Graduate Students Determined To Prove That Water Is Always Best
By Patrick Hogan, Graduate Student

Departmental graduate students have spent the last year planning their second biennial conference, "Water: Plumbing the Depths of Purity and Pollution," scheduled for January 31 and February 1, 2003. Lectures given by guest speakers Nicholas Purcell (Oxford) and Richard Thomas (Harvard) will bookend papers by graduate students from across the U.S. and Canada, and together all of them will present their unique perspectives on the role of water in Greco-Roman life from the Bronze Age to Late Antiquity through the connecting spheres of literary, archaeological, and historical inquiry.

A pervasive yet multifaceted element, water was an agent of both purification and pollution in antiquity and in these capacities played an important part in ancient religion, civic life, medicine, philosophy, commerce, and literature. For whether as a geographical entity, a tool, a lifesource, or a symbol, water was almost always integral to the pursuit of cleanliness and purification; at the same time it was a potential conveyor of pollution and the undesirable. And so this conference will explore the literal and symbolic manifestations and applications of this element of life in the contexts of purity and pollution, and the tensions between those two forces.

The conference will begin with a lecture by Mr. Purcell on the evening of Friday, January 31, followed by a reception at the Kelsey Archaeological Museum. Twelve graduate students, including three from our program, will deliver their papers on the morning and afternoon of Saturday, February 1 in three panels of four papers apiece, reflecting the three spheres of inquiry. Finally, Dr. Thomas will deliver the closing lecture in the late afternoon. The combination of two such illustrious lecturers and the visiting graduate student speakers will make this conference most memorable and enjoyable.

Aside from the contributions of many graduate students of both Classics and IPCAA, generous financial assistance from the following benefactors have made the conference possible: the Gerald Else lecture fund, the Department of Classical Studies, IPCAA, IPGRH, the Rackham School of Graduate Studies, and the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library. For more information on the event and location, click here.

List of Student Speakers:

Panel 1: Water and Space (moderator Jeremy Hartnett, IPCAA)
Paper 1: "Water as an Initiatory Principle at Samothrace" Jude Morris. University of Colorado at
Boulder.
Paper 2: "Black ships on the wine-dark sea: Some related artistic and military developments after
ca. 1200 B.C." Seth Button. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Paper 3: "The Ancient Water Cooler: The socio-political culture of women at fountain houses and
wells" Whitney Snead. Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.
Paper 4: "Three Inverted Siphons and the Problem of the 'Hydraulic Towers'" Milorad Nikolic.
University of Calgary.

Panel 2: Water in Motion (moderator Kristopher Fletcher, Classics)
Paper 1: "A Dark and Stormy Night: Statius' Thebaid 1.342-363" Robert Nau. McMaster University.
Paper 2: "Nocte Intempesta: Analysis of shipwreck rituals for an alternative interpretation of this
expression" Tommaso Gazzarri. Johns Hopkins University.
Paper 3: "Praesentius esset numen aquis: Water, Nefas, and Dissonance in the Satires of Juvenal"
J. Matthew Harrington. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Paper 4: "Rivers of the Heart and Conversion in Augustine's Confessiones" Anna Pitts. University of
Victoria, British Columbia.

Panel 3: Water through Time (moderator Rob Chenault, IPGRH)
Paper 1: "Phaedrus, Fable and the First Ship" Nathan Gilbert Bethell. University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor.
Paper 2: "Xenophon and the Topographical Dialogue" Stephen Pigman. University of California at
Los Angeles.
Paper 3: "Blood and Water: Rivers in the battle narratives of Roman historians" Alexandra Holbrook.
McMaster University.
Paper 4: "Holy Water and Secular Purities: Ritual bathing in ancient Palestine" Danielle Steen.
Stanford University.

Index of Topics

• Letter from the Chair
• The Incas and Rome
• Life After Grad School: To Teach or Not to Teach
• Lurking in the Library
• Classics for a New Generation
• Jerome Lectures 2002
• Graduate Student Conference
• Honoring John D'Arms