Thursday, May 26, 2005

Harold C. Gotoff

University of Cincinatti:

The John Miller Burnam Professor of Latin and Romance and Palaeography, Professor Gotoff received his PhD from Harvard University in 1965. His research interests include Latin prose, rhetoric, Virgil, textual criticism.

"I am continuing my study of Ciceronian stylistics, trying to understand the relationship between composition and nuance, primarily in the periodic style of his oratory. I began, in my commentary on Pro Archia Poeta, trying to analyse and describe the variety of Ciceronian periods. In Cicero's Caesarian Speeches I attempted to relate the effect of various kinds of composition on rhetorical strategies. My text now is De Lege Agaria and my emphasis is on the forms and flow of Cicero's presentation beyond the limits of the syntactic period, and, within such periods, on the use of complex and ornate phrases. The speeches that make up the collection have rarely received extensive commentary; in English there is no such complete book. I am working on a historic, rhetorical, and stylistic commentary on the three speeches. Because the rarity of critical editions of the text, I am in the process of re-recollating a number of the manuscripts, particularly Vat. Lat 11458, Poggio's apograph, only used once since Campana discovered it half a century ago."

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Heinrich von Staden

"Heinrich von Staden is one of the world's foremost authorities on ancient science and medicine. His book Herophilus: the Art of Medicine in Early Alexandria (1989) is a major contribution to the history of Greek intellectual discourse. Von Staden's broad range of interests includes classical philosophy and literature. Among his current projects is a book-length work on Erasistratos (the Hellenistic pioneer of human dissection), a study of the relation between "nature" and "art" (techne) in ancient science, and a study of medical ethics in ancient Greece and Rome.

Ph.D., Universitat Tubingen, 1968; William Lampson Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature, Yale University, 1997-98; Professor, Institute for Advanced Study, 1998-; Charles Goodwin Award of Merit, American Philological Association, 1992; William H. Welch Medal, American Association for History of Medicine, 1993; Corresponding Fellow, British Academy; Member, Association des Etudes Grecques en France, American Philosophical Society, Acad?mie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Institut de France; Corresponding Member, Akademie der Wissenschaften, Gottingen."

Professor von Staden is a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study.

"The Institute is a private, independent academic institution that enjoys close, collaborative ties with Princeton University as well as Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and other nearby institutions."

"A compelling lecturer with an unusual talent for synthesis and exposition, Professor von Staden has given more than 75 external lectures at universities and institutions both here and abroad. His work on medicine is informed by a thoroughly professional knowledge of philosophy, in which he was trained as a doctoral candidate in Germany. While he approaches the culture of the ancient Mediterranean world mainly through the history of its thought and ideas, he retains from his classical background a strong philological base that is reflected in several important articles on semantics.

Professor von Staden gave a lecture, "When Physicians Err: Responses to Medical Failures in Antiquity," in the Institute's Public Lecture Series. In ancient Greece and Rome medical authors often referred to disorders caused or aggravated by medical intervention. Many physicians displayed an awareness of a tension between their claim to an efficacious professional expertise, based on scientific methods, and the frequency with which even expert practice led to unintended harmful consequences. The lecture explored strategies physicians adopted in response to this tension, their accounts of the reasons for the fallibility of scientific medicine, and moral and social responses to medical failures."

"Professor von Staden has published numerous articles and reviews, and is the author of several books, including his work on the Alexandrian doctor Herophilus. Herophilus: the Art of Medicine in Early Alexandria (1989, second edition 1994) is widely regarded as a critically important resource for study not only of the Hellenistic period but of the whole history of Greek medicine. Among Professor von Staden?s current projects is an edition of Erasistratos with full commentary, a companion volume to Herophilus. Von Staden is also working on an edition of six treatises by Galen, as well as a book-length study on ancient and mediaeval theories of language."

Friday, May 13, 2005

Maud Gleason

Maud Gleason: "Maud studies the cultural and social world of Greeks in the Roman Empire, with a particular interest in issues of gender, performance, and power. She is the author of Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton 1995).

One life Gleason examines in this work is the first-century public-speaker and super-star Favorinus.

As a 'Gaul who spoke Greek, a eunuch prosecuted for adultery, and a man who quarreled with the emperor and was still alive', to quote Philostratus' account of his own paradoxical self-description, Favorinus was a bizarre figure, good -- or hard -- to think with. He flaunted his own precarious position within gender, class, and racial categories, and this very flaunting means that the descriptions of Favorinus both by himself and by others are extremely revealing of the categories he puts under such strain. - Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Her study of Greek cities under Roman rule will appear in the Blackwell Companion to the Roman Empire."

Her email address: maud@stanford.edu