dux femina facti
news and notes from the Randolph College Classics Department.
Posts tagged greek
Randolph College is the new host and publisher of the journal Didaskalia, the Journal for Ancient Performance.
Founded in 1994, Didaskalia is the third oldest online classics journal. It features scholarship on all aspects of Greek and Roman performance — drama, poetry, music, and dance — both in its original context and as it is performed today.
A group of Randolph classicists, Greek Players, and friends took part in a powerful experience today as civilians, military family members, cadets, and veterans across generations (including WWII) shared their responses to Bryan Doerries’ Theater of War at VMI. The project is described on its website as follows:
Theater of War presents readings of Sophocles’ Ajax and Philoctetes to military communities across the United States. These ancient plays timelessly and universally depict the psychological and physical wounds inflicted upon warriors by war. By presenting these plays to military audiences, our hope is to de-stigmatize psychological injury and open a safe space for dialogue about the challenges faced by service members, veterans, and their caregivers and families.
Bryan Doerries (a native Virginian!) was the 2010 Randolph College Philip Thayer Memorial Lecturer. Last spring, a small group of Randolph students were privileged to be present for the first ever “Female Ajax,” performed at Fort Eustis.
“For a superpower, dealing with the fast rise of a rich, brash competitor has always been an iffy thing,” The Times’s David E. Sanger wrote, adding, “Just ask the British”:
Or ask Thucydides, the Athenian historian whose tome on the Peloponnesian War has ruined many a college freshman’s weekend. The line they had to remember for the test was his conclusion: “What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.”
So while no official would dare say so publicly as President Hu Jintao bounced from the White House to meetings with business leaders to factories in Chicago last week, his visit, from both sides’ points of view, was all about managing China’s rise and defusing the fears that it triggers. Both Mr. Hu and President Obama seemed desperate to avoid what Graham Allison of Harvard University has labeled “the Thucydides Trap” – that deadly combination of calculation and emotion that, over the years, can turn healthy rivalry into antagonism or worse.
The students who labored through Thucydides’ History in the 2008 Greek Historians class are now all feeling very vindicated, I’m sure.
New Exhibit at the Maier Museum: Nature Perfected
Nature Perfected: The Art of Botanical Illustration, curated by student Lydia Kirchner (‘11), opened last weekend at the Maier Museum of Art. The show focuses on a collection of 19th century botanical wall charts which were recently discovered languishing in the attic of Martin Science.
Lydia gave a gallery talk on the day of the opening (1/23) which discussed the origins of botanical instruction and illustration all the way back to ancient Greece and Rome. Included in the talk were some images from the Vienna Dioscurides, a 6th century CE illuminated manuscript of Dioscurides’ Περί ύλης ιατρικής, a medical treatise written in the 1st century CE and one of the world’s most famous pharmacopoeias.
Botanical illustration has always been a part of botany and pharmacology because specimens wilt and crumble over time. Today, an illustration by a skilled artist can still provide much more information than a dried specimen, a photograph, or even the real thing!
On exhibition in addition to the wall charts, there are other examples of botanical illustration, including several items of special interest to Classicists. A page from a 14th century Vulgate Bible, on loan from the Lipscomb Library’s Francis C. Watt’s Rare Book Room, provides an example of an illuminated manuscript to illustrate the beauty and utility of books like the Vienna Dioscurides. The exhibition also includes an antique copy of The Georgics, Vergil’s great pastoral poem which features an exhaustive list of the trees of Italy, complete with woodcut illustrations.
Make sure to stop by and see the show before it closes on July 31st!
missives from GREK301/201
καὶ οὐ πολὺ ὕστερον Ἀλκιβιάδου τὴν φωνὴν ἀκούειν ἐν τῇ αὐλῇ σφόδρα μεθύοντος καὶ μέγα βοῶντος, ἐρωτῶντος ὅπου Ἀγάθων καὶ κελεύοντος ἄγειν παρ᾽ Ἀγάθωνα. ἄγειν οὖν αὐτὸν παρὰ σφᾶς τήν τε αὐλητρίδα ὑπολαβοῦσαν καὶ ἄλλους τινὰς τῶν ἀκολούθων, καὶ ἐπιστῆναι ἐπὶ τὰς θύρας ἐστεφανωμένον αὐτὸν κιττοῦ τέ τινι στεφάνῳ δασεῖ καὶ ἴων
-Συμποσίον 212d
“So, Alcibiades is that guy?” -RGK
from GREK301/201: a clip from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, inspired by Aristophanes’ speech from Plato’s Symposium.
Randolph College’s production of “Hecuba,” a Greek play by Euripides, delivers blow after blow of dark intrigue and plot twists to keep the audience on the edge of their seats. “It’s non-stop drama,” said director Amy Cohen, a classics professor at Randolph. “There’s no room to breathe in it.”The play debuts Friday in The Dell, Randolph’s natural outdoor theater, which has served as a venue for Greek plays since 1909.
2010 Greek Play HECUBA opens this weekend!
Come see Euripides’ HECUBA October 8th, 9th, and 10th @4pm in the Mabel K. Whiteside Theater (The Dell)!
Also this weekend, Randolph College is hosting an academic conference in the Dell: Ancient Drama in Performance: Theory and Practice. More info here.
Amy R. Cohen will never forget the first time she saw The Dell and the College’s Greek Theatre. It was a beautiful spring day, and she was interviewing for her current position as a classics professor. As she gazed out at the facility during a tour of campus, her jaw dropped.
“It was one of those ‘Oh my God’ moments. They showed me this amazing space and told me about the Greek Play tradition. I just couldn’t believe it.”
Eleven years later, Cohen is still amazed.
We are pleased to announce that the VFH has awarded us a generous grant to support the conference. We are are combining serious work in the humanities with a public service aspect in a theatre that is a unique part of Virginia’s history.
Many thanks to the VFH for recognizing our efforts.
