Professor Emeritus Judith Hallett's News for the 2020 Alumni Newsletter

Former UMD Professor Judith Hallett shares news of her current work and UMD alumni connections

Judith P. Hallett was elected to a three-year term on the Modern Language Association Delegate Assembly in December. At the Society for Classical Studies meeting in January, she received the 2019 Award for Leadership from the Women’s Classical Caucus, which she helped to found in 1972. On February 18, the SCS Blog: “Interviewing Women in Classics” featured a “Conversation with Judith Hallett” conducted by Claire Catenaccio of Georgetown University; a link to the conversation may be found at https://classicalstudies.org/scs-blog/claire-catenaccio/blog-women-classics-conversation-judith-hallett. In June, Judy was honored with a Merita Award from the American Classical League. The citation and her acceptance speech are being posted on the ACL website.

Since last spring, Judy has published “Expanding Our Professional Embrace: The American Philological Association/Society for Classical Studies 1970-2019,” in TAPA: Sesquicentennial Anniversary Issue 2019,Volume 149, Number 2, Supplement: 61-87; “The Legacy of the Drunken Duchess: Grace Harriet Macurdy, Barbara McManus and Vassar College, 1893-1946,” in the inaugural issue of History of Classical Scholarship 1 (2019) 94-127; “Augustan Maternal Ideology: The Blended Families of Octavia and Venus,” in Maternal Conceptions in Classical Literature and Philosophy, eds. Alison Sharrock and Alison Keith (Toronto 2020): 113-126; and “ The Family Economy: Consent and Consensuality in Ancient Greco-Roman Marriage,” in A Cultural History of Marriage in Antiquity, ed. Karen Klaiber Hersch (Bloomsbury Academic 2020) 89-96. She was also named to the editorial board of History of Classical Scholarship, edited by Lorenzo Cavelli of the University of Venice and Federico Santangelo of the University of Newcastle, along with three other American scholars:  Anthony Grafton and Patricia Fortini Brown of Princeton and William Stenhouse of Yeshiva. With Jacqueline Fabre-Serris of the University of Lille in France, she continues to co-edit EuGeStA, an online, award-winning peer-reviewed European and North American journal of Gender Studies in Antiquity. 

Judy presented two peer-reviewed papers at scholarly conferences. The first, on “Latin literary portrayals of Phoenician female speech and their American legacy: Plautus’ Phoenicium, Vergil’s Dido, Emma Lazarus and Ruth Bader Ginsburg” was delivered at the meeting of the National Communication Association/American Society for the History of Rhetoric in Baltimore, November 15, on a panel that included Professor of English Emerita Jane Donawerth. The second, “Female Courage and Strength and “The Ius Trium Liberorum: Revisiting the Women of Augustus’ Household” was given at an interdisciplinary conference on “Crossing Gender Boundaries: Brave Women Living in Texts and Images,” held at the University of Campania ‘L. Vanvitelli’ (Santa Maria Capua Vetere, CE, Italy), November 26. 

Since the the March 13-14 meeting of the Classical Association of New England at Trinity College, Hartford, was cancelled owing to COVID-19, Judy will be presenting her CANE paper on female agency and autonomy and the Ius Trium Liberorum first at the online CANE meeting on July15 (for which it is still possible to register) and then at the 2020 meeting of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States on October 10. 

One of the highlights of the fall 2020 CAAS meeting will be a panel on Latin pedagogy organized by Lauri Dabbieri, MA ‘14. It will draw and build on the contributions made by the presenters to the Latin pedagogy course that Judy introduced at UMCP in 1999 and taught through 2016, with Lauri as the course TA in its final instantiation. Joining Lauri, who teaches middle and upper school Latin at the Sidwell Friends School, on the panel will be Ann Renzy Maclean, MA ‘00, who teaches Latin at the Highland School in Warrenton, Virginia; Justin Redpath-Dascola, MA ‘06 , who teaches Latin at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria; and Sherwin Little, Executive Director of the American Classical League. At the June 2020 ACL meeting Lauri was herself honored by its Excellence Through Classics Committee with its Calliope Award in recognition of the impact Lauri has had on elementary and middle school Classics through her inspiration of her late student, Julia K. Petrino, and her encouragement of others in Julia’s memory.    

At the 2019 CAAS meeting in Silver Spring, Judy and Ann Kuttner of the University of Pennsylvania organized a session in honor of History Professor Emeritus Arthur Eckstein, featuring presentations by Art’s Doktorvater Erich Gruen of UC-Berkeley; Kuttner; Nik Overtoom, UMCP History ’10, now teaching at Washington State; UMCP History PhD student Justin Slavik; Roberta Stewart of Dartmouth College; and classics alumnus William Soergel ’17. Will has recently passed his preliminary examinations for a PhD in ancient history at the University of Michigan—with distinction! Judy also wrote the 2019 CAAS Latin ovationes honoring Eckstein, Elizabeth Fisher of George Washington University and Diana Jensen, MA ’04, collaborating with Professor of Education Emeritus Denis Sullivan on Fisher’s ovatio. UMCP History PhD student Dustin Cranford joined Jordan Slavik in delivering Eckstein’s ovatio; John Ziolkowski of GW Fisher’s; and Jan McGlennon of School Without Walls Jensen’s.

Judy’s recent invited lectures include “The Gender and Third Person Parameter in the Shaping of First Person Discourse in Roman Literature,” at “Der Parameter ‚Gender‘ in der Modellierung der Ich-Rede in der antiken Literatur / The gender parameter in the shaping of first-person discourse in classical literature ‒ shaping a (gendered) ‘I’ persona”, sponsored by EuGeStA, University of Munich, November 8; “Lily Ross Taylor Beyond Bryn Mawr”, at a colloquium remembering Lily Ross Taylor on the 50th anniversary of her death at Bryn Mawr College, November 22; “The Myth and Legacy of Vergil’s Dido, Queen of Carthage” at a conference on Vergil’s Dido and Tunisia at the Alliance Francaise in New York City, December 5; and “Challenges of a 21st Century Feminist Classicist in the Era of Takedown/Cancel Culture” at Carol Woods in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on February 19. 

COVID-19 has also forced rescheduling of her Christina Elliott Sorum memorial lecture at Union College; a Conversazione at the American Academy in Rome on her research with Stephen Rojcewicz MA ‘12, PhD ‘17 about Thornton Wilder in Italy; a visiting appointment and public lecture at Northwestern University, and a keynote address at a conference on “Female Agency: Women disrupting the patriarchy” at the Institute of Classical Studies in London.

On September 22 Judy had the honor of speaking at the Maine Jewish Hall of Fame in Portland upon its induction of her maternal grandfather, Benjamin S. Stern (1885-1975).  A refugee from Lithuania, he was elected to the Maine State Legislature from Biddeford in 1931, on a progressive platform—“a New Dealer before there was a New Deal”—as the first Jew to serve in that governing body.

Working with and reflecting in the accomplishments of her former students over the past year has yielded Judy tremendous pride and pleasure. In addition to writing the CAAS Latin ovatio for Diana Jensen upon her retirement from the Maret School in 2019, she helped Diana’s successor there, Allison Goldstein-Berger, MA ‘19, organize a classroom holiday celebration with Latin Chanukah and other holiday songs. Allison is to be congratulated on her recent election to the Vergilian Society Board of Trustees. The 2019 CAAS meeting also featured papers on Latin poetry by Rob Santucci and Talia Chicherio, both MA ‘16, in a session on Latin poetry at which Judy co-presided with CAAS First Vice President Gareth Williams of Columbia University. Rob has just passed his PhD qualifying examinations in Classics at the University of Michigan. Talia, who teaches at the McLean School in Potomac, has also been appointed to the CAAS 2020 Program Committee. 

Under the aegis of Maryland Junior Classical League Chair Inna Kunz, MA ’16, Judy and special student Alan Vollmann happily labored on Latin academic certamen questions for the 2020 Maryland JCL Spring Convention. Inna heroically redesigned the convention from an in-person extravaganza at Easton High School, where she teaches, to a totally online event in response to COVID-19. Inna’s achievement in putting together a digital convention is extraordinary—most similar secondary school Latin events were immediately cancelled throughout the US this past spring—and nationally recognized: Alan and I gave our permission for another state JCL to use our questions for their online convention modeled after Inna’s. Inna is also serving CAAS as its Maryland Director.

Judy has benefited immensely from collaborating with Steve Rojcewicz on two articles about Thornton Wilder in Italy slated to appear in the Italian Giornale de Filologia. She was pleased, too, with the opportunity afforded this past spring by Michael Leary, MA ’12, to present two classes on Latin poetry to his advanced Latin students at the Derryfield School in New Hampshire. Finally, last August she so enjoyed celebrating the marriage of Johanna Braff, MA ’08 to Rael Kenny at a spectacular venue in New York City’s Battery Park. Johanna teaches at the Dalton School in Manhattan.