Recent News
The Department of Classics is delighted to announce the establishment of the Lawrence Bliquez Endowed Student Support Fund for Classics, a gift of Laura Matz and Trevor Peterson. This fund is designed to provide broad-based support for undergraduate students in the Department of Classics, helping to cover educational expenses, research, travel costs, and study abroad.
An alumna of UW, Laura Matz wanted to honor her former first-year Greek teacher with a fund that would support future students… Read more
A Companion to Apollonius of Rhodes, edited by Ruth Scodel, was recently published by the University of Michigan Press (2025). The companion contains 20 essays by well-known scholars of Greek and Latin literature, including two UW Classics faculty -- Jim Clauss ("'With No Direction Home': Medea and Jason") and Alex Hollmann ("Magic in Apollonius' Argonautica") -- and a 2002 graduate of our PhD program, and currently Professor and Chair in the Department of Classics at Pomona… Read more
by James J. Clauss
Stephen Thielke grew up in Shoreline and graduated from Reed College in Portland in Classics in 1992. He had taken summer classes at the UW, including intensive Greek in 1990. After Reed, he received the Lionel Pearson Fellowship from the APA, and studied as a visiting scholar at King’s College, Cambridge. In 1993, he joined the graduate program and recalls with great fondness classmates Alex Bram and Chris Chinn (both Reedies), Owen Ewald, Brady Mechley,… Read more
In the newest episode of Betwixt the Sheets, a podcast that tackles the history of sex, sexuality, and sex work, historian Dr. Kate Lister interviews Prof. Sarah Levin-Richardson about sex workers in ancient Roman culture. Prof. Levin-Richardson has become a go-to expert on Roman prostitution following the publication of The Brothel of Pompeii: Sex… Read more
Geoffrey Sumi graduated from UW with a degree in Classics (with College Honors) in 1986. Prof. Bliquez's Honors seminar in Classics shifted Geoff's focus from Engineering, his intended major, to Classics and things snowballed from there. He recalls (fondly) studying Plautus and Terence with Prof. Dunn; Livy and Tacitus with Prof. Clauss; the Greek tragedians with Prof. Halleran; Lucretius with Prof. Blondell; Horace, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid with Prof. Harmon; Herodotus and Aristotle with… Read more
A great friend of the UW Department of Classics, Thomas Morgan, MD, MA in Classics (’89), passed away on December 9, 2024. Here is his obituary in the Seattle Times, and below are a few UW Classics faculty members’ reflections on Tom.
Larry Bliquez:
In the fall of 1978, I was informed by Dan Harmon, who was chair then, that Thomas Morgan, a retired doctor, had enrolled in my Elementary… Read more
by James J. Clauss
Joel Kalvesmaki, after graduating from UW with a major in Classics in 1999, went to Washington, DC and received his MA and PhD at Catholic University of America in 2006. Thereafter he served as editor of Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks until he left in 2019 to pursue a second career as a programmer with the Government Publishing Office. He is currently editor for the Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative, the series editor for … Read more
Mark Nugent (UW Classics PhD '10), Associate Teaching Professor at the University of Victoria, is the recipient of a 2024 Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Classics at the College Level from the Society for Classical Studies. Congratulations, Mark! Read a description of his teaching excellence.
As always, UW will be very well represented at the annual conference of the Society for Classical Studies/Archaeological Institute of America, to be held in Philadelphia in January 2025. See below for talks and panels by UW graduate students, faculty, and alumnx!
Friday Jan 3, 2025
First Paper Session (8:00am–10:30am)
SCS-7: HYBRID: Greek Law and Oratory
Sarah Brucia Breitenfeld, University of Pittsburgh (UW PhD ’22), “Fugitivity and Space in Apollodorus’s A… Read more
by Sarah Levin-Richardson
For over thirty years, the Department of Classics has brought students to Rome to study the monuments, art, tombstones, and graffiti produced by the million-or-so ancient residents of the caput mundi, the “head of the world.” This year was no different: eight undergraduates and two graduate students joined Prof. Sarah Levin-Richardson for a four-week exploration of ancient Rome. Each student taught a famous Roman monument (the Arch of Constantine was… Read more