2020 Newsletter
Department Spotlights
Department Kudos
Class Notes
Donor Recognition
Department Spotlights
Faculty Spotlight: Eric H. Cline
Kabri Archaeological Project in Israel.
Professor Eric Cline continues to serve as co-director of the Kabri Archaeological Project in Israel, along with Assaf Yasur-Landau of the University of Haifa. During the 2019 summer excavation season, they found yet another room belonging to the wine storage complex in their Canaanite palace at the site, as well as evidence for another painted plaster floor, which remains to be uncovered in a future season. During spring 2019, a volume he edited with Assaf and Yorke Rowan was published by Cambridge University Press. Titled The Social Archaeology of the Levant: From Prehistory to the Present, it received the ASOR G. Ernest Wright Publication Award for the best edited volume published in the past two years.
In other book news, his volume Three Stones Make a Wall: The Story of Archaeology (Princeton University Press, 2017) has now been translated into Italian, Spanish, French, German, Turkish and Chinese (both simplified and complex), with additional translation rights sold for Czech. His previous volume, 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Princeton University Press, 2014), has now been translated into 14 languages to date, with an additional Arabic version due out soon. His next book, Digging Up Armageddon: The Search for the Lost City of Solomon, will be published by Princeton in March 2020.
Lighting Up Ancient Artifacts
Using cutting-edge imaging technology, Chris Rollston, associate professor of northwest Semitic languages and literature, is deciphering inscriptions on fragments of 2,000-year-old pottery excavated in Jordan. His work on the once presumed-lost pieces is shedding new light on a pivotal point in history. He was profiled in GW Today.
Chris Rollston, associate professor of northwest Semitic languages and literature, examines ostraca. He is using multispectral imaging to examine the pieces and their faded ink writing more closely.
Department Kudos
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Eric Cline received several honors: the 2019 ASOR G. Ernest Wright Publication Award for The Social Archaeology of the Levant; the National Geographic Society/CRE Grant for Tel Kabri; and was a AIA Norton Lecturer.
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Jennifer Tobkin presented a paper titled "Muhammad ibn Dawud al-Isfahani and his Poetic Alter Ego the Man of Our Times" at the Great Lakes Adiban Society workshop in Bloomington, Ind.
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Elizabeth Fisher was honored with a Latin Ovatio (Speech of Commendation) at the Fall Meeting of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States in Silver Spring, Md. Her service to the Washington area classics teachers and programs was cited. Emeritus Professor of Classics John Ziolkowski delivered the Ovatio in flawless Ciceronian Latin. She also published an open-access article In Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 59 (2019) 714–736, titled "Natural Omens in Byzantine Literature: An Unpublished Translator’s Preface to a Brontologion (Petrop.Bibl.Publ. 575). In the classroom, Elizabeth is reading in Greek selections from Plato's Republic and Phaedo with seven students in Greek 2001 and 3001, a large Greek class in the context of U.S. college enrollments in Greek. She also celebrated 12 years as classical studies coordinator.
Class Notes
- Katherine Bradshaw, BA ’16, MA ’17, completed her MA in classics at the University of Maryland (College Park) and is now living her dream of teaching Latin at a private school in suburban Virginia—and loving it!
- Victoria Costa, BA ’13, MD ’17, is in her third year of pathology residency at New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center.
- Garrett Dome, BA ’19, is now an MA candidate in classics and philosophy as well as a special assistant to "Dr. Digital Classics" Gregory Crane at Tufts University.
- Noble Larocco Masi, BS ’19, is completing his Master of Divinity at Southeastern Baptist Theological as he teaches 8th grade science. Noble is extremely thankful to Dr. Rollston for all that he did during his time as an undergraduate.
- Yang (Charlotte) Luo, BA ’19, is now a graduate student in the TESOL program at the University of Pennsylvania.
Donor Recognition
The Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages & Literatures would like to gratefully acknowledge the following generous donors who made a gift to the department from January 1, 2019 – December 31, 2019.
+ Faculty/Staff | # Parent | ~ Student | * Friend
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Ricardo Azze, BA ’19
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Kelly Cook, BA ’01, JD ’04
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Josh Eisen *
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Kylie Madden BA ’17