Women and Challenge will be the focus of The University of South Dakota's Biennial Women's Research Conference, to be held on the USD campus in Vermillion, SD on March 24 and 25, 2011. Organizers seek proposals for individual papers or panels of three or four presenters on the challenges that women have faced, or perhaps continue to face, and on women's responses to such challenges, whether those challenges are specific to their status as women or prompted by other circumstances. Challenges may be physical, aesthetic, environmental, economic, psychological, ethical, or social (to name a few); they may be the result of war, legal inequity, colonization, ethnic/religious conflicts, or other factors. Also of interest are papers connecting women with challenge in other ways: women offering challenge, women joining in (or in response to) challenge, etc. The conference is entirely interdisciplinary, and welcomes perspectives from anthropology, art, business, film, history, law, literature, medicine, music, philosophy, politics, religion, and sociology. Judy Mahle Lutter, author of The Bodywise Woman and Of Heroes, Hopes, and Level Playing Fields and founder of The Melpomene Institute for Women's Health Research, will deliver the keynote.

The Mediterranean Society is planning a "Seminar in Romania and Bulgaria:  Ancient History, Modern Memory" for May 19-June 4, 2011.  The seminar will begin in Bucharest and end in Sofia.  Included in the itinerary are Greek, Roman, and Byzantine archaeological sites and museums, art museums, monasteries, churches, and castles, as well as sites made famous by Bram Stoker's Dracula.  Participants will visit Histria and Constanta (the former Greek colony of Tomis, the site of Ovid's exile) in Romania, Varna and Plovdiv in Bulgaria, among other cities.

The complete itinerary and other information are at www.mediterranean-society.org, or you may request the brochure by writing wtucker@hsc.edu.   

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October 8-10, 2010, saw the Greeks-and Trojans and Thracians-come alive in the Mabel K. Whiteside Greek Theater on the campus of Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia.  This year's production of Euripides' Hecuba continues a tradition begun in 1909 by Professor Whiteside and her students (when the college was Randolph-Macon Woman's College).  Whiteside was an innovator in teaching Greek conversationally, and she and her Greek students produced the plays in their original language.   Over the years Miss Mabel (as she was affectionately known) led forty productions of tragedies and comedies by all of the great Greek playwrights, culminating in 1954 with Aeschylus's trilogy The Oresteia-it was the first time the trilogy had been staged as a whole in Greek in the new world.

Hecuba was the eighth play in the new series under the direction of Amy R. Cohen. Like all the plays in our new series, we perform the plays in English.  But in other respects, we adhere as much as we can to the original practices that governed theatre in the time of the great tragedians, believing that the best plays will emerge from the conventions for which they were written.  Our chorus performs songs with live music and new choreography; our three actors play all the parts; the productions are outdoors in a Greek theater with only the sun for lighting; and we use full helmet masks.  Those masks are the result of research we've done at Randolph that has proven that linen masks not only maintain the volume of the actors' voices, but that they also allow the actors to be heard clearly even if their backs are to the audience (as must often be the case in a Greek theater).

Hecuba was also the occasion for a new conference-Ancient Drama in Performance: Theory and Practice.  With Kenneth Reckford as keynote speaker and Mary-Kay Gamel as a featured respondent to the play, we enjoyed a variety of papers on different aspects of ancient theatrical practice, by both scholars and practitioners in both Greek and Roman drama.  Speakers delivered their talks in the Greek Theater, and some illustrated their points with actors, which underscored the importance of embracing the performance context in thinking about dramatic texts.  We hope this was first of many productive gatherings on the topic.

For information about the conference, go to http://faculty2.randolphcollege.edu/ancientdrama/ 

For information about the Randolph College Greek Play, go to www.randolphcollege.edu/greekplay

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Individual Membership in CAMWS

Individual membership in CAMWS for the fiscal year July 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011, may be purchased for $45 ($25 for student, retiree, or first-time teacher). Joint spouse/partner membership is available for $70, retired spouse/partner membership for $40. A life membership costs $900 for an individual, $1300 for joint spouse/partner.

Please pay with a check in U.S. funds drawn on a U.S. bank or a bank that uses U.S. routing codes. The check should be made payable to CAMWS and mailed, along with a completed membership form, to:

CAMWS, Dept. of Classics
St. Olaf College
1520 St. Olaf Ave.
Northfield, MN 55507-1098 U.S.A.

Payment by credit card is possible if subscriptions are requested via the CAMWS website. A $3 processing fee will be added to each credit-card transaction.

A membership includes a subscription to Volume 106 of The Classical Journal. Please indicate on the membership form whether you would prefer to receive CJ electronically (via JSTOR, beginning on January 1, 2011, with access to all back issues as well as the most current issues) or in print. For an extra $4 you may receive the journal in both formats.

(JSTOR now offers libraries the opportunity to subscribe electronically to current issues of CJ as well as all back issues of the journal. It is expected that most libraries will eventually choose this option.)

The CAMWS Newsletter is sent electronically to all members with e-mail addresses. If you would like to receive a print version in addition, you may indicate that on the membership form.

You may use the CAMWS membership form to join ACL or SALVI, subscribe to any of nine other scholarly journals, order CAMWS pens, rulers, or histories, and/or make a tax-deductible contribution to CAMWS.

Click here for the individual membership form.

Institutional Membership in CAMWS

Institutional membership in CAMWS for the fiscal year July 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011, may be purchased for $50 (B.A. or M.A.-granting institution or K-12 school) or $100 (Ph.D.-granting institution). For more information click here.

 
All questions concerning CAMWS memberships should be directed to Sue Newland, CAMWS Administrative Assistant (telephone 507-786-3238; fax 507-786-3732).

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