2012-2013 has been a good year for CAMWS. Individual memberships in CAMWS passed the 1500 mark for the first time since 2004. In 2012-2013 there were 1504 individual members and 116 institutional members. The only weak area of membership is library subscriptions to Classical Journal, which have seen a steady decline from 343 in 2003 to 236 this year. The number of members applying for all awards and scholarships as well as the number of students taking the CAMWS Sight Translation Exam increased significantly this year. For this reason the Executive Committee agreed to finance one additional Benario Travel award and one additional Stewart Scholarship for an undergraduate and to increase the budget for the Stewart Teacher Training and Travel awards so that more funding requests could be approved.

The year-long transition of the CAMWS office from St. Olaf College to Monmouth College was finally completed by early last fall. Jevanie Gillen, the CAMWS administrative assistant, now cheerfully keeps a good rein on the Secretary-Treasurer and ensures the smooth functioning of the office. We are happy to report that we have (almost) no boxes left from St. Olaf to unpack.

511 people attended the 109th meeting in Iowa City, a significant increase over the 215 members who attended the meeting the last time it was held in Iowa City in 1993. Of course, that year it snowed. This year we only had rain, heavy winds and flooding to contend with. Many of our members successfully weathered the challenges of travel and were able to attend at least part of the meeting. Only a handful of registrants were not able to attend at all and we certainly missed their presence.

The Sheraton Iowa City

On Friday afternoon most participants enjoyed a short, fifteen minute stroll from the hotel, past the Old Iowa State House to the Iowa Union, albeit through snow flurries, for the sessions at the University and the delicious spread of hors d'oeuvres and drinks at the reception sponsored by the University of Iowa and planned so expertly by John Finamore, Chair of the Local Committee. John also gathered in Iowa City an enthusiastic cadre of volunteers from the University of Iowa as well as area institutions, to provide assistance at the registration desk and in many other ways. Many members of the Local Committee proved themselves especially adept at making paper flower centerpieces for the Friday night banquet under the expert direction of Jevanie Gillen. We were also pleased to welcome a good number of exhibitors to Iowa City. Their presence greatly enhanced the meeting and we appreciated the opportunity to view all the materials they had on display. We were especially grateful to the American School of Classical Studies, Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, the National Latin Exam and the Vergilian Society for sponsoring snacks during the session breaks.

The experiment of including the cost of the Friday night banquet in the registration fee appears to have been successful. The banquet was attended by 418 people and it was inspiring to see so many members, especially graduate students, enjoying the festivities. (We are planning a second plenary banquet again at the 110th meeting in Waco next year, by the way.)  

The banquet this year included a greeting from Chaden Djalali, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Science at the University of Iowa which was so inspiring that it received a spontaneous standing ovation from the audience. (You can read this address elsewhere in this newsletter.) The response was given by CAMWS' gracious president-elect Monica Cyrino of the University of New Mexico and James C. McKeown of the University of Wisconsin-Madison served as a memorable presider and arbiter bibendi. CAMWS Orator James May delivered three ovationes along with a special Latin version of "Seventy Six Trombones," in honor of Meredith Wilson, in whose home state we were dining. Audio recordings of these ovationes are available on the CAMWS website.

Peter Knox has shown great imagination and diplomacy as president of CAMWS. Not only did he insure that the plan for a new and improved Friday-night banquet at the meeting in Iowa City would be successful with his thoughtful presidential address entitled "The Archaeology of Reading" (which you can listen to on the CAMWS website) but he also spearheaded a drive to raise funds sufficient to endow a pedagogy book prize in memory of Lou Bolchazy. Within a few short weeks, under Peter's leadership, CAMWS raised more than $9000.00 for this purpose and, at its meeting in Iowa City, the CAMWS Executive Committee approved the prize as a permanent annual $250.00 award. I am pleased to report that, at the same meeting, the Executive Committee also voted to establish an annual $2000 award for summer archaeological fieldwork. It is exciting to see CAMWS increasing the number of ways that it can serve the classical profession.

The CAMWSCorps project begun at CAMWS-SS in Tallahassee last fall continued in Iowa City, where ten long-term members of CAMWS were interviewed by undergraduate and graduate students. You can read more about this project elsewhere in this newsletter, where you can also learn about the various awards and scholarships that were announced at the business meeting. All the recipients of these awards were well-deserving, especially in this year when there were increased number of applicants and the competition was particularly strong.

So let us all celebrate the accomplishments of 2012-2013 but not rest on our laurels. Rather let us look forward to an even better year for CAMWS in 2013-2014, when I hope to see you in Waco, where novelist Steven Saylor will be a plenary speaker!

-Tom Sienkewicz, Monmouth College, CAMWS Secretary-Treasurer

Dear Colleagues in CAMWS,

We are in the process of closing the books on our Annual Meeting in Iowa City, which proved to be a great success.  In spite of the adverse travel conditions, only a handful of participants were unable to make it to the meeting.  And thanks to all of you who did come, a wonderful time was had by all. 

We would particularly like to thank all of you who attended the banquet for your indulgence: with more than 400 people in attendance, this was a new experience for us. This was also the first time that we have included the banquet ticket in the registration packet and we are very keen to improve the experience now that it will be a regular part of our annual meeting. Toward that end we have been reviewing the responses to the survey about the annual meeting and we want to assure you that we are listening to your concerns (and your compliments).

We received over 200 responses to our survey and the overwhelming sentiment about the meeting-the papers, the presiders, the hotel, and the city-was extremely positive. In addition, more than 80% of those who attended the banquet rated the experience as satisfactory, and over 50% called it very satisfactory.  Most importantly, almost 75% agreed that we should continue to include the banquet ticket in the registration fee. That said, we have also listened to dissenting voices and are working on improvements for next year's conference in Waco.

To be specific, we will be working with the hotel staff to provide a better dining experience, including more table service with coffee and dessert. Many respondents reported that while they very much enjoyed the proceedings, the speeches ran over their time and we will adhere to a tighter schedule next year.  Our greatest concern is the cost of registration and we want to assure you that we will do everything we can to keep it affordable. While we are aware that even at this year's pricing registration for CAMWS's annual meeting is comparable to, or much less expensive than, other professional gatherings, we nonetheless intend to pursue every possible avenue for keeping it as low as possible.

We would like to thank all of you for making this year's conference such a success, and for helping us to make our upcoming meetings every bit as good (or better).

If you would like to contact either of us directly with suggestions, please feel free to email Peter Knox ([email protected]) or Monica Cyrino ([email protected]).

With thanks again for all you do for our field and for CAMWS,

Yours very truly,

Peter Knox, President 

The Department of Classics at the University of Iowa is very fortunate to count on such a benefactor, who, like Maecenas, fosters study and education through travel, an essential item in every scholar of the Classics. We, therefore, recognize Professor David Perlmutter with a Special Service Award and commend him for his hard work on behalf of the Classics. 

Nicoletta Villa-Sella presents David Perlmutter with the Special Service Award.

Dr. Mark Freeman will retire on July 31st of this year after 25 years of service as the Superintendent of the Shaker Heights (OH) City School District. What becomes most apparent in reviewing and comparing Dr. Freeman's leadership with other Superintendents past and present, both in Shaker and other school districts, is that it is manifest, even in his early years as an Administrator in the Central Office, that he showed an unparalleled enthusiasm and support for the teaching of Classical Languages.

In 1985, Dr. Freeman oversaw the major curriculum changes involved in the implementation of the Middle School model of education in the Shaker Schools. Most notably, he was adamant that the Shaker Middle School Foreign Language program would include Latin as one of the three languages taught there, and that a new wide-ranging Latin curriculum be designed and written specifically for 7th and 8th grade students. Twenty-eight years later, Latin still thrives in the Middle School, and is one of the premier Latin programs at that level in the United States.

In addition, Dr. Freeman has been the guiding force behind the Shaker Schools becoming a full-fledged K-12 International Baccalaureate School System. His commitment to an international focus in education has constantly emphasized an intense involvement of World Language in all three of its parts- the Primary Years, the Middle Years, and the Diploma Programme. Again, for the group here assembled, the most important part of the District's implementation of the International Baccalaureate, has been that due solely to the persistence of Shaker Schools- under the express direction of Dr. Freeman- Latin was recently awarded full Language B status by the IB Board, thus making Latin eligible to be included as an integral part of the Middle Year Programme.  

In Dr. Freeman's quarter-century as leader of the Shaker Heights City Schools, the Greek and Latin programs offered in the Shaker Schools have grown large in size and strong in stature through his support. Currently five Latin and Greek teachers work at the Middle and High Schools, offering students the possibility of taking six years of Latin and/or four years of Greek.

Bombarded far too often with constant news of dying and defunct Latin programs at secondary and post-secondary schools around the country, it is a pleasant task for CAWMS to present a 2013 CAMWS Award for Special Service to Dr. Mark Freeman- to an administrator who throughout his career has not only realized the value of the Classics, but has done so much to support this discipline in the Shaker Heights School District.

Mark Freeman is presented with the Special Service Award

Principal George Heshka, Ms. Kristin Peterson, and Ms. Lindsay Welbers

Sisler High School, Winnipeg, Manitoba

Recipients of the CAMWS Special Service Award have made special contributions to the promotion of Latin and Classical Studies in CAMWS territory. They need not be classicists or CAMWS members. Suitable candidates can be parents, community members, or school administrators who have supported local Latin programs in notable ways, or companies that have donated money or other resources for the promotion of Latin.  

This year's recipients fit the mold perfectly: whereas Latin is uncommon in publicly funded high schools in the province of Manitoba, Principal George Heshka, Ms. Kristin Peterson, and Ms. Lindsay Welbers of Sisler High School in Winnipeg have taken the bold step of launching a pilot program aimed at installing a multi-year sequence of Latin instruction as the bedrock of a Classics department.    

The progress of the project has been impressive. In the fall of 2012, the school's ambitious "accelerated program" added a section of Introductory Latin to its schedule, in which the thirty-six accelerated grade nine students were automatically enrolled. Concurrently, a small section of Introductory Latin for five ambitious grade twelve students was undertaken, three of which are on the verge of challenging for University credit in Latin.  

Enrollment seems likely to explode in the fall of 2013: approximately the same number (ca. thirty-five) of incoming accelerated grade nine students will again begin Introductory Latin, while more than half of the first accelerated cohort have opted to continue their study of the language in grade ten. Moreover, forty-one grade eleven students and nine grade twelve students have elected to begin Introductory Latin, as well. Nor is the growth of Classical studies limited to the language: a class in mythology has been added for 2013-2014, which is likely to enroll nearly one hundred students.  

The momentum of the Sisler Latin program suggests that within a few years, the desired multi-year cycle of Latin stretching from grades nine to twelve will be firmly established. And because Latin at the grade nine level is currently only available to the select students in the school's accelerated program, the potential for further growth once it is offered more widely is vast.  

While faculty members in the local universities' Classics Departments are thrilled to support the pilot project in Latin, the credit for its installation and success lies with three recipients of this award. The driving force for the project as a whole is the school's head of English, Ms. Kristin Peterson, whose passion and determination to add Latin to the curriculum is manifest in the very existence of these classes. She and Ms. Lindsay Welbers deserve plaudits for taking on the responsibility of teaching these new classes. No less deserving is Principal George Heshka, who has taken the initiative to support a bold and risky project, at a considerable cost to Sisler's institutional and human resources. We commend the effort of these educators and support their vision as they endeavor to enrich their schools with the Classics.

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• Ryan Horne (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Mary A. Grant Award for American Academy in Rome: 

• Robert Dudley (Duke University) 

Janice & Herbert Benario Award  

• Veronica-Gaia Ikeshoji-Orlati (University of Virginia), to attend the American Academy in Rome's summer program in Roman pottery   

• Jody Bergman (Scecina Memorial High School, Indianapolis, Indiana), to attend the Vergilian Society's "Gods, Myths and Sanctuaries of Asia Minor" in Turkey   

• Laurel Boman (Gustavus Adolphus College)
• Ana Guay (University of Michigan)
• Kirsten Kappelmann (Baylor University)
• Timothy Kimbrough (University of Tennessee)
• Maria Kovalchuk (Northwestern University)
• John Mulhall (The College of William and Mary)
• Amanda Swisher (Creighton University)

• Claire Bishop (University of Kentucky)
• Edmund DeHoratius (Wayland High School, Wayland, MA)
• Lindsey Lovette (Archer High School, Lawrenceville, GA)
• Lance Piantaggini (Stow-Munroe Falls High School, Stow, OH) 
• Keith Toda (Brookwood High School, Snellville, GA)

Heather Vincent presents the Teacher Training Award to Lance Piantaggini.

At our Annual Meeting in Iowa City President Peter Knox announced the debut of two new awards open to members of CAMWS.

The first is the Ladislaus J. Bolchazy Award for publication of a textbook, handbook, anthology, or other pedagogical work (or the digital equivalent) by a member of the Association in the field of classical studies broadly defined. Initially set at $250, this award is funded by gifts from members of CAMWS and friends of Lou Bolchazy to commemorate his many contributions to teachers and students of Greek and Roman antiquity. A committee is being formed to administer the award and solicit nominations for the first award, which will be announced at the Annual Meeting in 2015.

The second exciting development is the new CAMWS Excavation and Field School Award, a grant of $2,000 intended to support participation in a summer excavation or archaeological field school.   The new subcommittee will be reviewing applications this year for the first award, which will be announced at the Annual Meeting in Waco next spring.

These new awards have been made possible by the generous donations of friends and members of CAMWS. We are committed to maintaining and expanding our fellowships and awards programs as a crucial component in our mission. The officers and Executive Committee members are grateful for the membership's continuing support of our endeavors, and we hope to report more good news in the future!

CAMWSCorps is a project designed to create an audio library of oral history about the organization. This project began with five interviews at CAMWS-SS at Florida State University in November, 2012. Ten additional interviews were conducted at CAMWS 2013 in Iowa City. Jim Ruebel, Ken Kitchell, Judith Sebesta, Marilyn Skinner, Doug Olson, Adam Blistein, James May, Anne Groton, Ted Tarkow and Robert Ulery were interviewed by students Krishni Burns, Tim Morris , Janet Lawler, Joseph O'Neill, Charlou Koenig, Kyle Oksvig, Robert Cook, and Katie Lamberto .

CAMWS would like to continue conducting interviews at future meetings and other occasions.  If you are interested in serving on an ad hoc CAMWSCorps committee or in being a CAMWSCorps volunteer at CAMWS 2014 in Waco, please contact Tom Sienkewicz, the CAMWS Secretary-Treasurer at [email protected].

The last I had seen, Roman legionaries and gladiators were dashing across campus. Dragons were still getting their faces painted, and Medea's chariot was unaccounted for. One of the Olympian judges had not yet appeared, but at least we had the halteres for the long jumpers. It was fifteen minutes before 400+ K-12 students and teachers from around the state of North Carolina would converge on the University of North Carolina, Greensboro's third annual Classics Day, and the fifty or so students from UNCG's Classical Society were still getting the event together as I (the advisor of the Society) was called away to welcome the visitors to it. While we had done Classics Day twice before, we had not done nearly this many events, and we had not previously had to have it all together for a huge audience right at our 10 AM starting time.

It was November 17, 2012, the day of the North Carolina Junior Classical League's Fall Forum at UNCG. At that same event in 2010, a conversation with a teacher in attendance gave me the idea for Classics Day, and in April 2011, after hundreds of person-hours of planning and work by scores of student volunteers, the first Classics Day took place, with six events (Greek and Roman military drills, a scene from Euripides' Bacchae, ancient Olympic events, a Homerathon, archaeology via painting pots and sand art, and a "Sink the Siren" charitable fundraising booth) and about 300 total attendees from the University and local communities. All signs, costumes, shields, and armor were designed, sewn, cut, and/or painted by UNCG students, with funding for those things, and all other materials, from UNCG's Student Government Association and the Classical Society's own funds, raised by member dues and periodic bake sales. The second year, April 2012, we added a scene from Plautus' Miles Gloriosus and a Delphic Oracle, changed our tragic performance to a scene from Trojan Women and a monologue from Medea, and entertained roughly the same number of visitors.  

What was missing from the first two instantiations of Classics Day, though, were great numbers of K-12 teachers and students. Though we had invited the schools to attend, most of the likely attendees were already making a big trip to the JCL State Convention at Wake Forest within a week or two of our date, and a second such trip was not logistically feasible. So, instead of asking the state's Latin programs to come to us in the spring, we decided it would be much easier to come to them in the fall, when they were already going to be here for Fall Forum.

We worked closely with Danetta Genung of Ronald Reagan High School in Pfafftown, NC, NCJCL's Fall Forum Coordinator, who worked assiduously to integrate Classics Day's events into the Fall Forum schedule. She and the other members of the NCJCL Executive Committee also supported our efforts by approving a generous subvention to help in our preparation for the event.

We at UNCG decided that we, in turn, would be bigger and better. We added gladiatorial combat, a puppet show, mythological stories with lyre accompaniment, fortune-telling through Roman-style liver readings, and booths for Roman dress/hair/makeup, inscribing tombstones in Roman fashion, and writing people's names in Greek. We recruited more Theatre majors to put on our comedy, Plautus' Rudens, and we had dragons pull Medea onto the last scene of Medea in Danetta Genung's chariot, which she went to great lengths to bring to UNCG for the day. Sherri Madden from Master's Academy in Charlotte also offered (and staffed, with her students) her award-winning Roman board games and mosaic-making stations.  

And though it was difficult to get it all together for our JCL visitors by 10 AM, we managed to pull it off. From all accounts, the NCJCL students and teachers had a blast, and we at UNCG loved adding hundreds of eager and knowledgeable attendees to our audience. We'll do it again this coming fall, on Saturday, Nov. 16, assisted by a grant from the Committee for the Promotion of Latin, and this time with John Given bringing a cast from East Carolina University to reprise a portion of its successful production of Oedipus Rex from this past spring. Follow Classics Day at our web site (http://uncgclassicalsociety.wordpress.com/), and if you're in central North Carolina next November 16, we would be glad to see you.                                

UNCG Classical Society president Alexander Richardson (in white), with legionary escort, inaugurates Classics Day at the opening ceremony.

Gladiatrix Amanda Galloway, in black, explains gladiatorial combat as retinarius Winston Leonard (with the net) and an unidentified Samnite look on.

UNCG professor Jon Zarecki (in his own suit of armor) guides a group of "barbarians" (with spears) against Roman legionaries.

WHAT: The Wittenberg Reformation, deeply indebted to the new philological tools of Humanism, held the classical languages in high esteem and fostered the study of them and their literatures. The conference organizers seek papers of 20-25 minutes (or panels with at least three participants) on such topics as follow:

• Reformation-Era perspectives on ancient Latin/Greek historians
• The history of early Christianity as viewed by 16th-century reformers
• Melanchthon and universal history
• Flacius and the Magdeburg Centuries
• Historical interpretations of scriptural texts in the Reformation
• Saints' lives, martyrologies, and the reformers
• History of music and the liturgy
• The role of history in Lutheran pedagogy
• Writing the history of Lutheranism
• Lutheran biography

Considerable latitude will be given, though proposals should exemplify philological excellence, contribute to the conference theme however broadly, and avoid overspecialization. Selected papers from this conference may be published. Presenters whose abstracts are accepted will receive a modest honorarium, greatly reduced board while in Fort Wayne, though not registration nor travel (beyond the airport van and transportation to the seminary).

WHO: Keynote addresses by Cameron MacKenzie (Concordia Theological Seminary), Paul L. Maier (emeritus, Western Michigan State University), and Robert J. Christman (Luther College).

WHEN: Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be submitted by electronic attachment to Carl P.E. Springer, Professor, Department of English and Coordinator, Classical Studies Program, Southern Illinois University at [email protected] by 1 November 2013.

WHERE: Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, IN, October 2-3, 2014.

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September 20th-21st, 2013
Angell Hall 3222

The idea of large-scale Roman missteps-whether imperial domination, sexual immorality, political corruption, greed, religious intolerance, cultural insensitivity, or the like-has been a notion "good to think with" since antiquity, and persists in familiar comparisons between the Roman Empire and the present-day United States. This conference seeks to go beyond a merely thematic discussion to re-examine the connections between "Roman error," broadly conceived, and basic features of the reception of antiquity including: misunderstanding and misprision, repetition and difference, the subject's relation to a (remembered or unconscious) past, performance and illusion, and links between text and image. If the Romans "erred," what are the consequences for Rome's inheritors as they attempt to construct a stable relation to Rome as a flawed "source" or model? We ask not simply, "Are Rome's errors ours?" but, "How does Roman error figure in the reception of Rome itself?"

For a schedule of speakers please follow this link.