Letter From the Chair

On September 1, 2001, I took over as the Interim Chair of Classical Studies, and so one of my earliest acts involved coordinating the Department's response to the World Trade Center disaster. It was, of course, a traumatizing event that deeply challenged the common values we hold dear as classicists. We were obliged to consider the fragility of things that we too easily regard, in more placid times, unquestioned and enduring: not only human life, although the losses of 9/11 were undeniably horrific, but also the civility that binds us together as a nation and as a culture. One part of the Department's mission is to communicate, especially to our students and through them to the world, a sense of classic fortitude in the presence of turmoil.

Fortunately, nothing in the year that followed was to rival the sheer emotion of that day. The danger was that events of such public magnitude would overwhelm our smaller endeavor. In the end, though, we had plenty to cheer about as well. Vassilis Lambropoulos delivered his inaugural lecture as the C.P. Cavafy Professor of Modern Greek Studies; Sabine MacCormack was named one of the first five Mellon Distinguished Achievement Scholars; and Sue Alcock, our current MacArthur Fellow, became the John H. D'Arms Collegiate Professor of Classical Archaeology and Classics.

Now, as the summer slips away, we are eagerly awaiting the first Platsis Symposium, which will take place in late September. This symposium was established by George amd Barbara Platsis as part of our rapidly expanding program in Modern Greek. Successive annual symposiums will explore the vitality of ancient Greek ideas within the modern world. The first symposium, described in more detail later in this newsletter, has an extremely timely theme: the lasting significance of Greek concepts of war in relation to Greek democracy, against the backdrop of modern anti-democratic terrorism.

Fall term will also see the inauguration of a new Ph.D. program in ancient history. This program, jointly run by Classical Studies and History, consolidates Michigan's considerable strengths in historical subjects by bringing together not only historians and classicists, but also archaeologists, art historians, and experts on the ancient Near East, in what we believe will be a bold new educational format. Ray Van Dam of History, the first Director of the Program, describes the new program later in the newsletter.

More or less simultaneously with the release of this newsletter, we will be launching a new department website, which I invite you to visit for further information about the Department and our upcoming activities. The address will remain the same: http://www.umich.edu/~classics/ Both this website and the newsletter would not have been possible without the ingenuity and dedication of our office staff.

Finally, let me mention the death of two close friends and former colleagues, both of whom are likely to be well known to most in the Michigan community. Gerda Seligson, Professor Emerita of Latin, passed away on June 1, 2002, after a remarkable academic life that took her from the great classical seminars of pre-Nazi Berlin first to London and finally to Ann Arbor, where she was the redoubtable champion of our linguistically based methods for teaching elementary Latin.

John D'Arms, Professor Emeritus of Classical Studies, was the former Chair of this Department, Dean of the Rackham Graduate School, and Vice Provost of the University. John retired in 1997 in order to take up the Presidency of the American Council of Learned Societies, where he served until his death on January 22, 2002. John's life was remarkable for his ability to keep an on-going balance between scholarship and academic service: detailed studies of Roman social life, but at the same time also a commitment to the constant renewal of our field and the Humanities in general.

Both Gerda and John are deeply missed, and the Department has established funds honoring each of them. The Seligson fund is used to award prizes to outstanding graduating seniors in Greek; our D'Arms fund underwrites the travel plans of graduate students who need to go abroad while researching their dissertations. You can support one or both of these funds by sending the Department a check made out to "The University of Michigan." Be sure to clearly designate where you want the money to go.

It has been a great privilege serving as Interim Chair of this Department, and, of course, I still have several months to go. But I will take this opportunity to thank my colleagues and the College for their support during this transitional period. Like all of us, I eagerly await our new Chair, Richard Janko, an internationally honored scholar in Greek literature, who will take over from me on January 1 of next year. This past January, Richard received the APA's highest honor, the Goodwin Award of Merit, for his book Philodemus: On Poems, Vol. I. Richard and his wife Michèle Hannoosh, an expert on nineteenth-century French literature who will be joining the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, are very welcome additions to our community.

Bruce W. Frier

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