Classics Graduate Students Well Represented at Classical Association Meeting

From October 18-20, graduate students Olivia Hopewell, Mary Somerville, and Christie Villareal from the Department of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies presented papers at The Classical Association of the Middle West and South, Southern Section 2018 conference. The event was held at the Hawthorne Inn and Conference Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina at the invitation of Wake Forest University.

Olivia Hopewell’s talk titled “The Ethics of Reading Autobiography” considered the ethical stakes of the reception of Augustine’s Confessions and Dhouda’s Liber Manualis. Her paper was a selection of her Master’s thesis on autobiography and the ethics of reception, which involves a reading of Late Antique texts through the lens of 20th century philosopher Emmanuel Levinas.

Mary Somerville, whose alma mater is Wake Forest University, presented the paper “Statius’ Hypsipyle and Second Stage Warfare in the Thebaid.” Mary’s project explored a case study from Statius’ Thebaid to investigate the prevalence of second-stage (siege) imagery in the same text as a reconsideration of scenes which seem domestic in otherwise martial epic poetry.

Christie Villareal presented a section from her ongoing research into metallic imagery in Euripides with the talk “All that Glitters: Metallic Imagery in Euripides’ Electra.” Her talk examined real and metaphorical metal objects mentioned in the play as a lens into late 5th century B.C.E. class strife and attitudes towards the Tyrannicides in Athens.