UPPER SOUTH REGION

ANNUAL REPORT

1999-2000

The Upper South region remains generally strong in the promotion and growth of Classics. Enrollments are healthy at all levels in most areas, although Arkansas has had some difficulty with recalcitrant administrators. The disconcerting news continues to be the lack of qualified secondary teachers, and the reluctance on the part of some administrators to support Latin in their schools.

Working in alphabetical order, let's look first at the state of Arkansas, where state vice-president Dave Fredrick reports that there is the usual mix of good and bad news. In the high-school scene, Susan Burden who has taught Latin for many years at Deer High School, is leaving to teach in Texas. She cited a lack of support from the administration, but Dave notes that this is a poor, rural district. Another Latin program is on the line at Arkansas Tech, where the program was abruptly cancelled this year and the teacher, John Hassell reassigned to Spanish. He is trying to leave the school and is in search of a Latin position. Another Latin teacher, Mary McSwain who has been travelling between two schools in Ft. Smith is retiring this year, and fortunately the district is planning to replace her. The most disturbing news comes from Fayetteville High School.

Last year, Dave Fredrick and Dan Levine put together a very successful mailing campaign to the parents of FHS students which resulted in a decision by the school to re-instate Latin. This year, apparently as a result of opposition by the German and Spanish teachers who think that they will lose their best students, the board reversed that decision with no comment. Back to the drawing board. In the central part of the state there has been no change in the number of Latin programs at the high school level. In Conway Arkansas, Hendrix College has decided to offer a full time classics program.

The University of Arkansas has revamped its Foreign Language Festival, and now offers it under the name of LinguaLinks to a select group of students late in February. The teacher who is running the program in Latin has joined CAMWS and is strongly committed to his job. The department sees this part social, part academic day as a means of attracting students into the department. A new program in Latin is now in place at a private school in Bentonville. The program, which seems to be quite stable, is being taught by a U of A graduate named Josh Garvin. In other news from the U of A, the department now has several courses on line including three Latin courses and a Roman Civ course taught by Dave Fredrick. He will also be doing this with a mythology course this summer.

And speaking of technology, Fredrick is supervising an Honors thesis which will be turned in on CD-ROM rather than as a traditional paper. This will be a first for the university, and so should gain some publicity for Classics at U of A. Finally, in what can only be seen as a major victory, the library at U of A has agreed to purchase the full Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae. This effort was helped by having a librarian who has an MA in Classics from Columbia.

The news from Kentucky is that Classics is strong there too. Transylvania University now has two classicists on the faculty. Frank Russell (Ph.D from UCLA) started his tenure track position here in the fall; his book, Information Gathering in Classical Greece, has just been published by the University of Michigan Press. Professor Andrew Szegedy-Maszak (Wesleyan University) presented two talks at Transylvania in the fall of 1999, one on 19th century views of the Colosseum; the other on 19th century travellers in Athens. The University of Louisville hosted a symposium on Homer in the fall of 1999. A scholarship has now been established to encourage and support the training of high school Latin teachers in Kentucky, and is well on the way toward the $50,000 goal.

The University of Kentucky faculty has been very active both in scholarship and other initiatives. During the Spring term of 1999 the Classics Department sponsored a major conference on the Pre-Modern Novel. Our intention was to bring to the attention of the university community some of the exciting work now being done on late antiquity and in particular on the novel. Simon Goldhill was our keynote speaker, and he opened the conference with a paper on "The Erotic Eye: Cultural Conflict and Empire Society in the 2nd Century." Following this keynote address there were two presentations on two separate evenings. The department has also enjoyed recent lectures by Geoffrey Rockwell, "Trajan's Column; Image-based WWW Sites in the Humanities;" Sebastian Heath, "The Internet as Context: Cross Project Resource Discovery in a Networked World," and Larry Kant, "Syncretism? Multiculturalism? Coming to Terms with Jews and Christians Who Refer to More Than One God." The first-ever Undergraduate Vergil symposium, held November 22 at the Gaines Center, proved to be a remarkable success. The symposium was devoted to exploring various aspects of Vergil's Aeneid.

A highlight of the past year for J. Francis was his participation in the International Conference on Patristic Studies at Oxford University in August. The conference is held every four years at Oxford and is considered the premier meeting of scholars of early Christianity in the world. Lou Swift attended the patristics Conference as well, though perhaps a bigger highight for him was his return to the Classics Department as a full time faculty member after stepping down from his position as Dean of Undergraduate Studies after nine years in the post.

In October Jane Phillips participated in an international symposium that celebrated the 450th anniversary of the first translation of Erasmus' Paraphrases into English. She presented a paper entitled "'Sub evangelistae persona': The speaking voice in Erasmus' Paraphrase on Luke." Jane also continues to serve as editor of the Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook.

Hubert Martin presented lectures on "Plutarch and Thucydides" at the annual meeting of the APA, and on "Plutarch, Alexander, and the Ideal Emperor" at a Plutarch conference in Chapel Hill. He also continues to do yeoman's service as the Drector of Undergraduate Studies for the Department.

Bob Rabel is enjoying a semester of sabbatical leave during the Spring of 2000, working on a book tentatively titled Mimesis in the Odyssey. In October he delivered a paper at the University of Louisville's Homer conference on the subject of "The Sirens in the Odyssey." He also has an article in the latest Classical World entitled "Impersonation and Representation in the Odyssey." Bob's efforts as chair have continued to be devoted toward strengthening the department's enrollments.

Terry and Jennifer Tunberg report great success with their Summer Latin Workshops: whereas the first event in 1996 brought 11 participants to UK, last summer the two scheduled conventicula aestiva attracted 55 hardy souls. This year promises similar results, even as the curriculum continues to evolve. The Tunbergs have also nearly completed work on their second Latin translation in the Dr. Seuss series: look for The Cat in the Hat to appear later this year! The department has been greatly strengthened in the last year by the fact that Terry and Jennifer Tunberg are now sharing the academic post at UK previously held by Terry alone.

Ross Scaife has continued to develop a variety of humanities computing projects associated with the Stoa Consortium (<http://www.stoa.org). />www.stoa.org). With Chris Blackwell of Furman College he has organized a CAMWS panel for the Knoxville meeting on the Demos: Classical Athenian Democracy project. He will also be presenting a lecture concerning the Suda On Line at the 2000 joint annual conference of the Association for Computers and the Humanities and the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing, which will take place from July 21st-25th at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Scaife also gave an invited presentation ("Informatics Across the Curriculum: First Steps at the University of Kentucky") to a conference titled "Toward Information Fluency in the Liberal Arts" at the ACS Technology Center in Texas, sponsored by the Associated Colleges of the South. He was also asked by the EdSitement division of the NEH to do a technology workshop at an NEH seminar on Homer's Iliad and Walcot's Omeros at Sarah Lawrence College, led by Professor William Shullenberger.

Classics in the state of Tennessee continues to blossom. There is great activity at both college and secondary levels. The faculty at UT Knoxville have been very active, and we are most grateful for all of their work in hosting this year's meeting of CAMWS. Susan Martin resumed her position as Chair of the Department. She organized Latin Day in November, which drew 550 high-school students from around the state. The department continues to be productive in terms of scholarship, and the promotion of Classics in the state of Tennessee. Virtually all of the faculty are involved in some activity which promotes the study of Latin and Greek.

This includes everything from popular lectures to sitting on committees for the Tennessee Foreign Language Teachers Association. Chris Craig, President elect of CAMWS, was named as the first recipient of the Cunningham Outstanding Teacher award, and won the university wide award for advising as well. David Tandy has been named to coordinat the College Scholars Program in which select undergraduates write their own curriculum with a senior faculty member. The UT website, http://web.utk.edu/~tandy/classics, contains regularly updated information on the department.

From Vanderbilt comes the news that Robert Drews was named as NEH Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Richmond. He hosted a conference on Anatolia and the Indo-Hittite Languages. Professor Kathy Gaca has been named a Fellow in the Robert Penn Warren center for the Humanities. Chris Brunelle, who has gained fame for his abilities in spoken Latin, chaired the annual Bernstein competition in Latin recitation.

Classics at Austin Peay is also healthy. The summer of 1999 marked the first annual Austin Peay study abroad program to Greece. Professor Tim Winters took a group of students on the six week tour. APSU Classics continues to grow; the first three students to graduate with the new Classics minor will cross the stage this May, and one encouraging piece of news is that an Austin Peay student has been accepted to graduate school in Classics at Ohio State. Winters will be submitting the paper work to establish a major in Classics next year.

Professor Tony Lombardy at Belmont University is doing an interesting web-based outreach program for high schools which will culminate with Roman certamina, a Latin play performed by his students, and a Roman banquet on April 13. The web-based program gives students 3 questions a week. Those who answer all correctly are in a drawing for a $25 gift certificate. This is called AENIGMA HODIERNUM. Students may also sit in on real Belmont classes in Latin via computer and may listen to Latin read.

The big news in the secondary schools is that Alice Sanford was named Tennessee Outstanding Teacher of the Humanities and this fall was named Tennessee Foreign Language Teacher of the Year. This is a wonderful award and she is certainly worthy of the recognition. We are all very proud of Alice, and are grateful too for the good publicity this gives Latin. Hume-Fogg High School hosted over 500 students at the Mid-State JCL Tournament. The host school took the 1st place trophy! White Station H.S. continues to be a hot bed of Classics activity: last summer Eric Foster participated in the The NEH seminar The Ancient and Modern Epic; JoAnn Haughton and Eric Foster continue their involvement with VROMA; Dawn LaFon was a reader for the AP Latin exam, and JoAnn Haughton took a group of students on a tour of Classical lands. In more general terms, Tennessee Junior Classical League now has approximately 3,400 students from 69 schools. This number is a good indication of the strength of Latin in Tennessee. The TJCL Convention will be hosted by Dobyns-Bennett in Kingsport in April.

Tennessee needs Latin teachers! Montgomery County lost a Latin teacher and program last year, and is still looking for a replacement. Webb is looking for someone immediately, and more jobs will be opening up. A retired Latin teacher came back to the profession this fall so that the program at Oakland H.S. in Murfreesboro (full Latin) might continue. It is heartwarming to see that the demand is there, but we need to fill the positions with good, solid teachers. This continues to be the major problem with Classics in Tennessee.