graduate liberal arts & sciences news - Villanova University

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CLASSICAL STUDIES
“Changes of Form, New Shapes”
Enhance Classics Program
This Year
This spring’s hit campus production of
a play based on Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”
epitomized the dramatic changes
undergone this year in the classics
program. In a year characterized by
the Roman poet’s theme of “changes
of form, new shapes,” the program
welcomed a new chair, a new director
of Graduate Studies, two new classics
professors, and three new affiliated
faculty to its ranks. The additional
faculty broadened the program’s range
of offerings to include such fields as
ancient history and philosophy, classical
political thought, and Greek and Roman
archaeology. Plans are also underway to
teach Greek literature more regularly, to
offer students more experience honing
their research and writing skills, and to
create stronger bonds between the
graduate and undergraduate classics
programs.
The graduate program is proud to
announce that three students graduated
this spring: Joanna Johnson; Laura
Malone, the first student enrolled in
the five-year Bachelor/Master’s degree
program; and Stephen Parker, who
passed his comprehensive exams with
Honors. These students completed the
Herculean task of taking three threehour
exams in Latin translation, the
history of Latin literature, and Roman
From left to right: Graduate students Steven Ciprani, Stephen McGrath, and Thomas Di Giulio visit with
preeminent Latinist Dr. Denis Feeney (center) at a tea hosted by Dr. David Califf (far right).
history! To aid them in their labors, they
were given a list of topics and texts to
study that will be distributed to other
students this summer. Parker, a full-time
editor, expressed his appreciation for the
opportunity to take evening classes with
passionate, knowledgeable professors, a
sentiment shared by his colleagues James
Fiorile and Edward Turner, who are fulltime
teachers.
Two new five-year B.A./M.A. students,
William Blubaugh and Rhodes Pinto,
will be starting the program this fall.
The year began with two events
that not only brought the entire classics
program together but also attracted
the attention of the entire University
community. The first was a reception
attended by graduate and undergraduate
students, faculty, and University
administrators (see photo on page 3).
The second was a public reading of
Homer’s “Odyssey,” which was attended
by hundreds of people in the course of
a fifteen-hour marathon! (For details,
see the November – December 2008
newsletter.)
A New Chair and Two New
Professors Join the Program
Kevin Hughes, Ph.D., succeeded Thomas
Smith, Ph.D., as chair of the Humanities
Department and Classics Program,
when Dr. Smith became associate dean
for Humanities in the College of Arts
and Sciences. Dr. Hughes, who has been
teaching at Villanova since 1997, is also
an associate professor of Theology and
Religious Studies specializing in Late
Antique and Medieval Latin Literature.
He is the author of “Constructing
Antichrist: Paul, Biblical Commentary,
and the Development of Doctrine in the
Early Middle Ages” (Catholic University
of America Press, 2005).
Gary Meltzer, Ph.D., who has been
teaching at Villanova since 2005,
became the new director of Graduate
Studies and associate professor of
Classics. The author of “Euripides and
the Poetics of Nostalgia” (Cambridge
University Press, 2006), he taught a
graduate seminar on Euripides last fall
and will be offering one on Homer next
fall. He is currently working on a second
book about the relevance of the classics
to contemporary life. This spring
Dr. Meltzer took a group of students
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