Welcome to our shiny new electronic newsletter!  It’s been wonderful getting news in from all our far-flung alumni; you can now check out what folks have been up to, and even see a couple of pictures.  While you’re there, fill in the form with your news if you didn’t get around to it last time.

2008-9 was an exciting year for the Classics department.  In the fall, we hosted a production of Iliad: Book One by the Aquila Theatre Company ; it was an imaginative and riveting adaptation of the epic for the stage.  They played to a packed Concert Hall on the Friday evening of Parents Week-end.  Before the performance several faculty (including our own Jorge Bravo and President Rob Oden) participated in a panel discussion of the Iliad.  The whole event was part of a year-long faculty-staff epic reading group Chico Zimmerman had organized out of the Learning and Teaching Center (Iliad in the Fall, Odyssey in the Winter, Aeneid in the Spring: don’t you wish you’d been here?).

Also in the fall we inaugurated what we hope will be a continuing tradition. Keyne Cheshire (’94) gave the First Annual Distinguished Alumni Lecture on his work on Callimachus.  The talk was titled “Bathing With a Goddess: For Your Country’s Sake” and was greatly enjoyed by all; a festive dinner at Chapati followed.  If you’d like to come be a Distinguished Alumni Lecturer let me know… or in any case don’t be surprised if I give you a call.

In the winter our seniors’ chosen Symposium topic was Colonization and Cultural Exchange, and once again we were joined by a non-Carleton student: Paula Wiggam of Gustavus Adolphus College.  It has been really invigorating having other students and faculty at the event.  Again, local alumni are warmly encouraged to join us for this event: this year the topic is The Four Elements, and the Symposium will take place on the afternoon of February 13 2010.

Four alumni are starting in new graduate programs this fall: Garrett Ryan (’09) at University of Michigan, Rob Matera (’08) at USC, Hans Wietzke (’03) at Stanford, and Taylor Coughlan (’06) at Cincinnati (transferring from Madison).  We’ll be keeping our eye out for them as they transform the profession.

The faculty have been engaged with a range of projects: Jackson Bryce attended the International Double Reed Society Conference in Birmingham last summer, and also got his Lactantius Loeb project underway: his life on phased retirement began this year.  (NB: You should all start preparing your after-dinner toasts for the Giant Retirement Bash, which will occur in the Spring of 2012.); Nancy Wilkie is working on a publication of depictions of hell in Buddhist temples in Sri Lanka; Jorge Bravo served again last summer as field supervisor for the Kenchreai Excavations (this time with several Carleton students along for the dig); Chico Zimmerman is serving one final year as director of our Learning and Teaching Center.  He and Clara Hardy together designed a game for their Classics 110 class: a simulation taking place on a Facebook-style interface in which students conspired to assassinate Nero (this year they failed; too many spies!). 

This year we welcome to our ranks Akira Yatsuhashi, who is at Carleton on a pre-doctoral fellowship.  He is a PhD candidate at Duke University, and is finishing up a dissertation titled: “In the Bird Cage of the Muses: Archiving, Erudition, and Empire in Ptolemaic Egypt.”  Rob Hardy is also teaching two courses for the department; he’s keeping busy as chair of the board of a new STEM charter school in Faribault, where he also runs a “Latin Club” on Thursday afternoons.

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