2023 CNELC Newsletter
Message From the Chair
Department Spotlights
Department Kudos
Alumni Class Notes
Message From the Chair
The Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (CNELC) is flourishing at GW. We offer a major and minor in Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies (“CANES,” with Greek, Latin and Biblical Hebrew as our language options), a major and a minor in Arabic, a minor in Hebrew and three years of Persian language instruction. Each year we teach a total of more than 1,000 students in our classes, thus, our faculty of 12-15 is fully engaged in teaching and mentoring students. We are also very active in research and publication projects, with refereed books and articles published every year by our faculty.
During recent years, we have been placing our graduates in some of the best universities in the world, including Yale, Harvard and the University of Cambridge. In addition, our graduates are currently working in government, museums, private industry, nonprofits and education (both secondary and higher education). We are able to do what we do because of this great university, and especially because of the gifts and support from friends and alumni like you. Thank you for your continued support of CNELC. Because of you, we look confidently to the future!
All best wishes,
Christopher Rollston
Chair, Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Department Spotlights
Garrett Dome Publishes Latin Translation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Garrett Dome, BA ’19, translated the book Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde into Latin for a foreign language book publisher. After earning an MA in Classics from Tufts University, he now teaches and helps create curriculum for Latin at BASIS DC and will become the next summer school principal.
Rollston Book Honors Esteemed Professor P. Kyle McCarter Jr.
Christopher Rollston is the lead editor of Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor of P. Kyle McCarter Jr., a volume of collected articles by leading scholars honoring Kyle McCarter Jr., Professor Emeritus of Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
Department Kudos
- Orian Zakai’s forthcoming book Fictions of Gender: Women, Femininity, and the Zionist Imagination rethinks Israeli feminism through the contemporary lens of global feminism, intersectionality and post-colonialism, exploring how current controversies surrounding Zionism and feminism are prefigured in the complex legacies of early Zionist women activists and writers.
- Diane Harris Cline published the articles “Assortative Mixing in the Social Networks of Athenian Potters and the Search for Communities of Practice” for the Journal of Historical Network Research and “Sensory Disorientation During Crisis: Foucault's 'Heterotopia' and the Plague in Ancient Athens” for the Classical World.
- Elise A. Friedland published the article “Beth Shean 'Beauties': An Introduction to the Sculptures from Roman and Byzantine Nysa-Scythopolis” in Cities, Monuments and Objects in the Roman and Byzantine Levant Studies in Honour of Gabi Mazor and an online essay “Antiquity in America’s Capital" to accompany the exhibition “Antiquity & America” at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.
- Eric H. Cline authored the article “Tree Rings, Drought, and the Collapse of the Hittite Empire” for Ancient Near East Today as well as two co-authored articles on the Late Bronze Age collapse in Perspectives on Public Policy in Societal-Environmental Crises: Risk, Systems, and Decisions.
Alumni Class Notes
- Joseph Frechette, BA ’95, MA ’98, is a historian assigned to the Office of the Air Force Surgeon General.
- Rickcord Gibbons, BA ’68, spent 34 years in Europe—Germany and Italy—with the Department of the Army and picked up 15 hours post-grad in Military Studies. He retired in 2014 and lives in Winchester, Va.
- Ryan Mackler, BA ’21, is a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Jordan, where he teaches a class on English language for business to Jordanian students at the Ammon Applied University College.
- Alexandra Ratzlaff, BA ’03, will be directing a new excavation at the Roman/Byzantine site of Birsama in Israel this summer. She is currently the Assistant Professor of Classical Archaeology and Digital Humanities at Brandeis University.