Introducing the Board Members of FIEC

It is about time for a new interview! This week it is featuring Catherine Steel, Professor at the University of Glasgow and Adjunct Member of the new FIEC Board:

1. What is your current position at the University of Glasgow?

I am Professor of Classics in the subject area of Classics, which is part of the School of Humanities. I am also at the moment Dean of Research for the College of Arts.

2. What does your research focus on?

I work on the political history of the Roman Republic and on Roman oratory. That means Cicero, of course, but also the many other orators of the Republic whose speeches don’t survive – or survive only in fragments – but whose activity is attested in other sources.

3. What made you study the ancient world?

I was lucky enough to be able to study Latin and Greek at school, and it was because of the inspiring teachers there (South Hampstead High School in London) that I decided to study Classics at University. Once my knowledge of Latin was good enough to read and not just stumble through a text word by word, I found myself entranced by Cicero’s oratory, and things developed from there.

4. What is your job as Adjunct Member of the FIEC board?

As an Adjunct Member of the Bureau, my job is to contribute to board discussions and advise the officers. There is also the opportunity to tell the national Classics community in the U.K., where I’m based, about FIEC’s work and encourage U.K.-based scholars to participate in its activities. The 2019 FIEC meeting in London has made that side of the job much easier!

5. One of the main objectives of FIEC is to foster cooperation among classical scholars! Where do you see the future for classicists in that regard?

Co-operation is vital for the future of the discipline. Open exchange of ideas is fundamental to the humanities; and, more specifically, tackling big research ideas requires co-operation between specialists with different expertise. There are huge opportunities in terms of funding for collaborative research which classicists should be seeking to exploit; and increasingly we need to engage in research across disciplinary boundaries. The humanities need to be part of the effort to tackle big societal changes, and classicists and ancient historians have a great deal to contribute here – more than perhaps sometimes we realise. But we need to be open to new definitions of our discipline, which embrace areas and approaches outside traditional conceptions of Classics, and to new ways of doing the subject.

6. Another very important objective is to point out the relevance of classical studies to governmental authorities. What do you consider to be the biggest challenges as well as opportunities for classics?

The perennial challenge is ‘relevance’: why should people today still be interested in the Classics, let alone in classical Greek and in Latin? As a discipline we have good answers to those questions and we need to proclaim them confidently and in ways that respond to the different contexts in which they are asked. The opportunities, I firmly believe, lie in combining a confidence in the value of our research with a willingness to work with others across the Academy.

Introducing the Board Members of FIEC

Today we are happy to continue our interview series with Andre Lardinois, Professor at Ratboud University and Adjunct Member of the new FIEC Board:

1.     What is your current position at Radboud University?

I am professor of ancient Greek language and culture.

2.     What does your research focus on?

My research focuses primarily on archaic Greek lyric poetry and Athenian tragedy.

3.     What made you study the ancient world?

When I was a young boy of nine years old my parents took me to Rome. I was so impressed by the ruins that I became very interested first in Roman and very soon also ancient Greek culture. I also had a very good and funny teacher for Greek and Latin in high school, who helped to fuel my interest in the ancient world.

4.     What is your job as Adjunct Member of the FIEC board?

I am the FIEC delegate to the European Alliance for Social Sciences and Humanities in Brussels.

5.     One of the main objectives of FIEC is to foster cooperation among classical scholars! Where do you see the future for classicists in that regard?

One of the strongest points of our discipline is that it is very international. Classical antiquity and its literatures, history and art are studied in many parts of the world without their being a dominant country or region, as is often the case with modern languages. We should cherish this and at the same time seek opportunities to expand our horizon and include scholars from countries and regions that more recently have developed scholarly traditions in Classics, such as China and South America. The FIEC can and should play a pivotal role in this.

6.     Another very important objective is to point out the relevance of classical studies to governmental authorities. What do you consider to be the biggest challenges as well as opportunities for classics?

The challenge is at the same time the opportunity. Many governments focus exclusively on the economic welfare of their citizens and think they can foster this without any regard of history or the humanities. We should make clear that there are many more problems that affect the wellbeing of citizens in modern society (e.g. religious intolerance, racism, nationalism, populism) and which the humanities can help societies to think through by examining the occurrences of similar problems in other historical periods. Classics is particularly well placed to contemplate these parallels, because it looks at relatively complex societies that have experienced many of the same problems and whose sources over the centuries have been made relatively well accessible. Even economic innovations, however, only work if the people who have to adopt these innovations are properly understood and to this understanding the humanities, including classics, can contribute as well.

Introducing the Board Members of FIEC

New week, new face! This week's interview is featuring our new Secretary General, Sabine Huebner, Professor at the University of Basel:

1.     What is your current position at the University of Basel?

I hold the chair of Ancient History and I am the director of the Institute of Ancient History at the University of Basel in Switzerland. I am also currently the head of the doctoral program of the Department of Classical Civilizations in Basel. 

2.     What does your research focus on?

My research focuses on the lower social strata of the Graeco-Roman world, the ordinary men and women in their everyday life, for which documentary papyri are the most valuable sources. I have worked on classical religion, on early Christianity, on the ancient family, and on the impact of climate change on ancient societies. 

3.     What made you study the ancient world?

A road trip with my parents from North-Western Germany over the Alps to Italy when I was 12. We made stop-overs at Bologna, Firenze, Rome, Napoli and Pompei. I had just started studying Latin with a very inspiring teacher and I was in awe of the still extant material remains of the Romans who had lived 2,000 years before us. A walk over the original cobble stones of the Via Appia Antica left a particular deep impression on me. I imagined that Cicero and Caesar had walked on exactly these stones on which I was standing. I guess from that moment on it was clear that I wanted to study the ancient Romans. I fell in love with ancient Greek culture only at university, and with papyrology and the incredibly rich details papyri provide on ancient daily life even much later during my postgraduate studies.

4.     What is your job as Secretary General of the FIEC board?

As the new Secretary General I am in charge of coordinating all activities of FIEC. I also keep in touch with FIEC’s many member associations around the world. Apart from coordination and correspondence, I send out the annual report, prepare the agenda for the meetings of the FIEC board, and ensure that the meetings of the FIEC board and the general assemblies are effectively organized and minuted. I am also responsible for FIEC’s website and social media profile and last but not least, the archives of the FIEC, which go all the way back to 1948. 

5.     One of the main objectives of FIEC is to foster cooperation among classical scholars. Where do you see the future for classicists in that regard?

Classical studies are not only taught in Europe, the ancient homelands of the Greeks and Romans: Ancient Greek and Classical Latin, but also Graeco-Roman history are studied and taught around the globe from Russia to South Africa and from China to Argentina. However, the appraisal and support classical studies and classics scholars find differs very much from country to country. While Classics can build on a century-old tradition in many Western countries, the study of «Western Classics» in South-East Asia has very much evolved only in recent years. The field of classical studies has also changed in recent decades from an «elitist dinosaur» to something that embraces more diversity. Precisely in this evolution and capacity to change is where I see the future for classics.

6.     Another very important objective is to point out the relevance of classical studies to governmental authorities. What do you consider to be the biggest challenges as well as opportunities for classics?

FIEC steps up in its official capacity to national governments or university administrations for example when a chair or even an entire department of Classics is under threat. «Why Classics?» is a question that probably every classicist around the globe faces from time to time. I think it is important to make our research and teaching relevant to today’s great challenges. Already 2000 years ago people discussed social equity, questioned authority, criticized women’s oppression, and dealt with the impact of climate change. Their way of dealing with these challenges can inspire and inform us today and classicists can act as experts and facilitators of this knowledge. FIEC is there to connect classicists around the globe – because united they are stronger to fight for their cause.

Introducing the Board Members of FIEC

We are excited to introduce the Board Members of FIEC in the upcoming weeks as part of an interview series, which will give an insight into the structure and the main objectives of our Federation!
This week`s interview is featuring our new President, Gunhild Vidén, Professor emerita of the University of Göteborg:

1. What is your current position at the University of Göteborg?

I was professor of Latin until April this year. I am now emerita, but still connected to the department of Languages and Literatures.

2. What does your research focus on?

My main research interest is in history of ideas and attitudes, mentality and gender history, in my case based on literary evidence from antiquity (what is said as well as what is not said). I have studied attitudes to women in Silver Age literature, identity transition in early Christianity and attitudes to the body and physical aspects in the late Roman republic. At present I am involved in a cross disciplinary project on an early French translation of the Aeneid.

3. What made you study the ancient world?

It probably started because of my interest both in languages as such, and in history. Classical studies gave me the opportunity to combine these two things. They have continued to fascinate me through an increasing experience of how much there is to gain towards an understanding of the complexity of the world through the study of a period in time where it is still possible to get first hand knowledge and impressions of people’s thoughts and reactions. Studies of the ancient world can help us increase our understanding of human beings in different cultural and socio-economical contexts, as well as contribute to our understanding of how the world came to be what it is today. These things are crucial to finding tools to handle the problems of the world today, in combination with the insights and tools provided by the natural sciences.

4. What is your job as President of the FIEC board?

I see my main task in continuing the work of former presidents to save the classics when and where they are threatened, keep up the platform that FIEC tries to be for classicists all round the world, and find means of strengthening the collaboration between classicists across the world.

5. One of the main objectives of FIEC is to foster cooperation among classical scholars! Where do you see the future for classicists in that regard?

Cooperation has become more easy these days, with the fast communications that the internet provides and the outreach of social media. At the same time, classicists have become more specialised in later years, just as scholars within other disciplines, and there is a natural tendency that you go to conferences and look out for people who work with similar things as yourself. This is where I think FIEC has a role to play, in organizing the large congresses that encompass many parts of classical studies. It is important to make us remember that we are part of a larger whole, however tiny our own special corner of the field is.

6. Another very important objective is to point out the relevance of classical studies to governmental authorities. What do you consider to be the biggest challenges as well as opportunities for classics?

The biggest challenge at least in my own part of the world is the ignorance of the importance of humanistic competence in society, the one-eyed focus on economic capital without understanding of the need for cultural capital and the general lack of historicity. The opportunities must be created by the classicists themselves, by continuously reminding the world that we are there and we can contribute. There are many classicists who run blogs and podcasts, write articles in newspapers and magazines and contribute in other ways to keep the classics visible in the world. This work (usually carried out in the contributors’ spare time) must continue – gutta cavat lapidem.

CAMWS ENDORSEMENT: GREEK AND LATIN INTANGIBLE WORLD HERITAGE

In the past months, we informed you about efforts for the inclusion of Ancient Greek and Latin in the 'Intangible Cultural Heritage' list of the UNESCO, initiated by the Cultural Organisation "Human-Hist", based in France. Their proposal has received support from the Italian Senate, the Spanish Parliament as well as from FIEC. This week we are glad to inform you that the group of supporters has been joined by CAMWS, the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, which has officially endorsed FIEC's open letter on the issue.

For more information, please follow this link.

L'ANNÉE PHILOLOGIQUE - GUIDELINE FOR ABSTRACTS

L'Année Philologique has published general guidelines for the submission of abstracts, which have been approved by the FIEC General Assemby of Delegates. Please follow this link for more information.

FIEC ON GREEK AND LATIN AS INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE

With reference to what we informed you about in this blog, we would like to let you know that FIEC supports efforts to register Ancient Greek and Latin in the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Please read the full resolution following this link.