Classics Commons^™

Myrrha Now: Reimagining Classic Myth And Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses In The #Metoo Era, Claire A. Pukszta

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper represents the final culmination of a theater senior project. The project consisted of an analytical research paper, performance in a mainstage department production, and supporting process documentation. I portrayed Myrrha, Hunger, Zeus, and others in a production of the play Metamorphoses.

Through research on Mary Zimmerman’s 1998 play Metamorphoses, adapted from the works of Roman poet Ovid, this thesis grapples with the historical meaning of the myth of Myrrha. A polarizing figure, Myrrha was cursed to fall in lust with her father. By exploring of portrayals sexual assault onstage, I tackle themes of audience relationships to …

The Clashing Island Of Humanity: Virgil's Aeneid As Heroic Threnody, Steffen Mathis

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

This study follows neither the paradigm of pro-or anti-Augustan nor the strict belief that the intention of the poet, like other poets of the time, is one of ambiguity open to multiple interpretations. Virgil’s Aeneid is an epic poem with a clearly woven thesis that the hospitality relationships that its hero enters both transcend and address the difficulties he faces in founding Rome. The Rome that Aeneas founds is, like Augustan Rome’s mythology, built on labors and toils. Aeneas’ labors are moral, they are intellectual, and they are searching for the relationship between the human and the divine that is …

Leaves Of The Bodhi Tree From East To West: The Symbol Of The Sacred Fig Tree In Ancient India, Southeast Asia And Contemporary Contexts, Amanda J. Spradling

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines the depiction of the Bodhi Tree, a common Buddhist symbol. Bodhi tree simply means tree of enlightenment and Buddha Shakyamuni reached enlightenment while in meditation beneath the particular tree species of ficus religiosa, or sacred fig. Though the sacred fig tree, as a native tree to India, has historically held significance, today it is principally known for its association with the Buddha, particularly his single most important life event, his enlightenment.

Tree worship and its universal practice is well understood and many studies of the Bodhi Tree explore its associated pilgrimage site, Bodh Gaya, and monument, the …

The Classics, Race, And Community-Engaged Or Public Scholarship, Patrice Rankine

Classical Studies Faculty Publications

Our discipline has always been at, its core, concerned with language. At its best, The American Journal of Philology has professed to being a forum for those seeking knowledge of the words and worlds of Greece and Rome. It is unreasonable, however, to disentangle the discipline of philology and its allied fields – art history, philosophy, archaeology, and so forth – from the modern realities of slavery, race, and their impacts well after global abolition, emancipation, and any declaration of a post-racial period. That is, we bring a great deal of cultural baggage to what we call the Classics.

Afterlife: Du Bois, Classical Humanism And The Matter Of Black Lives, Patrice Rankine

Classical Studies Faculty Publications

In Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man, the protagonist—i.e., the Invisible Man—encounters an ex-doctor at the Golden Day, a bar full of discontents. The former doctor explains to the overwhelmed and confused Mr Norton, who is the white trustee of the Southern black college that the Invisible Man attends, how he sees the protagonist. It is no accident that Ellison models the college in the novel after Tuskegee Normal Institute, the historical black college that Booker T. Washington founded in 1881. After the publication of his autobiography Up From Slavery in 1901, Washington would become W. E. B. Du Bois’s …

A Reading Of Phaedrus's Eulogy In Plato's Symposium, Benjamin Goodman

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis provides a reading of Phaedrus's eulogy in Plato's Symposium.

A Merely Comic Conclusion: A Comparative Analysis Of Xenophon’S Spartan Constitution, Conor Hogan

CMC Senior Theses

In this paper, I hope to do a small part to bridge the gap that has emerged in this scholarly debate between the historicist and Straussian views of Spartan society. To that end, this paper will analyze the Spartan Constitution according to the Straussian method. That is, I will engage in a close reading of the text, only referencing outside, secondary sources directly when necessary and appropriate. In other cases, their views will simply color this analysis and be referenced as supporting evidence in footnotes. Strauss chose to have only a superficial interaction with the existing scholarship at the time …

An Apology For Lawyers: Socrates And The Ethics Of Persuasion, Sherman J. Clark

Michigan Law Review

Review Plato's "Apology of Socrates" in Six Great Dialogues: Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Symposium, and The Republic.

Review: Oresteia, Adapted By Robert Icke, Laura Gawlinski

Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Robert Icke’s adaptation of Aeschylus’ Oresteia twists the themes and conflicts of the three ancient Greek plays that make up its source material into fresh horror for the modern stage.1 Icke taps into the big-picture issues that are worked out through the mythology of Orestes and his family—the steep costs of war, the nature of justice, the marginalization of women, the role of religion in politics, and the irreconcilability of obligations to family and state—to create a work that feels both novel and timeless. First staged at London’s Almeida Theatre in 2015 as part of a season of Greek-based productions …

Sororal Bonds Actualized: Sisterhood In Charlotte Bronte's Shirley And Louisa May Alcott's Work, Lorin Richard

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

No abstract provided.

Underworld, Radcliffe G. Edmonds Iii

Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies Faculty Research and Scholarship

Depictions of the underworld, in ancient Greek and Roman textual and visual sources, differ significantly from source to source, but they all draw on a common pool of traditional mythic motifs. These motifs, such as the realm of Hades and its denizens, the rivers of the underworld, the paradise of the blessed dead, and the places of punishment for the wicked, are developed and transformed through all their uses throughout the ages, depending upon the aims of the author or artist depicting the underworld. Some sources explore the relation of the world of the living to that of the dead …

Literature Of The Self In Foucault: Parrhesia And Autobiographical Discourse, Álvaro Luque

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Literature of the Self in Foucault: Parrhesia and Autobiographical Discourse" Álvaro Luque Amo analyzes the framework of Foucault’s study of the technologies of the self. In his study, Michel Foucault analyses the practices of self-writing in the Graeco-Roman period. From this perspective, Foucault approaches the texts of classical authors to interpret what he calls a process of ethopoiesis, or construction of the subject: a subject who tells the truth about himself in the text. Foucault introduces concepts and ideas that are essential to understanding the evolution of autobiography and literature of the self. This article studies …

Martial Iv.29 By Martial, George Held

Transference

Translated from Latin by George Held.

Poems By Rilke, Catullus, And Baudelaire, Susan Mclean

Transference

Translated by Susan McLean:

• From German - Die Erblindende (The Woman Going Blind) by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
• From Latin - Catullus 11 by Catullus (c.84 - c.54 BC)
• From French - Les Deux Bonnes Sœurs (The Two Sisters of Mercy) and Bien loin d'ici (Very Far from Here) by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)

Better Left Unsaid And Other Poems, John Brugaletta

Transference

Translated from Classical Greek by John Brugaletta:

• Better Left Unsaid by Philodemus (110-35 BC)
• Still Young by Philodemus
• Le Moment Psychologique by Rufinus (340-410 AD)

Transference Vol. 6, Fall 2018

Transference

Complete issue with covers of Transference Vol. 6, Fall 2018

Blended With The Savior: Gregory Of Nyssa's Eucharistic Pharmacology In The Catechetical Oration, John David Penniman

Faculty Journal Articles

Humankind, for Gregory of Nyssa, was poisoned through a primordial act of eating the forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden. As a result, the toxin of sin and death has been blended into the body and soul of each person, dispersing itself throughout the component parts of their nature. If eating and drinking initiated the spiritual and physical degradation of humanity, Gregory argues, then it must also be through eating and drinking—namely, through the Eucharist—that humanity will be healed. This article proposes that Gregory's instruction on the Eucharist in his Catechetical Oration should be understood as more than merely …

Did Hollywood Take Theatre "By Hook Or By Crook?", Catherine S. Wright

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Hollywood and Theatre have been partners in producing entertainment for over 100 years. The relationship was fruitful for both parties, but Hollywood moguls and playwrights battled over ownership of the work and crafting of its creative nucleus, story and character. Theatre was the dominant entertainment right before the rise of motion pictures. Once Hollywood’s talkies closed the curtain on silent films, playwrights had a high creative worth to movie makers. In the cinema, story and dialogue were essential for its survival and growth. Playwrights were courted by the Hollywood studio heads but were not offered equal partnership as they were …

Worldwide Waters: Laurasian Flood Myths And Their Connections, Logan A. Mcdonald

Honors College Theses

In various cultures, stories of great floods have arisen, and many scholars agree that the writers of these stories based their accounts on an actual flooding event. However, these narratives vary in characters, plot, and even their meaning to each culture. This thesis examines several Laurasian flood narratives, perhaps the most ancient narratives in Western literature, including those of the Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Sumerian, and Israeli cultures. These civilizations all rose and existed in close proximity to one another, which makes the historicity of a flooding event more probable. A structural examination of the narratives and a comparison of their …

University Of Mississippi Archaeology Showcase (2018), Matthew Murray, Nancy Wicker, Jacqueline Dibiasie-Sammons, Aileen Ajootian, Arianna Kitchens, Madeleine Mccracken, Hannah Zechman

Lecture Series

Presentations about current research by UM archaeology professors and students.

6:00 p.m. Dr. Matthew Murray

"Fragmented, wrapped and infected: new perspectives on death in Iron Age Central Europe"

6:10 p.m. Dr. Nancy Wicker

"Vikings in Iberia? Investigation of a Viking-style deer antler container in Léon, Spain"

6:20 p.m. Dr. Jacqueline DiBiasie-Sammons

"Photographing ancient graffiti: dStretch and Neutral Density Filters"

Break

6:40 p.m. Arianna Kitchens, Madeline McCracken

"Inscriptions Lost in Time"
6:50 p.m. Hannah Zechman "Archaeological Investigations at Friendship Cemetery, Columbus, Mississippi"

7:00 p.m. Dr. Aileen Ajootian

"Actium at Ancient Corinth: a Victory Monument for Octavian?"