The Classics Department at UCSB invites applications for a graduate opportunity fellowship to support talented scholars who come from groups historically underrepresented in Classics and who would benefit from an additional year of graduate study. The successful applicant will receive, along with regular admission to the PhD program, a seven-year funding package that includes an initial “bridge” fellowship year and six additional years of support from a combination of fellowships and TAships. During the bridge year, the Department will provide a program of study tailored to the needs and interests of the fellow, including such components as courses in Greek, Latin, or other ancient languages; directed research in the fellow’s area(s) of interest; and faculty mentorship. Prospective fellows must be citizens or permanent residents of the United State at the time of application. Applicants who wish to be considered for this fellowship should submit a regular application to our PhD program (deadline Jan. 1, 2023).
News
Helen Morales has been awarded an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University
The Faculty of Languages of Uppsala University has appointed Helen Morales as honorary doctor. As they note in their press release, Helen “writes about the ancient world and its reception in modern times for both subject experts and the broader public” and “has thus become one of the most important voices in classical studies of the decade.”
Congratulations, Helen!
UCSB Classics Welcomes New Faculty Member Julio Vega-Payne
We are delighted to announce that, effective November 1, has joined the Classics faculty as an Assistant Professor. Professor Vega-Payne graduated from UCSB with a PhD in Classics in 2022 and, for the past two years, has held a prestigious UC President’s Post-Doctoral Fellowship at UCLA. His addition to our faculty will open up new connections with Environmental Humanities and will establish (with Annie Lamar) a cluster of excellence in archaic Greek poetry. He will teach the full range of Classics courses, including new courses on literature & the environment, the reception of myth in Japanese anime and manga, and Latin for Spanish speakers.
Welcome, Professor Vega-Payne!
Congratulations, Class of 2024!
The Classics Department is delighted to celebrate the majors who successfully completed their undergraduate studies this year: Eric Banuelos, Nia Correal, Lisbeth Gil, Bryanna Harrell, Monserrat Hernandez, Elijah Holton, Shannon Mayo, Amanda Orza, Eduardo Ruiz Felix, Michelle Woo.
Congratulations, graduates!
Carissa Chappell Wins the 2024 John J. Winkler Memorial Prize Competition
We are delighted to announce that Carissa Chappell’s essay “Leaving No Trace: Reading the Asexual Possibility in Leucippe and Cleitophon” has been selected as the winning essay in the 2024 John J. Winkler Memorial Prize competition.
The Prize is intended to honor the memory of John J. (“Jack”) Winkler, a classical scholar, teacher, and political activist for radical causes both within and outside the academy, who died of AIDS in 1990 at the age of 46. Jack believed that the profession as a whole discourages young scholars from exploring neglected or disreputable topics, and from applying unconventional or innovative methods to their scholarship. He wished to be remembered by means of an annual Prize that would encourage such efforts. In accordance with his wishes, the John J. Winkler Memorial trust awards a prize each year to the author of the best student essay in an adventurous or marginal field of classical studies. Topics include (but are not limited to) those that Jack himself explored: the ancient novel, the sex/gender systems of antiquity, the social meanings of Greek drama, and ancient Mediterranean culture and society. Approaches include (but are not limited to) those that Jack’s own work exemplified: feminism, anthropology, narratology, semiotics, cultural studies, ethnic studies, and lesbian/gay studies.
Congratulations, Carissa!
UCSB Classics Welcomes New Faculty Member Annie Lamar
We are delighted to announce that Annie Lamar will be joining the Classics faculty as an Assistant Professor next year. Professor Lamar (PhD, Stanford) is a Classicist and Data Scientist whose research uses computational methods to analyze Homer and develops machine-learning models for low-resource languages like ancient Greek.
Professor Lamar joins a growing network of faculty in computational linguistics and humanistic data science on campus. She will teach a range of Classics courses, as well as a new course in Literary Text Mining (Spring 2025) and other new courses in Classics & Data Science. Her computational linguistics lab will offer exciting opportunities for undergraduate majors and graduate students to participate in high-level research.
J.P. Sullivan Memorial Lecture Postponed
This year’s J.P. Sullivan Memorial Lecture, which was scheduled to be delivered by Prof. Sasha-Mae Eccleston on May 17, has been postponed to the a.y. 2025-26. More details will be provided in due course.
Chris Erdman to join the Classics faculty at Wash U
Chris Erdman (PhD ’24) will join the Department of Classics at Washington University in St. Louis as an Assistant Professor this fall. Chris has spent the year in Rome at the American Academy as a Rome Prize Fellow. He is currently finishing a groundbreaking dissertation (supervised by Robert Morstein-Marx) on voting culture in the Roman Republic. His article “The ‘Ballot Questions’ of Roman Republican Legislative Assemblies” is forthcoming in Historia. Congratulations, Professor Erdman!
Richard Hunter is Visiting Professor from Feb. 26 to Mar. 1
Richard Hunter, Emeritus Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, will be Visiting Professor in the Department of Classics from Monday, Feb. 26 to Friday, March 1. In addition to delivering a traditional academic lecture on the reception of Euripides’ Medea in antiquity, Prof. Hunter will take part in a conversation on recent international trends in the field of Classics, lead a seminar on Dio Chrysostom’s “Euboean Discourse,” and collaborate with faculty and graduate students on ongoing research projects.
Prof. Hunter’s visit is part of the programming of the Center for the Study of Ancient Fiction, and is co-sponsored by Argyropoulos Chair in Hellenic Studies.
Erin Lam’s Lecture on Queer Orientations in Ovid’s “Ars Amatoria” Spotlighted on HFA Website
Erin Lam’s lecture on Queer Orientations in Ovid’s “Ars Amatoria” has been spotlighted on the website of the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts. A summary of the talk together with pictures taken during the event can be found here.