As always, I’d like to start by congratulating our 2023 graduates, including our BAs, MAs, and PhDs. I’m also thrilled to announce that our recent PhDs have landed stellar jobs, including as a User Experience Research Scientist at Meta and as Classics professors at the University of Pittsburgh!
One of the biggest developments of this past year was the revival of our long-running Classics study abroad program in Rome, reinvented as an Early Fall course and led in 2023 by Prof. Sarah Levin-Richardson. In other study abroad news, Prof. Jim Clauss (inaugural Daniel P. Harmon Professor of Classics) once again led a popular study abroad program in Rome for UW student athletes.
This March, the Department of Classics hosted the annual meeting of the Classical Association of Pacific Northwest (CAPN). The conference was a huge success, with its program boasting more than 50 speakers from all over the US and Canada, including a number of alumnx of our Department! UW Classics graduate students, alumnx, and faculty were also very well represented at the annual conference of the Society for Classical Studies/Archaeological Institute of America in New Orleans, presenting their research and presiding over panels.
Once again, our students received many national awards this year, including the American School of Classical Studies at Athens Summer Program Scholarship (three recipients!), the Janice and Herbert Benario Award (Classical Association of the Middle West and South), and the Brent Malcolm Froberg Scholarship (Eta Sigma Phi). Our students also received a number of awards from UW, including the GSEE Graduate Excellence Award, the Joff Hanauer Graduate Fellowship, the Irene Dickson McFarlane Tuition Scholarship, the Eleftherios and Mary Rouvelas Endowed Writing Prize in Hellenic Studies, and the Top Scholar Award.
As always, we are deeply indebted to our donors, who make it possible for us to grant a number of Departmental awards to our students, including, this year, the Classics Department Scholarship, the Classics Student Travel Endowment, Harvey Densmore Scholarship, the Jim Greenfield Undergraduate Scholarship, the Jim Greenfield Dissertation Fellowship, the Jim Greenfield Graduate Fellowship, the Jim Greenfield Travel Award, the Meg Greenfield Undergraduate Essay Prize, the Roseanna Wabel McDermott Endowed Fund for Study Abroad, the Ringland Rome Prize, the Ringland Rome Bursary, and the Pamela Stewart and Julie Golding Endowed Student Scholarship.
This coming year promises to be an exciting one! We are embarking on a search for a new faculty member (an Assistant Professor of Roman History in a global context) and we have a great lineup of talks by visiting speakers, including by our inaugural Daniel P. Harmon Lecturer, Prof. Joseph Farrell of the University of Pennsylvania. I hope to see you at these or other UW Classics events!
Deborah Kamen, Chair, Classics Department