Classics Commons^™

Defining Communal Identity In The Ottoman Empire: Hagop Gagosian And The Mormon Armenians, 1890–1910, Courtney Cook

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

“A Kindred Sigh For Thee”: British Responses To The Greek War For Independence, Susannah Morrison

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

"Some Dreamers Of The Golden Dream": The Construction Of The Golden Age Myth(S) In The Age Of Ottoman Decline, Ian Mclaughlin

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

This paper considers the role and construction of golden age myths in seventeenth-century debates about how to renew the flagging Ottoman Empire. Policymakers and preachers prescribed radically different solutions based on which golden age they idealized—whether the time of the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century or the reign of Sultan Suleiman in the sixteenth. Throughout most of the 1600s, the pendulum swung back and forth violently depending on which faction had the sultan’s ear. Charismatic mosque preachers like Kadizade Efendi whipped up Istanbul crowds against coffee, while advice writers such as Koçi Bey urged expelling “outsiders” from the military …

“It Is A Privilege To Pee”: The Rise And Demise Of The Pay Toilet In America, Katie Richards

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

From The Editor, Ian Mclaughlin

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Department Awards

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Early Pyrrhonism As A Sect Of Buddhism? A Case Study In The Methodology Of Comparative Philosophy, Monte Ransome Johnson, Brett Shults

Comparative Philosophy

We offer a sceptical examination of a thesis recently advanced in a monograph published by Princeton University Press, entitled Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia. In this dense and probing work, Christopher I. Beckwith, a professor of Central Eurasian studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, argues that Pyrrho of Elis adopted a form of early Buddhism during his years in Bactria and Gandhāra, and that early Pyrrhonism must be understood as a sect of early Buddhism. In making his case Beckwith claims that virtually all scholars of Greek, Indian, and Chinese philosophy have been operating under flawed …

Review: Irene Ceccherini, Sozomeno Da Pistoia (1387–1458): Scrittura E Libri Di Un Umanista., Julia H. Gaisser

Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Homeric Time Travel, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

It has been a commonplace among anthropologists since Malinowski that during the performance of traditional stories the listening community experiences the primordial past when the gods still appeared freely to humans. Significantly, this involves not a return to the past, but a return of the past. The Odyssey not only depicts its own hero as a character from the heroic past, in which the gods were intimately involved with the heroes who fought at Troy, but also as one who brings the past with him when he returns home to an Ithaca that represents a greatly diminished present. In so …

Drone Photography Vs. Light Detection And Ranging (Lidar) Data - Which Source Is Best Utilized In 3-Dimensional Modeling Applications?, Austin Valentine

Student Scholarship & Creative Works

Drone Photography vs. Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) Data — Which Source is Best Utilized in 3-Dimensional Modeling Applications? is an evaluation essay comparing the analysis and modeling of both drone photography and LiDAR data. This paper gives a brief introduction into my choice of utilization between these two techniques, both of which were applied to 3-dimensional modeling of the Kincaid Mounds Archaeological site in southern Illinois. Thus, illustrating some of the advantages and disadvantages associated with both methods.

Homeric Studies, Feminism, And Queer Theory: Interpreting Helen And Penelope, Rachel H. Lesser

Ancient Greek and Roman Studies Faculty Publications

Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz and Amy Richlin’s Feminist Theory and the Classics (1993) and Barbara F. McManus’ Classics and Feminism: Gendering the Classics (1997) provided ground-breaking surveys of the feminist revolution in classical studies, and their work leads us to the question of the feminist impact on the study of Homer. In this essay, I review the contributions of feminist scholarship on Homer and explore queer theory as a new heuristic avenue for advancing the feminist interpretation of the Homeric epics. With this approach, I follow upon and revise McManus’ use of the concept of “dual-gendering” (a term that I employ …

Site Formation Processes Of Submerged Shipwrecks. Matthew E. Keith (Editor), 2016. University Press Of Florida, Gainesville. Xi 276 Pp. $79.95 (Hardcover), Isbn 978-0-8130-6162-7, Russell K. Skowronek

History Faculty Publications

Site Formation Processes of Submerged Shipwrecks explores the physical and cultural processes affecting shipwreck sites. Authors from archaeology, chemistry, oceanography, and sediment dynamics share their expertise regarding the factors that influence the formation and preservation of shipwreck sites. These include the material aspects of ships, the underwater environment, and events including storms, chemical reactions, and subsequent human activity.

The Fall Of The Roman Empire, Fred W. Jenkins

Roesch Library Faculty Publications

Review article on key works on the fall of the Roman Empire.

Data Mining Ancient Script Image Data Using Convolutional Neural Networks, Shruti Daggumati, Peter Revesz

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

The recent surge in ancient scripts has resulted in huge image libraries of ancient texts. Data mining of the collected images enables the study of the evolution of these ancient scripts. In particular, the origin of the Indus Valley script is highly debated. We use convolutional neural networks to test which Phoenician alphabet letters and Brahmi symbols are closest to the Indus Valley script symbols. Surprisingly, our analysis shows that overall the Phoenician alphabet is much closer than the Brahmi script to the Indus Valley script symbols.

Wonder Woman: Classical Hero, Modern Superheroine, And Feminist Figure, Victoria A. Karnes

Celebration of Learning

Wonder Woman, an Amazonian princess and superheroine who has been inspiring women since her comic debut in 1941. From her origins to the villains she faces, Wonder Woman’s stories and character are wrapped up in allusions to famous myths and figures of Greek and Roman literature. In my Senior Inquiry, I investigate Wonder Woman’s Classical connections and compare the ancient portrayal of Amazonian women to their portrayal in the comics and the recent films Wonder Woman (2017) and Justice League (2017). Also, in my Senior Inquiry, I analyze Dr. William Marston’s complicated and problematic feminist views which inspired his creation …

Bladelet Polish: A Lithic Analysis Of Spracklen ( 33 Gr 1585 ), An Upland Hopewell Campsite, Tyler R. E. Heneghan

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis builds upon recent investigations at Spracklen (33GR1585), a small upland site in Greene County, Ohio. The presence of non-local cherts, bladelets, and bladelet cores indicates a Middle Woodland Ohio Hopewell occupation. Raw material sourcing, debitage analyses, and a use-wear analysis uncovered that Spracklen functioned as a logistical hunting campsite. Its people utilized bladelets for butchery and hide-working processes. This information provides new insights into Hopewellian life in the uplands and its place within Hopewell community organization.

Women’S Erotic Desires And Perspectives On Marriage In Sappho’S Epithalamia And H.D.’S Hymen, Amanda Kubic

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

In her collection Hymen (1921), the modernist poet H.D. engages in a collaborative, composite reception of the archaic Greek lyric poet Sappho. H.D. draws on Sappho as a source of lyric power and lesbian erotic authority, and brings together the various women’s voices and perspectives represented in Sappho’s poems—especially those that have to do with marriage—into her own present poetic moment. As the title Hymen suggests, of particular significance to H.D.’s Sapphic reception work is the genre of the epithalamium, or “wedding song.” Sappho, in her epithalamia, constructs a woman-centered and woman-identified thiasos that is centered on the bride, her …

& One Night The World Will Have Changed, Hanna Andrews

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

& One Night the World Will Have Changed is a collection of poems largely concerned with thresholds—what does one have to reconcile when standing at a precipice, when grappling with a crisis of faith, and how does one begin again? The collection is marked by three distinct sections: the first section of poems considers the effects of a devastating storm along with the emotional upheaval of abandonment (both the act of having been left, and then later, of leaving behind one life for a different one.) The second section is a series of prose poems that narrate the aftermath in …

Cathartic Concentration: Meditation And Altered States In Apuleius' Metamorphoses, Benjamin L. John

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

In this thesis, I offer my reading of Apuleius’ novel, the Metamorphoses, or the Golden Ass. Modern scholars are divided on whether we should read the novel as a genuine expression of religio-philosophical sentiment or a satire of religious devotion. My goal is to show that these are not mutually exclusive readings, but two positions from which to consider the idea of spiritual transcendence.

The first chapter explores the way that Apuleius uses light imagery to characterize the religious experience of the novel’s protagonist, Lucius, by analyzing similar phenomena in contemporary and modern descriptions of altered states of …

Leaving Neverland For Narnia: Childhood And Gender In Peter Pan, The Secret Garden, And The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, Calabria Turner

English MA Theses

British gender expectations are often epitomized in mature adults, either in society or within novels, but in Peter Pan, The Secret Garden, and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe gender roles are interpreted by the child protagonists. J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan inhabits the world of the Neverland, but the gender roles of Victorian England follow them from London to the home below the tree where Peter, Wendy, her brothers, and the Lost Boys reside in a pseudo-domestic sphere. Peter often engages in literal discussion of what it means to become an English man, while Wendy lives …