Introducing the Board Members of FIEC

New week, new face! This week's interview is featuring Fausto Montana, Professor at the University of Pavia and Adjunct Member of the new FIEC Board:

1.     What is your current position at Università di Pavia?

I have been professor of Greek language and literature at Pavia University since 2000 (full professor since 2005). Apart from teaching and institutional and research responsibilities in my Department (Musicologia e Beni Culturali, located in Cremona), I hold courses at the Department of Studi Umanistici. I participate as an elected representative in the Academic Senate of my University.

2.     What does your research focus on?

Since my Doctoral thesis, defended in 1994 and centered on the citations of Aristotle’s Constitution of Athenspresent in the scholia to Aristophanes’ comedies, I have been fascinated by the intertwined relationship which occurs, in the ancient and Byzantine tradition of Greek texts, between institutional and factual history, literature, and exegesis. This web of intersecting subjects and viewpoints has remained the compass of my research studies – with alternating emphasis on ancient historiography, poetry, and scholarly works – for the last thirty years. My underway projects include the co-editorship of the encyclopedic database Lexicon of Greek Grammarians of Antiquity and of the series of commented critical editions Supplementum Grammaticum Graecum (both being published by Brill) and, furthermore, such a longterm teamwork as a new critical edition of the Iliad scholia (to be published by de Gruyter).

3.     What made you study the ancient world?

In my family of origin, we could not remember anybody who dealt with studies on classics. When I was 14, my parents adressed me to the Liceo Classico, where Greek and Latin (both the respective languages and histories of literature) where and are the educational core. Greek morphology (!) was the spark. I loved this way of controling a complex world of words in order to decifer amazing texts in their original sounds and forms. Thanks mainly to my first teacher in those days, I gradually convinced me of the useful and gratifying value of studying the Greek language, the ancient history, the literatures and cultures of the past. Later, as an university student, I also began to seize and understand the relevance of classics for the constantly evolving societies of our days. 

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

Apart from supporting the organization of the FIEC Congress scheduled for 2022 in Mexico City and fostering classics all around the world, which are essential missions of our Federation and shared by all the members of the board, my special task is as delegate for the Année Philologique (APh). I know quite well this fundamental tool for the study of the ancient world, having been a member of the Centro Italiano dell’Année Philologique since 1995 and of the Société Internationale de Bibliographie Classique (SIBC), the scientific editor of the APh, since 2017. I was also the Italian representative in the international Comité de rédaction of the APh in 2014-2019. In these last years, the APh has experienced important changes mainly from the technological point of view. It is crucial for the development and enhancement of classics that our old instruments keep up with the times.

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?

We dispose today of a widespread technology which makes scholars able to connect and stay in touch each other in real time, as individuals and institutions as well. Accordingly, the exchange and dissemination of scientific ideas and products can travel at light speed (quite literally!). The familiarisation of people (the old generation as well, though more slowly...) with these revolutionary opportunities is ongoing and we are authorized to hope that, in a few decades or years, communication, cooperation, and sharing will become easier and more natural than in the past and even today. This tendence deserves new and appropriate opportunities also in the fields of copyright, access, and circulation of products. I see among FIEC’s targets the active promotion of this trend. 

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?

I think that the most serious challenges for today classicists are (1) to prove the actual value of their studies for contemporary societies and (2) to ensure the transfer of knowledge from the old to the new means of transmission which are provided by the ongoing digital revolution and are spreading very quickly, above all among the young generations. In some Countries our disciplines are out of fashion, somewhere they are suffering like “under siege” because of communicational obsolescence and, consequently, due to a lack of money or interest. We all know what a gigantic loss would be to set classical studies apart. Therefore, we should make the strongest and most cohesive effort to disseminate this awareness of the social importance of classics also among not specialist people (public authorities as well as private individuals); and do it by overturning the defensive approach into a proactive and attractive initiative, in step with the times. Resolution, cohesion, and self-updating shall help us to succeed!

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.