Four Faculty Honored for Freshman Seminar Offerings

February 6, 2009

Four Classics professors were among the 73 campus faculty honored at a reception acknowledging contributions to the Freshman Seminar Program.

EVC and Provost George Breslauer and Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Christina Maslach expressed their appreciation for all faculty who have participated in the program and made awards to those whose level of participation had been especially high: Gold Awards for 20 or more seminars to 8 faculty, and Blue Awards for 10 or more seminars to 65 faculty. Anthony Bulloch, Mark Griffith, Robert Knapp, and Donald Mastronarde received Blue Awards. In addition, Emeritus Professor Michael Nagler (Classics, Comparative Literature, and Peace and Conflict Studies) earned a Blue Award. Among Arts and Humanities departments, this total was surpassed only by the English Department with six.

The Freshman Seminar Program began in 1992 as a way to provide first-year students with early intellectual contact with faculty. On a voluntary basis, faculty offer 1-unit seminars (usually limited to an enrollment of 15) on any topic of their choice.

In addition to the faculty mentioned, freshman seminars in Classics have been offered by Jock Anderson, John Ferrari, Crawford Greenewalt, Ralph Hexter, Todd Hickey, Tony Long, Maria Mavroudi, Kathleen McCarthy, Stephen Miller, Charles Murgia, Trevor Murphy, Ellen Oliensis,  Kim Shelton, and Florence Verducci. Among the topics taught have been "Indiana Jones and the Elgin Marbles: the Myth and Reality of Archaeology," "To Live and Die along the Nile: Writing Histories from the Papyri," "Envy,"  "Race and Ethnicity in Ancient Greece," "Psyche: Ancient Greek Ideas about the Soul, the Mind, and the Afterlife," "Dionysus," "How were they made?  Aspects of Greek and Roman Technology," "Who were the Ancient Lydians?,"  "Questions of Cultural Patrimony: Aspects of Modern Trade in Antiquities," "Greek Models of Mind," "Nietzsche and Freud on Greek Tragedy," "Images of the Twentieth Century," "Eros and Aphrodite in Greek Literature and Philosophy," "Greek Tragedy: Translation and Performance," "Papyrus and Greek Literature," "Curiosity, Sex, and Salvation in the Roman World," "Opera and the Classical World."