Dear Colleagues,

This is an exciting time for CAMWS. Under the strong leadership of Peter Knox, the organization is undertaking its first major fund-raising campaign since its centennial in 2005. I encourage you to support this campaign to the best of your ability. Every contribution, even a very modest one, will help CAMWS endow a fund to support archaeological fieldwork well into the future. And every gift is tax-deductible!

Also exciting are the many new initiatives President Augoustakis has described in his letter, opportunities which will enable CAMWS to be much more visible and proactive in the support of Classics in our society. Particularly noteworthy, I think, are the new group travel grants which are now being awarded to K-12 teachers who want to take their students on a field trip to an exhibit on the classical world in a local museum or even abroad. The first four grants, in fact, were all awarded to teachers who are planning trips to Italy with their students this year: Keely Lake, Wayland Academy (WI); Caitlin Campbell, Dominion High School (VA); Phillip Cortese, John Paul the Great Academy (LA); and Robbie Masterson, St. James Academy (KY). You and your students can also benefit from this grant opportunity. For more information, see https://camws.org/
StudentGroupTravelGrant. The next application deadline is January 30, 2016.

I am especially pleased that CAMWS is now able to offer access to the Loeb Classical Library on-line to CAMWS members. This benefit will be especially attractive to those of us whose schools are unable to subscribe to the Loeb institutionally. And our students can have the same access for the price of a student membership in CAMWS ($30), which is less that the cost of a typical required textbook. Or your department can use its institutional membership in CAMWS obtain this access for a student by designating him or her as a recipient of a CAMWS Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in Classical Studies. For more information, see https://camws.org/InstitutionalMembershipBenefits.

The 2016 meeting in Williamsburg promises to be a most memorable one. I still remember the last meeting in Williamsburg, in 1984. Things have changed a bit since then. The hotel CAMWS met in that year is now a dormitory for the College of William and Mary and the small children my wife and I took along to that meeting now have children of their own. But other things haven't changed. I am sure you will find the same southern hospitality of our Local Committee, ably chaired by Lily Panoussi and Georgia Irby, and the same memorable ambience for classical papers read within walking distance of the Wren Building, the oldest college building still standing in the United States. The special culinary delights of Colonial Williamsburg also remain as appealing as ever.

So take your colonial waistcoat and tricorn out of moth balls and get ready for CAMWS 2016 in Williamsburg. (And, yes, the presidential souvenir promises to be very memorable as well!)

Tom Sienkewicz,

Monmouth College,

CAMWS Secretary-Treasurer

stcamws@camws.org  

The following articles are in CJ 111.1:

Erin Moodie, "License To Thrill: Humor And Linguistic Accuracy In Translations Of Roman Comedy"

• When translating Roman comedy for performance, literalism and linguistic accuracy must be subordinated to the pursuit of an authentic response from the play's new audience. While the original may inspire many different responses, a translation necessarily simplifies the possibilities. Plautus' methods of adapting Greek New Comedy provide a model for the process of translating and transforming his own work, especially when one wishes to highlight his humor.

Michael Lippman, "Embodying The Mask: Exploring Ancient Roman Comedy Through Masks And Movement"

• Students and teachers of Roman comedy tend to be inexperienced in the mask work and body movement that would have formed an integral part of ancient performance. Masks and movement can help define character and status in a way that can be complementary to (or even subversive of) the written text as we have it. Augmenting textual readings through basic exercises and experiments in the classroom can illuminate the importance of these performative elements. This paper describes such experiments and suggests ideas for similar exercises that Classicists can try with their own students.

Timothy Moore and Ted Gellar-Goad, "Using Music In Performing Roman Comedy"

• In the original performances of Roman comedy, actors sang to the accompaniment of the two-piped tibia. Although complete reconstruction of this practice on the modern stage is impractical, participants in the 2012 NEH Summer Institute on Roman Comedy in Performance demonstrated several ways of incorporating music into modern performances, including hip hop-style performance; spoken dialogue with incidental music; a cappella singing to rhythms suggested by Plautus' and Terence's meters; accompanied singing of stichic meters to a repeated melody; and accompanied singing of a polymetric scene. Each of these approaches can be reproduced in the classroom to great pedagogical benefit.

Sophie Klein, "When Actions Speak Louder Than Words: Mute Characters In Roman Comedy"

• Because of their absence from the dialogue, mute characters often pass unnoticed in texts of Roman comedy. Focusing on them enhances the reader's view of the unspoken aspects of a play, in particular, how the visual elements can either support or subvert the verbal. Furthermore, they provide a unique pedagogical opportunity; the process of locating them in a script, inferring what they might be doing onstage, considering the implications of their social roles, and exploring the ambiguities they create in performance invites students to engage critically and creatively with a Roman comedy by expanding their view of a scene beyond the words on the page.

Christopher Bungard, "Negotiating Mastery: Staging Status In Pseudolus"

• Although underutilized in teaching Roman comedy, dramaturgy and performance engage teachers and students more deeply with the texts that survive from antiquity. This paper explores how requiring students to perform a scene of Roman comedy leads to more meaningful reflection on Roman social dynamics, particularly those between masters and slaves. Taking Ballio's canticum (Pseudolus 133-229) as a test case, this paper explores ways that interactions between characters on stage reinforce differing relations between masters and slaves. Although I focus on one scene, the process described in the paper can easily be applied more widely.

Meredith Safran, "Power Plays: 'Breaking' Into Critique Of Roman Comedy Through Metatheater"

• Drawing from personal experience with an experimental theater device, this article argues for the use of an interpolated breakout scene, as developed by the pioneering theater group Split Britches, to facilitate students' efforts to grapple with the conflicting impulses of laughter and disgust toward Roman comedy. In addition to enabling a critical comparative assessment of ancient and modern norms, the breakout scene facilitates appreciation of aspects of Roman theatrical practices, especially the nature and power of metatheatricality.

Nancy Sultan, "Pseudolus At The Ludi Megalenses: Re-Creating Roman Comedy In Context"

• This is a post-production report on a student reenactment of the Roman Ludi Megalenses (Megalensia), including a ludus scaenicus, at Illinois Wesleyan University in May 2013. Students studied and re-created some of the rituals commonly associated in antiquity with the worship of the Magna Mater, including a procession of both Phrygian worshippers and Roman citizens and a staged reading of Plautus' Pseudolus in Latin and English. We grappled with questions of text and metatheatricality, theatrical and sacred space, actors, music, movement, costumes (including masks), authenticity, audience reception and occasion. The reenactment allowed us to gain a unique historical perspective by "living history," providing a laboratory for learning about ancient Roman ritual and theater practice.

Erica Bexley, "Ludic Lessons: Roman Comedy On Stage And In Class"

• This afterword offers reflections on the pedagogical value of using performance in the classroom by situating the 2012 NEH Summer Institute on Roman Comedy within the wider development of Performance / Theatre Studies as a university discipline. It also examines the methodology underpinning various approaches to performance and suggests further ways of implementing the ideas proposed in the preceding articles.

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• Defining the "preternatural environment" / preternatural aspects of an environment.
• Superstition and spaces.
• Demonic domains.
• Artistic representations of preternatural environments across the ages.
• Aspects of the uncanny in various physical settings.
• The pathetic fallacy and narrative theory.
• "Unnatural" landscapes and environments.
• Bridging natural and preternatural spaces.
• Preternatural ecology and ecocriticism.
• Connections between material environments, literary narratives, and the preternatural.
• Eerie landscapes as characters or significant presences in literature, history, and culture.
• How preternatural environments inform human behaviour, or how behaviour informs preternatural environments.

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