News

Classics and Archaeology High School Day

Wednesday, April 10, 2024 | By egreene

On Saturday, April 6th, fourteen students (and three parents) from six high schools in the Niagara Region visited the Department to participate in Classics and Archaeology High School Day, an event organized by our Recruitment Committee.

Katharine von Stackelberg, Angus Smith, Allison Glazebrook, Michael Carter, and Adam Rappold introduced students to ancient artifacts, Roman coins, the Greek alphabet, and traditions of games and play–including a scavenger hunt in the Department. We hope the experience leads some of our visitors to choose Brock for their studies!

Categories: Events
Humanities Research Institute’s Spring Term Symposium

Wednesday, April 10, 2024 | By egreene

The Department of Classics and Archaeology will be well represented at the Humanities Research Institute’s Spring Term Symposium, featuring in-progress work by graduate students and faculty in the Humanities. Nadine Brundrett and Michael Carter will present in the morning session, “Rediscovering a lost Roman inscription: From provenance to provenience for CIL X 1074.” In the afternoon Fanny Dolansky and M.A. student Sarah Murray will address, “Pedagogies in progress: Creating a Latin commentary for classroom use as a component of a Major Research Paper in Classics.” The full program is available here.

Join the event in person on Monday, April 15, 2024, 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. in the Charles A. Sankey Chamber or virtually via Lifesize. For best performance use the Chrome browser.

Categories: Events, News
Madelyn Huston to present at Mapping the New Knowledges

Wednesday, April 10, 2024 | By egreene

Congratulations to Classics (Text and Culture) M.A. student Madelyn Huston, who will deliver a presentation titled “Briseis’ Lament and the Agency of Enslaved People” at Brock’s Mapping New Knowledges Research Conference on Wednesday, April 10th. The conference includes 21 paper sessions and a poster presentation featuring graduate and undergraduate research across campus, as well as a keynote address by Dr. Adam Dickinson (Department of English Language and Literature) titled, “Writing Metabolism: Art, Science, and Research Creation.” The full program is available here.

Categories: Events, News
A busy February for Classics and Archaeology faculty

Wednesday, March 20, 2024 | By egreene
February was a short month, but Classics and Archaeology faculty kept busy with an assortment of lectures and publications.
- On February 2, Carrie Ann Murray presented “Religious Worship and Mobility at the Lago di Venere Sanctuary, Pantelleria” for the University of Toronto’s Classics Department Lecture Series.
- On February 5th, Allison Glazebrook delivered the Joseph C. Miller Memorial Talk at the Bonn Centre for Dependency and Slavery Studies of the Universität Bonn. Her lecture was titled, “Slavery in the Athenian Sex Trade.”
- Elizabeth Greene wrote two short articles for the Institute of Nautical Archaeology Quarterly, “The Archaic Shipwreck at Pabuç Burnu and Stories of Everyday Mobility” and (with J. Leidwanger), “The Marzamemi 2 ‘Church Wreck’ and a Changing Late Antiquity.”
- Katharine von Stackelberg published “The World of Nature” in J. Toner (ed.) The Cultural History of Leisure Vol. I: A History of Leisure in Antiquity. (Bloomsbury, February 2024).
Stop by the Department to chat with faculty about their current research!
Categories: News
Prof. Katharine von Stackelberg discusses Valentine’s Day

Wednesday, March 20, 2024 | By egreene

Did you know that in mid-February ancient Roman women were more likely to be struck by a strip of goat skin than gifted a box of chocolate?

An interview in Pelham Today featured Dr. Katharine von Stackelberg on the ancient and historical traditions that led to modern-day Valentine’s Day celebrations:

“Modern day Valentine’s Day celebrations may also have roots in the Lupercalia festival, which was traditionally held on Feb. 15. The reasons for the ancient rites aren’t totally clear, but von Stackelberg said it was likely related to good fertility and health. The festival began with an animal sacrifice, followed by the Feast of Lupercal.

“What would happen is a goat would be ritually sacrificed and the skins would be cut up into thongs. The sources are conflicting but nude or nearly naked men would run around the sacred boundaries of Rome and they would strike women with those bloody strips of goats,” she said. “It was considered very lucky if you as a woman were struck by one of the thongs. If a woman got hit by one of these, it meant you had improved chances of getting pregnant and having a safe birth.”

Read more here.

Andrea Camassei, Lupercalia, ca. 1635.

Categories: News
Brock welcomed Dr. Ulrike Al-Khamis for final 2023-24 AIA Lecture Series talk

Wednesday, March 20, 2024 | By jhawman

Brock welcomed a renowned guest on Friday, March 15, 2024 when Dr. Ulrike Al-Khamis, CEO and Director of the Aga Khan Museum, gave a public lecture “An Alternate Perspective on “The Museum.” This was the closing event of Brock’s 2023-24 Public Lecture Series on Archaeology, sponsored by the Niagara Peninsula Society of the Archaeological Institute of America. Other topics this year included the Bronze Age Collapse of 1177 BCE, and the lives of early Black Canadians in Niagara. We look forward to more great public programming for our 2024-25 season!

For more information on the Niagara Peninsula Society AIA please visit https://brocku.ca/humanities/classics/outreach/aia-niagara/.

Categories: Events, News
Prof. Allison Glazebrook recognized for International Women’s Day at Brock University

Tuesday, March 12, 2024 | By jhawman

On Thursday, March 7th, 2024, to celebrate International Women’s Day, Brock University took the time to acknowledge 12 of the many women researchers at Brock who contribute to the betterment of our society. The Department of Classics and Archaeology’s own Professor Allison Glazebrook was one of the women featured in the Brock News piece.

Allison Glazebrook, Professor of Classics and Archaeology, researches the social and cultural history of ancient Greece, focusing on women, gender, sexuality and slavery.

“Ancient Greek texts generally provide the perspective of elite male members of society. As a historian influenced by feminist, gender and queer theory, I reframe such texts to investigate the groups marginalized in those same narratives,” she says. “I focus on women, enslaved people and sex labourers; the diversity of experiences, agency, mobility and statuses within these sub-groups; and think about how these various identities intersected and emerged in different spatial and temporal contexts. I strive to broaden the questions asked and expand the approaches taken in my field and thus look beyond the dominant discourse as presented in the sources.”

To read the full story, click here: https://brocku.ca/brock-news/2024/03/international-womens-day-how-brock-women-researchers-are-creating-meaningful-change/.

Categories: News
Join the Department’s Latin Table (Mensa Latina)

Monday, February 12, 2024 | By egreene

In winter term 2022, the first gathering of the Mensa Latina was held in the department; now two years later, the Mensa Latina (Latin Table) is still going strong! Once a month, a group of undergraduate and graduate students interested in learning more about the Roman world and Latin and expanding their knowledge beyond the classroom meet with professors Sarah Parker and Fanny Dolansky to explore a wide range of topics. Previous sessions have focused on Roman humour; petkeeping; manuscripts and paleography; medicine and the body; and the poetry of Catullus and Martial. We’ve also tried our hands at playing Roman games and our tongues at speaking conversational Latin. On January 25, students learned about Roman satire; February 26 participants examine the calendar and Roman festivals. In the final meeting of the term on March 25, Dr. Katharine von Stackelberg introduces Roman cuisine and authentic Roman recipes from Apicius’ nearly two-thousand-year-old cookbook. No knowledge of Latin is required and everyone is welcome.

Mensa Latina – Winter 2024 dates

Students and faculty participate in the Mensa Latina.

Categories: Events
Humanities Graduate Student Symposium, “Narratives of Identity

Monday, February 12, 2024 | By egreene

Kudos to Daniel Belanger, Miranda King, and Cassidy Robertson for their roles in the 2024 Humanities Graduate Student Symposium, “Narratives of Identity,” which took place on Saturday, February 10th. King spoke about “The Small Finds from the Sanctuary of Venus at Pompeii” in Panel 2: Voicing the Visual. Belanger presented, “Hepatitis Bee: The influence of Roman culture on their understanding of bee disease” in Panel 4: Negotiating Nature. Robertson served as Administrative Coordinator for the conference. Click here for more information about the papers and presenters in this celebration of Brock Humanities graduate student research.

Categories: Events, News
Classics Minor James Moen to publish in Philomathes

Monday, February 12, 2024 | By egreene

Congratulations to Classics minor, James Moen, whose paper, “Agroeconomic Policy: Re-evaluating the Agricultural Decline of the Later Roman Empire” was accepted for publication in the undergraduate Classics journal Philomathes. The essay was written last year for CLAS / HIST 3P09 (History of the Later Roman Empire), taught by Dr. Michael Carter.

2nd century AD mosaic from the House of the Laberii at Uthina, Tunisia (https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/527318/view/roman-country-life-mosaic)

Categories: News