UCLA Department of Classics

Congratulations to Tianran Liu, Zak Gram, Ben Davis, Patrick Callahan, and Collin Moat who finished their PhD's and were rewarded with cake today following their presentations to the department!

We are proud to announce that our outgoing department chair, Distinguished Professor David Blank, will be delivering the keynote address at Humanities Commencement on June 13 in Royce Hall.

For more information, see here:

Classics chair David Blank to keynote 2026 Humanities commencement - UCLA Humanities A scholar of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, Blank has been a UCLA faculty member for four decades

Congratulations to Classics PhD student Roderick Zoe, whose article "Cato's Colonial Paradox and the Struggle over Libya's Geography in Pharsalia 9" has just been published in Classical Antiquity (vol. 44.2, pp. 1-27)!

Check it out here:
https://doi.org/10.1525/ca.2026.103

Avalon Doherty, our own Greek and Latin major, is delivering a presentation for UCLA Undergraduate Research Week tomorrow, May 19th.

She will talk about her project on recreating Lucian’s picture gallery from his “de Domo” using archaeological evidence as visual comparanda.

Please join her for the livestream on Tuesday afternoon (SESSION C 3:30-4:50 P.M. - Panel 1 - Presentation 1). More information at this link: https://my.ucla.edu/conference/urweek2026/107

The UCLA Department of Classics is proud to host speaker Sasha-Mae Eccleston (Brown University) for a talk entitled "Book Discussion - Epic Events: Classics and the Politics of Time in the United States Since 9/11" on Friday, May 22nd in Dodd 248.

Ancient Greek and Roman cultures have been privileged as authoritatively timeless throughout American history. American leaders capitalize on this privilege when, during periods of crisis, they allude to these cultures to offer relief, to reestablish trust in the status quo, and to promote national unity. Analyzing texts that also draw on ancient Greek and Roman material to respond to these crises, Sasha-Mae Eccleston explains how contemporary authors and artists have questioned calls for unity that homogenize disparate experiences and ignore systemic inequality. Their engagements with the temporalities of the ancient material reveal how time structures membership in the national community.

Reading, for example, Seneca’s drama Medea, Homer’s epics, and the verses of Sappho alongside Jesmyn Ward’s novel Salvage the Bones or the poetry of Ocean Vuong and Juliana Spahr, Eccleston examines the temporal politics of major events and everyday life in the United States. Epic Events shows how ancient works that seem to insulate audiences from disaster can actually alert them to the frightening hierarchization of American life. Eccleston skillfully weaves together analyses of ancient material and contemporary texts that range from memorials, visual art, and literature to speeches and public health declarations to bring questions of race, class, and gender into dialogue with time in thoughtful, nuanced, and original ways.

All are welcome!

The UCLA Humanities Division site has published a new article about Intergenerational Digital Archaeology Day, an event organized by Professor Kelly Nguyen.

The digital archaeology event brought more than 50 high school students from Westminster High School and more than 30 elders and community members from Orange County’s Little Saigon neighborhood. With seating arranged to ensure the generations were mixed, elders shared stories about their personal experiences as refugees from Vietnam, mostly during the 1970s. They worked together to determine the provenance of other artifacts from Vietnamese refugees, discussing where and when they might have been used.

Check out the full article here: https://humanities.ucla.edu/news/digital-archaeology-day-kelly-nguyen/

Congrats to Professor Nguyen on the success of this amazing cultural event!

High schoolers, community elders come together to explore artifacts from Vietnamese refugees - UCLA Humanities The event, organized by Kelly Nguyen, brought together Westminster High students, members of Orange County’s Little Saigon community and UCLA scholars.

Emily Greenwood (Harvard University) will be presenting a talk entitled “Audre Lorde and Plato’s Menexenus: The Master’s House and the House of Difference” on Thursday, April 23 at 5 PM in Dodd 247.

Talk description:
This lecture is part of a book project that revisits Ancient Greek dialogues from the perspective of Black Feminist Thought. In this lecture, I construct a dialogue between Audre Lorde’s undated speech “Difference and Survival”, and Plato’s conceit, in the Menexenus, of a funeral oration attributed to Aspasia and relayed by Socrates.

Borrowing a metaphor from Lorde, I argue that Plato’s choice of Aspasia is intended to expose the Athenian civic community as a house of unresolved difference. At the same time, reading Plato after Lorde, I also consider how the choice of Aspasia as an absent character in the dialogue relates to Lorde’s concept of the master’s house and the master’s tools, and Lorde’s own situated interest in Greek literature.

All are welcome!

Congratulations to Rachel Morrison (PhD 2025), who has accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Latin at the University of Chicago, and Zak Gram (PhD 2026), who has accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Classics at Brigham Young University.

Zak is finishing his dissertation, entitled "Common Ground: Exegetical Methods in Origen’s and Proclus’ Commentaries," this academic year under the mentorship of Professor David Blank.

Rachel is currently completing the first year of a two year Blegen Postdoctoral Fellowship at Vassar College (she will take up her position at Chicago in 2027). Rachel wrote her dissertation, entitled "Long-Distance Friendship in Roman Letters," under the mentorship of Professor Francesca Martelli.

We are delighted for Rachel and Zak and wish them luck in their new positions!

In honor of today’s Artemis II mission, the first crewed mission to the moon in more than half a century, the UCLA College interviewed three faculty members — including our very own Professor Alex Purves — to get their perspectives on what makes the moon so important to us all.

Professor Purves observes, "It’s interesting how we are still asking the kinds of fundamental questions of what the relationship of the world and universe are to our lives that fifth-century researchers were.”

The full article can be found on UCLA's Newsroom website here: https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/bruin-side-of-the-moon-artemis-ii-launch-nears

Check it out!

The Architecture Working Group will host their next event on Wednesday, April 8, 2026 with guest speaker Dr. Diane Favro, UCLA Professor Emerita.

Dr. Favro is a Distinguished Research Professor of Architecture and Urban Design and studies the Roman built environment, including The Urban Image of Augustan Rome, and was president and Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians and Samuel H. Kress Professor at CASVA.

Dr. Favro will present a talk entitled “Constructing Meaning: Anicia Juliana, The Building-Loving Woman.”

A light reception will precede the event at 4:30 PM.

Registration is kindly requested by using this link: https://tinyurl.com/AWG-Diane-Favro

This event is co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of Classics.