WashU Classics

👋 Meet faculty and students, explore courses and majors, discover study abroad and research opportunities—and yes, there will be donuts 🍩!

📅 Monday, August 19
🕙 10:00–11:30 AM
📍 Umrath Hall (Bridge) Conference Room 224
🍩 Donuts & refreshments provided
📚 Learn about courses, majors, study abroad, and research opportunities!

We’re delighted to announce that renowned archaeologist and scholar Michael Cosmopoulos has been named the 2028 Biggs Family Resident in Classics at Washington University in St. Louis. A leading expert in Greek history and archaeology, Professor Cosmopoulos will bring his research and insights to our community during his residency. Please join us in congratulating him! 🎉📚🏛️

WashU Classics faculty continue to make an impact around the world! This July, Alongside Dr. Stefania Alfarano (NYU), Nicola Aravecchia presented new research on burials and sacred space at Amheida in Egypt's Dakhla Oasis at the 13th International Congress of Coptic Studies in Göttingen, Germany.

This summer, Tim Moore delivered two lectures at the annual Thesaurus Linguae Latinae summer school in Munich, Germany, sharing his work on digital humanities, Latin lexicography, and Roman music. He also collaborated with fellow participants and TLL editors on a dictionary article for the Latin word salebra. Congratulations, Tim!

Ancient voices, modern audience. 📖✨ Classics PhD candidate Maurice Gonzales brought Juvenal’s Satires to life at SLAM Underground—MUSE, sharing Latin poetry with visitors at the Saint Louis Art Museum.

🎶✨ New digital collections from WashU Classics!

Explore over 800 images of ancient instruments and artwork, along with recordings of Greek and Latin texts read aloud by faculty and students.

These new databases—created in collaboration with the Humanities Digital Workshop—are now available on the Internet Archive. Dive into the sounds and sights of the ancient Mediterranean world!

🔗 Explore the collection: https://archive.org/details/WashUDepartmentofClassics

🌿 Alumni Spotlight 🌿
We’re delighted to share that Di Wang (Hunan), a WashU Biggs Classics alumnus, will deliver a joint lecture with Marina Bazzani (Oxford) for the Research Centre of Greek and Latin Literature at the Academy of Athens:

“Flowers, Trees and Forests in Early Chinese and Byzantine Encomium Literature”
🗓 Thursday, June 25 (online)
⏰ 8:00 AM (New York) | 1:00 PM (London) | 3:00 PM (Athens) | 8:00 PM (Beijing) | 9:00 PM (Tokyo)

The lecture explores how plant imagery shaped ideas of power, empire, and political order across early Chinese and Byzantine literary traditions. 🌸🌳

📩 Interested in attending? Email [email protected] for the Zoom link

Huge congratulations to Classics major Nicole Spangler on being named a Beinecke Scholar! 🎉 As a rising senior in Classics and History, Nicole is the first WashU student to receive this prestigious award since 2014—supporting her future PhD studies and continued research. We’re so proud of her accomplishments and can’t wait to see what’s next! 📚✨

📢 New research from the Biggs Department!

Assistant Professor Chris Erdman has published two new articles exploring Roman political history and practice.

In Phoenix, his article challenges the long-held view that Clodius planned a legislative agenda in 52 BC—arguing instead that Cicero’s claims are best understood as rhetorical exaggeration.

His open-access article, “Voting Procedure at Late Republican Legislative Assemblies,” rethinks how Romans voted—suggesting that tribes may have voted simultaneously rather than one at a time, allowing for faster and broader participation.

👉 Read it here: https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/klio-2025-0018/html

Exciting progress on Washington University Papyri Volume III! 📜

An international team of scholars—including Will Sieving (MA 2026), Alexander Free, Todd Hickey (University of California, Berkeley), and Roger Bagnall, Honorary Professor of Classics WashU—recently gathered at WashU for an intensive worksprint, bringing the volume into a full draft and moving it closer to completion.

We loved seeing this collaborative work in action!