UCLA Department of Classics

05/19/2026

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

05/15/2026

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!

04/28/2026

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!

The event, organized by Kelly Nguyen, brought together Westminster High students, members of Orange County’s Little Saigon community and UCLA scholars.

04/07/2026

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!

04/06/2026

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!

04/01/2026

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!

03/18/2026

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.

03/13/2026

We are proud to share this recent interview with UCLA Classics PhD student Collin Moat, highlighting his experience as a scholar at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens this year.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/16y2pvMPHK/

Congratulations also to Collin on the recent publication of "Sympathy with the Spear: Iliadic Tree Similes and Achilles' Entanglement with the Pelian Spear" in Helios 52.1 (Spring 2025)!

02/27/2026

The UCLA Department of Classics would like to thank Professor Emerita Sarah P. Morris for her engaging talk “Out of Anatolia: Hittites, Homer and the Trojan War” at the University Club yesterday. The room was packed with faces from across various departments at the university, who came to hear Professor Morris speak and also to thank her for her many years of dedication to her work at UCLA.

We are so happy that everyone had a chance to speak with Professor Morris in person! Thank you to all the guests who attended this memorable event in her honor!

02/02/2026

Prof. Sarah Morris will be presenting a lecture entitled "Out of Anatolia: Hittites, Homer and the Trojan War” on Thursday, February 26th at 4 PM at the Faculty Club's Morrison Room with a reception to follow.

This in-person event is open to all to attend so please come join us!

Talk description:
One hundred years ago, scholars identified proto-Greek personal names and places in Hittite texts of the Late Bronze Age that anticipated those in Homeric epic. Over the past century, scholars have debated linguistic and historical connections between these Anatolian texts of the second millennium BCE and early Greek epic poetry, especially the identification of Aḫḫiya(wa) with Homeric “Achaeans.” Yet events recorded in Hittite documents texts resemble more closely interactions in western Anatolia in the first millennium BCE, as narrated by the Greek historian Herodotus, than they illuminate or foreshadow heroic events in epic verse. Meanwhile, early East Greek art, archaeology, and poetry (the epic Cycle) preserve other tales of Anatolian heroes and cities behind the Iliad, and attest to the survival of Bronze Age ritual practices in western Anatolia.

12/22/2025

Professor Kathryn Morgan will be leading a discussion for the West Coast Hellenic Book Club on Hecuba by Euripides.

This event will be held via Zoom on Saturday, January 17, 2026. For more info and to RSVP visit: https://hellenic.ucla.edu/event/hecuba/