Monmouth College Classics Department

06/01/2026

The winner of the 2026 Bernice Fox Classics Writing Contest, sponsored by Monmouth Classics, is Alex Greuloch of the John Burroughs School in St. Louis! The Latin teacher with whom Alex worked to assemble his submission is Sorsha Maness. His story was titled "Myth," and it worked on the theme "Classical Adaptations, Retained Essences." Stay tuned for the prompt for next year's Fox Contest!

Send a message to learn more

04/29/2026

On a big day at Monmouth College (Scholars Day), Classics was well-represented, with lots of recognitions at Honors Convocation and lots of posters in the afternoon session. Bonus: Sydney Burge (who majors in Classics and Political Science) learned that she had been elected president of Student Senate for next year! Congratulations to Sydney, and to all of the students whose excellence was on display yesterday.

04/15/2026

At last night's Monmouth College Highlander Leadership Awards, Classics and Political Science major Sydney Burge '28 won the Emerging Leader Award! To those who know her work in school (both in classes and in cocurricular activities), in Pi Beta Phi, as a Scots Ambassador, in Student Senate, and at her other campus jobs, this is no surprise. Classics is grateful to benefit from the energy, courage, and commitment to excellence that she has in abundance. Well done, Sydney!

04/15/2026

Prof. Bob Holschuh Simmons is grateful for the opportunity to have delivered the 2026 “Classics in the New Millennium” lecture on Monday night at Augustana College - Illinois, with a talk titled “Demagogues and Masses in Athens and the Athenian Theatre: Class Anxiety and Apprehensions about Insurgencies in Euripides’ Tragedies.” He enjoyed talking further about the topic as well on Tuesday morning with Augustana’s Dr. Kirsten Day’s intermediate/advanced Latin students He especially thanks Dr. Day for inviting him to Augustana for this engagement. It is a pleasure to have the chance to share one’s research with other thoughtful people. Monmouth College

04/07/2026

Logan Serpette '27 and Prof. Bob Holschuh Simmons display their certificates for winning a faculty-undergraduate collaborative research award from the Classical Assn of the Middle West and South (CAMWS), worth $1000. The project for which they won this award is Logan's capstone, on creating all aspects of a semester-long class on hands-on ancient technology. He will present on a part of it at next year's CAMWS meeting in Cleveland. Monmouth College Classics has won this same award in each of the past two years as well; Prof. Simmons won it in 2025 with Jenn Ruscitti '26 for her capstone research (presented at CAMWS in Mobile, AL, this spring), and in 2024 with Jeff Schnetzler '25 for his (presented at CAMWS in Urbana-Champaign). Thanks for CAMWS for honoring excellence in this way, and thanks to Monmouth's Classics students, who keep finding ways to branch off of Prof. Simmons' research to make these collaborations meaningful.

03/21/2026

Six Monmouth College Classics students (seniors Gianna Maughan and Madison Hieser, junior Logan Serpette, and sophomores Ella D'Incognito, Calvin Wellman, and Sydney Burge) and Prof. Bob Holschuh Simmons drove this afternoon to Truman State University in Missouri for the annual meeting of Eta Sigma Phi, the national Classics honors society. While the trip on windy, hilly rural highways was beautiful but a little nausea-inducing, being in a room full of other Classics-fanciers, competing in Classics trivia, has been a hilarious delight. We'll be here until Sunday at noon.

03/14/2026

It was another excellent trip to the annual meeting of the Classical Assn of the Middle West and South for Monmouth College Classics. Jenn Ruscitti (Classics and English '26) confidently presented her poster on disparities between theory and practice in Athenian treatment of foreigners and resident aliens, and answered questions about her talk and poster skillfully. She then accepted a CAMWS Travel Award to subsidize costs of her trip. Her poster and presentation were based on her Classics senior capstone work with Prof. Bob Holschuh Simmons on place, displacement, and migration, which developed from the National Endowment for the Humanities project on which Jenn, Jimmy Woeltje '25, and Lynn Rech '25 worked throughout the 2024-25 school year. Logan Serpette '27 and Prof. Simmons also received a Faculty-Undergraduate Research Award and Grant for their work on developing a class on hands-on ancient technology, which will be Logan's senior capstone project, and which he hopes to present at CAMWS next year. Jenn and Prof. Simmons received that same award and grant in 2025, as did Jeff Schnetzler '25 and Prof. Simmons in 2024, all of which have expedited their travel to share their work at the CAMWS meeting. We are grateful for the support that CAMWS and NEH have provided to assist Monmouth Classics students in doing and sharing their national-level work.

12/26/2025

Happy holidays! Richard Harrod (MC Classics and History '07) just got ANOTHER article published from his dissertation research, his second publication in the past few months. The article, titled, "The Making of the Duruʿ Working Class: Empire, Oil, and Resistance in Fahud, Oman from the 1950s to the 1970s," was just released by Middle East Critique. Richard is currently a Ph.D. candidate in History, with a focus on modern Middle Eastern history, from Washington University of St. Louis. Well done, Richard!

Historians have written about anti-imperial resistance in Oman mostly as armed revolt. The case of the proletarianization of the Duruʿ tribe of Oman challenges scholars to include laborers combatti...

12/11/2025

Classics major; Philosophy, Biology, and Latin minor; ace Latin and Classics tutor; and varsity soccer player Lynn Rech is graduating this semester. Lynn was on the leadership group for the Eta Sigma Phi national meeting that Monmouth hosted in 2023, and has attended the national meetings in Pennsylvania and Minnesota since then. They were also part of the research group for a Endowment for the Humanities grant-funded project on place, displacement, and replacement in the ancient and modern worlds in 2024-25, and from that was a contributor to two professional presentations and two on-campus posters. They also were a part of a separate conference presentation on Monmouth’s Classics Day, and are now finishing a capstone project on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, on which they will also present a poster at a conference this spring. Lynn has made a substantial mark on Monmouth Classics, and we will miss them terribly as they move on to library and information school at San Jose State University.

12/11/2025

Classics major and History minor Dale Wolfe is graduating this semester. Dale declared a Classics major in summer of 2024, and he has taken a great number of Classics courses since then. Among his favorites have been Latin; Tyrants, Assassins, and Demagogues: Seizing Power in Ancient Greece; and Greek, Roman, and Mediterranean History. Dale hosted the gladiatorial combat station at Classics Day 2023 as well. Other highlights in the department for Dale have been scholarly talks, including that by Jeremy Hartnett of Wabash College this fall. Dale has been volunteering at the Warren County History Museum this semester, learning how to catalog artifacts and to research matters of local history at the request of museum members. Dale has made an important impact on Monmouth Classics, and we will miss him greatly as he moves into post-Monmouth life!