#classics students

Cassandra: KNOWS that people won’t listen to them; then people don’t listen to them and everything goes to crap 

Achilles: acts and is uninterested, until a day before the presentation, then gets f***ing PISSED when they go thru the slideshow and everyone has used different fonts; has an aristeia of changing things to actually look good; probably loses a friendship and accidentally deletes a jpeg or two along the way; no one’s particularly happy with them after, but they do agree that it does look better and more profesh

Odysseus: the one that quietly assigns roles and sections and then does most of the research for all of them anyway; but also if anyone asks how the project is going, they roll their eyes and loudly declare that theyre the only one doing any work; somehow both humble and smart, and also an arse about it, but still likeable because, yeah, they did do most of the work

Aeneas: the teachers pet that starts off strong but after they start researching they decide their topic is too hard for them and abandon it; no one hears from them until day before; then they are the one to actually present the project and get the whole thing mixed up, but still somehow come out with the same conclusion; the teacher still loves them but the student who’s not in the group but is actually paying attention to the material loudly objects to the whole thing and the Odysseus has to pipe up and explain where the Aeneas went wrong while not dissing them

Helen: when roles were assigned, they partnered up with a friend, but by the end, it looks like the slide of another person is the one they actually worked on, but then no ones really sure which part they did— if they actually did any of it; they never offer an explanation or stand up for which work they contributed (lends to the -if any- theory)

Penelope: didn’t specifically have a role, kind of just the overseer/narrator (then let Aeneus present it because theyre nice and not as performative); after the Achilles person went through and had their font-changing aristeia, they are the one that goes and smooths things back out and makes sure there aren’t any slides missing or out of place

Agamemnon: real gung ho, but no one actually knows what (if anything) they did; except everyone’s pretty sure that theyre the one that made the title slide font Comic Sans to begin with, probably prompting… you know… 

Paris: the one that jumped up and said they would present it way at the beginning of the process, but then they got sick and couldn’t do it so Penelope and Aeneas were the next choices (they also didn’t do any research but did contribute pixelated background pictures for a couple of slides) 

Who said learning Latin is dull?

This semester, UWM Latin instructor Deanna Wesolowski’s classes have been focusing on reading medieval Latin texts. Today she brought two of her classes, composed of beginning and 2nd-year students, to Special Collections to view examples from our extensive facsimile collection of manuscript books originally produced from the late 7th to the mid 15th centuries. The goal was to view and attempt to read a range of Latin texts in a long temporal span of paleographic hands, with their various ligatures and abbreviation conventions, and to discuss how reading Latin was transformed by the 13th century through the gradual introduction of standardized word order, spaces between words, punctuation, enlarged initial capitals, and the use of the Carolingian minuscule.

We were a bit surprised, but absolutely delighted with the level of enthusiasm  the students brought to their engagement with the texts, and with the many great questions and comments they formulated. For these students at least, learning Latin is certainly not dull!

Click on the images to find out what they’re reading.

Two University of Tasmania undergraduate students took on a momentous task this year. 

After months of translating, research, and practice, the two third-year Latin students performed two scenes from Plautus plays in Latin at the UTAS Amphitheatre on Thursday the 9th of November. The first is from Amphitruo and the second is from Aulularia. 

As you watch the videos you may note that not only do they recite the scenes in Latin, they recite in metre. Their work is valuable for the Classics community - it brings the wonders of the Latin language and performance into the present, making it accessible for all.