowship for Travel in Classical Lands is next Monday (February 1).

http://www.apaclassics.org/education/coffin.html

Capital Campaign News

GATEKEEPER TO GATEWAY CAMPAIGN

We have received some exciting news from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH): APA's deadlines for meeting the NEH Challenge Grant through our Gatekeeper to Gateway Campaign for the Future of Classics have been extended! To date, the APA has raised just over $1.5 million toward the Campaign's goal, but that total must reach $2.1 million by July 31, 2010, and $2.6 million by July 31, 2011, if we are to claim all matching funds that the NEH has offered.

If you have not yet contributed to the campaign, now is the time to do so, if possible with a two-year pledge. If you are already a campaign donor, please consider an additional gift so that we can reach these ambitious goals for the future of the field to which we devote our lives and energies. To make a gift online, follow this link:

https://app.etapestry.com/hosted/AmericanPhilologicalAssociat/OnlineDonation.html

The Capital Campaign Committee is working hard to build on the enthusiasm generated by an event at the Center for Hellenic Studies this Fall

http://www.apaclassics.org/campaign/news.html

and to identify new prospective donors from throughout the Classics community and beyond. As always, APA membership participation in critical to this extended fund raising effort.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

The 2009 Executive Director's report is now available

Executive Director Report for 2009

Calls for Abstracts for Organizer-Refereed Panels and Affiliated Group Sessions at the 2001 Annual Meeting

Calls for Abstracts for Organizer-Refereed Panels and Affiliated Group Panels for 2011 Annual Meeting

December 2009 Jobs in Classics

December job listings

National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar , “The ‘Falls of Rome’: The Transformations of Rome in Late Antiquity”

National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar
“The ‘Falls of Rome’: The Transformations of Rome in Late Antiquity”

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

NEH Summer Seminar at the American Academy in Rome
28 June – 30 July, 2010

Director: Michele Renee Salzman, University of California at Riverside
Michele.Salzman@ucr.edu or 951 827 1991
Associate Director: Kimberly Bowes, Cornell University
kdb48@cornell.edu or kimberlybowes@yahoo.com or 917 699 0340



The NEH Summer Seminar, “The ‘Falls of Rome’: The Transformations of Rome in Late Antiquity” will take place at the American Academy in Rome from 28 June through 30 July 2010. This seminar will focus on a topic that is fundamental to the study of antiquity; “What does it mean to say Rome fell?” Unlike other attempts to analyze the fall in terms of the political and military end of the Roman Empire, this seminar will focus on the capital of that empire, the city of Rome, in the late third to the seventh centuries. Through intensive study of texts and new archaeological remains, we will critically examine the reasons traditionally adduced for Rome’s fall - political and/or military crisis – and search for more complete definitions, and more complete explanations, of societal change.

The seminar is founded on interdisciplinary interactions, including the collaboration of the Seminar Director, Michele Renee Salzman, an historian, with the Associate Director, Kimberly Bowes, an archaeologist. All readings and seminar discussion will be in English. We welcome applicants from a wide variety of fields in the humanities.

Participants are chosen from university and college faculty who teach American post-secondary students. This includes faculty teaching abroad who teach American students. Applicants of all ranks and all levels of institution are welcome.

In addition, two places are reserved for qualified advanced graduate students

For detailed information about the Seminar and the application go to the American Academy in Rome website,

http://www.aarome.org/other-ways-to-participate.php#program5

or contact the Director or Associate Director at the addresses above.

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: March 2, 2010.