About the Department
Welcome to the Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia.
NEWS! Causes for celebration at CNERS in 2008/09.
For archived earlier editions of the newsletter, please click here.
AWARDS
Many congratulations to Professor Leanne Bablitz, who was successful in winning a major SSHRC research grant in 2009 for her project on 'Finding justice in the Roman Empire'. This will focus on assembling the evidence from the provinces of the Roman Empire for courtroom practice in the Roman legal system, and assess how far such practice varied from one region to another and indeed from that of Rome itself. This project follows on directly from an earlier major piece of research conducted by Professor Bablitz – her book published in 2007 as Actors and audience in the Roman courtroom (Routledge). A recent review of this in Latomus 68 (2009) praised it as ‘an excellent piece of scholarship but also a real page-turner. It is well written and conveys difficult concepts effortlessly. It is a book every scholar of Roman law should read.’ Professor Bablitz’s success brings to five the number of CNERS faculty who currently hold major SSHRC research awards.
Warmest congratulations are also due to Professor Siobhan McElduff who has been elected to an Early Career Scholarship at the Peter Wall Institute in UBC. This is a prestigious and highly competitive honour, and CNERS is delighted with the news of this recognition of Siobhan's scholarship and of her infectious enthusiasm for her subject.
NEW BOOKS
CNERS is delighted to announce the publication of Professor Susanna Braund’s Seneca: De Clementia. Edited with text, translation and commentary, which was published in March 2009 by Oxford University Press (pp. xiv + 456). The product of twenty years’ research (constantly interrupted over that time by her many other publications and commitments), this massive commentary is the first full-scale treatment of Seneca’s important and influential work De Clementia in English, and straightaway takes its place in scholarship as the definitive edition. Warmest congratulations to Susanna on the appearance of what she calls her magnum opus (but others in the know are sure that she has other magna opera in the pipeline!).
Congratulations are also due to Professor Dietmar Neufeld who has edited an important collection of essays entitled The Social Sciences and Translation of the Bible, in the Symposium Series for the Society for Biblical Literature (in which he is very active). This was published, just before Christmas 2008, in Atlanta by the Scholars Press, and in Leiden by the well-known international publisher, Brill.
Brill, as it happens, is also the publisher of a major Festschrift, The Play of Texts and Fragments: Essays in Honour of Martin Cropp (pp. xii + 580), which appeared in the summer of 2009 and which was co-edited by Professor Robert Cousland and a colleague at Calgary. Many congratulations to Robert on what must have been a gargantuan, if shared, task of editing: there are 32 contributors to the volume, including from CNERS Professor Christopher Marshall and Emeritus Professor Anthony Podlecki. The book has been described as 'arguably one of the most important studies of Euripides to appear in the last decade . . . [with] incisive examinations of many of Euripides' extant plays and their influence [and] of a number of Euripides' fragmentary plays'. Martin Cropp, Professor Emeritus of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Calgary, has been a major figure on the Canadian classical scene for many years.
Dr Philip Kiernan’s Miniature Votive Offerings in Rome’s North-West Provinces, an extensively revised version of his doctoral dissertation, was published in June 2009 (pp. viii + 300). As its name implies, the book is a survey of all the miniature objects in copper alloy, lead and other materials which have been found, usually in ritual contexts, in Germany, Gaul and Britain, together with an explanation of their significance. It was published in English by Franz Philipp Rutzen Verlag (Rühpolding). This well-illustrated book immediately becomes the standard work on this little-studied and until now ill-understood class of votive objects.
NEW FACULTY
Professor Thomas Schneider, after two years at UBC in temporary positions, has been appointed Associate Professor of Egyptology and Near Eastern Studies. After taking his MA and PhD at Basel University, he has held positions in Warsaw, Heidelberg, Basel and Swansea before coming to Vancouver. He is also Affiliate Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is the author of four books, including two volumes on the role of foreigners in Egypt, both Pharaohs and ordinary people (1998 and 2003), as well as the popular Lexikon der Pharaonen, already in its third edition (2002); publication of a fifth book is due next year. He is also the author of some 60 academic papers and other contributions, has edited three further monographs, and is Editor of a new academic journal, The Journal of Egyptian History (2008- ). His website is at http://www.cnrs.ubc.ca/index.php?id=12590
Dr Michael Griffin returns to UBC, his Alma Mater, with a distinguished Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship, tenable for two years from 1st September 2009. Dr Griffin already made his mark as an undergraduate at UBC, not only academically (he won the Governor General of Canada’s Medal for Academic Excellence in 2004), but also as the instigator of an imaginative and original educational software package, 'Ancient Spaces': this was (and is) an interdisciplinary project which drew collaboration from many colleagues in UBC and which won him deserved publicity in the media and much critical acclaim. He then moved to the University of Oxford (Oriel College) to study for both an M.Phil (awarded in 2006) and for his doctorate, entitled 'The reception of the Aristotelian categories, 80BC–AD220', which was successfully awarded in June 2009; his studies in Oxford were funded by a SSHRC doctoral award and a prestigious Commonwealth Award. His two-volume translation and commentary on Olympodorus of Alexandria on the Greater Alcibiades ascribed to Plato, a work which has never before been the subject of a full critical study, will be published next year by Cornell University Press; and hard on its heels will appear a revised publication of his doctorate, which has already been accepted in principle by Oxford University Press. His Killam research topic at UBC focuses on the links between Greek drama and Platonic dialogue, and will be guided by Professor Christopher Marshall. CNERS is delighted to welcome back Dr Griffin to the Department, where he is already well known, as a colleague and as a member of faculty.
Dr Philip Kiernan is continuing his two-year SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at UBC, with a project on religion in Roman Germany (working under the guidance of Professor Roger Wilson). Dr Kiernan is a graduate in Classical Studies of the University of Western Ontario, and he then did his Masters in Classical Archaeology under Professor Brian Rose at the University of Cincinnati. After a year in Mannheim as a visiting doctoral student, he then stayed in Germany, completing his doctorate at Heidelberg University (under Professor Reinhard Stupperich) in 2007 on miniature votive offerings in Germany, Gaul and Britain, which has just been published (see above, under 'New Books').
STAFF NEWS
CNERS is delighted to welcome Ms Andra Norton to the new position of Departmental Administrator. Andra has held a variety of temporary positions in UBC before coming to us, so she is already familiar with many of the workings of the university. In her spare time she is passionate about burlesque, and we look forward to seeing this other side of her life at the next Christmas party!
We are also delighted to announce that Ms Christine Dawson will be continuing to work for the Department that she has served so devotedly for many years, but from now on in a part-time capacity. From September 1st 2009 she will be in the office Tuesdays to Thursdays inclusive each week.
VALE
Professor Robert Daum, the first holder of the Diamond Chair in Jewish Law and Ethics, and Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible and Rabbinic Literature, left UBC in the summer of 2009. He has been appointed founding Director of the new Iona-Pacific Inter-Religious Centre at the Vancouver School of Theology, coupled with an Associate Professorship of Rabbinic Literature and Jewish Thought. We congratulate Professor Daum on this exciting new position, and wish him every happiness and success in his new post. CNERS will, however, miss his many contributions to the life of the Department, his devotion to his students (and theirs to him), his wit and good humour, and his endless patience with colleagues and students alike. Robert Daum has made a substantial contribution to CNERS over the past seven years, and leaves a gap in scholarship and teaching which will not be easy to fill.
Ms Janice McPherson decided to take early retirement in January 2009, after 27 years' loyal service to UBC; many of those were spent as secretary of the former Classics Department, and then for the last 14 years in CNERS. The whole Department joins in thanking Janice for all that she has done for us over many years, and we will also retain fond memories of her wicked sense of humour and the mischievous chuckle that greeted some latest nonsense or other. We send her every good wish for a long and happy retirement.
RECENT PhDs
Tracy Deline successfully defended her PhD on 'Women in Criminal Trials in the Julio-Claudian era' on September 3rd 2009 (supervisor: Dr Anthony Barrett), and Christie Lane also this summer (on July 21st) defended hers on 'Archegetes, Oikistes, and New-oikistes: the Cults of Founders in Greek Southern Italy and Sicily' (supervisor: Dr Franco De Angelis). It is also a pleasure to report that Jane Roy, sessional teacher in the Department, has also recently completed her PhD (in August 2009) on 'Egypt and the A-Group in Lower Nubia: Contact and Exchange', at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Warmest congratulations to all three on their newly-acquired doctoral status, and also to Dr Shelley Reid, who gained her UBC doctorate in 2008 with a dissertation on 'The first dispensation of Christ is medicinal: Augustine and Roman medical culture' (supervisor: Dr Robert Cousland).
CONFERENCES
UBC through CNERS hosted in May 2009 two major academic conferences, those of the Classical Association of Canada and of the Association of Ancient Historians, which overlapped slightly in May 2009. Both conferences were a triumphant success, academically and administratively, and CNERS owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to Professor Leanne Bablitz, who shouldered the lion's share of the considerable burden of their organization – with great expertise and with total unflappability at all times.
Professor Susanna Braund, along with Professor Siobhán McElduff and sessional teacher Hallie Marshall, continue to make progress towards the creation of a Centre for Translation Studies in UBC, based on an interdisciplinary group of more than 50 academics in the university, including several other colleagues in CNERS (Professors Daphna Arbel, Christopher Marshall, Richard Menkis Paul Mosca and Thomas Schneider), as well as others in the region (SFU, UBC-O). A Workshop held in the Peter Wall Institute in March 2009 on Translation and Authority, which brought together a number of international experts on translation studies, was hailed as a great success. The Workshop’s aim, to discover topics with the greatest potential for interdisciplinary projects and with the greatest intersection with the interests of the wider community in Vancouver as a whole, was successfully achieved. One follow-up comes in the form of a lecture series which Professors Braund and McElduff have organized for 2009/10 on 'Translation in Theory and Practice in the 21st Century', in collaboration with Green College and its Principal, Professor Mark Vessey (6 lectures, Wednesdays at 5 pm throughout the year).
ARCHAEOLOGICAL FIELDWORK
Several members of the Department have been active in the field in the summer of 2009, enabling UBC students to gain experience of the practical aspects of archaeological recording and research. Professor Hector Williams excavated on the acropolis at Mytilene in Greece, resuming excavations which he has been conducting there over many years. Professor Lisa Cooper was ceramicist on the Tell’Acharneh project in the valley of the Orontes in Syria, which she co-directs with her colleague Professor Michel Fortin, of the Department of History at Laval University in Quebec City. Professor Roger Wilson enjoyed a second successful season in his excavation of a building in the late Roman/early Byzantine coastal village of Caucana in south-eastern Sicily. Dr Philip Kiernan supervised an area as part of the Forschungstelle fur Asia Minor's project at Alexandria Troas, an ancient town on the coast of western Turkey, digging what is probably a Hellenistic market building with later Roman and Byzantine structures on top of it. Professor Cooper, in a separate project, also excitingly retraced the footsteps of Gertrude Bell exactly 100 years ago in the Syrian part of her journey along the Euphrates. Bell, a remarkable pioneer explorer of the Middle East, was also a strikingly good photographer, and Professor Cooper has replicated Bell’s album by taking her own photographs from exactly the same positions (or as near as possible) to Bell’s a century ago. We look forward to seeing the fascinating results in a forthcoming book which is in active preparation by Professor Cooper.
HOUSMAN AND THE CLASSICS
All classicists are aware of the distinguished if eccentric contribution and influence of A. E. Housman (1859–1936), poet and Professor of Latin at both University College London and the University of Cambridge. His career doesn’t sound like the stuff of successful drama, but Tom Stoppard wrote a play, The Invention of Love, exploring Housman’s life and relationships, and the Canadian première of this was presented to great critical acclaim at the Jericho Arts Centre in April 2009. One reviewer described it as 'an exceptionally well directed, presented and performed production of a unique play. It deserves many accolades for all concerned in this brilliant, dramatic theatrical experience.' It was certainly hugely enjoyed by all members of CNERS who were able to see it. CNERS graduate student Ian Runacres played the part of Alfred Pollard, Housman’s friend, and the play was directed with great verve and skill by our own Professor Christopher Marshall. Warmest congratulations to Professor Marshall on the artistic and commercial success of this venture, an unusual 'outreach' activity and one which must have consumed vast amounts of his energy and time.
PERSONAL
CNERS is also delighted to announce the birth of a baby daughter, Julianne, to Professor Lisa Cooper on October 30th, 2008. Many congratulations to her and to her husband Richard on this very happy event!
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Page and content last updated by Leanne Bablitz on 29 September 2009.
