Beginning in January 2018, a team of faculty and student volunteers from the Department of Classics have run a weekly after school Latin club for 5th and 6th graders at Oxford Intermediate School. The club uses a curriculum and program model called Aequora, developed by the Paideia Institute to support literacy skills while learning about Latin and Roman culture through fun activities and games. The undergraduate students involved get hands-on experience leading a class, working one-on-one with students, and participating in a team. More than thirty OIS students have been involved in the program so far, and three UM faculty members and nearly twenty UM students.

Sophomore Madeleine McCracken and "Caelia" work on a Latin sentence relay race.

Madeleine McCracken leads "Vocab Victory".

Henry Busby, Dr. Aileen Ajootian, and Mary Reagan Starrett work with club member "Voconius".

Dr. Molly Pasco-Pranger and UM senior Mary Grace Stewart work with OIS students.

Dr. Lucy Turnbull works with a student on an item from the Robinson Collection in 1971.

We received the sad news Sunday, April 21 of the death of our emerita colleague, Dr. Lucy Turnbull.

Dr. Turnbull joined the University of Mississippi faculty in 1961, teaching classical art history, archaeology, mythology, and civilization and also working to catalogue and curate the recently acquired David M. Robinson Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities. She was an dedicated teacher and an outstanding scholar of Greek art and archaeology, who served as campus leader during times of great challenges to the University. She was instrumental in the expansion of the University Museum in the 1970s, and directed the Museum for much of the 1980s.

We are very proud to announce that the Mississippi Humanities Council has named Associate Professor of Classics Dr. Brad Cook the 2019 University of Mississippi Humanities Teacher of the Year. As part of the celebration of this well-deserved recognition, Dr. Cook will be presenting a public lecture on some of his current research on Monday, February 11, 2019 at 7:00 in Bryant 209. His talk, "Documenting Freedom in Ancient Greece and a Bronze Inscription in Oxford Mississippi," stems from his work with a small portable inscription in the University Museum that records the manumission of a female slave.

The Department of Classics is saddened to report that our emeritus colleague Dr. Edward Capps III passed away in Oxford, MS on August 15, 2018.

Dr. Capps was born in 1935 in Oberlin, Ohio where his father was a Professor of Classical Art at Oberlin College; his grandfather was a Professor of Classics at Princeton. Educated at Swarthmore College and Yale, Dr. Capps joined our department in 1964 and taught ancient languages, literature, mythology and civilization courses for many years to many thousands of University of Mississippi students. From 1969 to 1972 he served as Vice-President for Mississippi in the Classical Associate of the Middle West and South. Dr. Capps retired in 2002 and was named Professor Emeritus, but continued to teach freshman liberal arts seminars for some years after that.

Donations and memorials in honor of Dr. Edward Capps III, may be made to the Mississippi Public Broadcasting Foundation (www.mpbonline.org/more/support/).

Assistant professor of Classics Dr. Jacqueline DiBiasie Sammons and three UM undergrads, Arianna Kitchens, Madeleine McCracken, and Mweyeria Offord spent part of Summer 2018 hard at work locating and digitally documenting graffiti in the ancient city of Herculaneum. Dr. DiBiasie Sammons is the field director for the Ancient Graffiti Project and will be taking more students to continue the project's work in Pompeii in Summer 2019. The Mike and Mary McDonnell Endowment for the Study of Classics helped fund all three students' work on the project.

Read more about Dr. BiBiasie Sammons and the Ancient Graffiti Project here.

L to r: Dr. DiBiasie Sammons, Madeleine McCracken, Arianna Kitchens, Mweyeria Offord.

The students at work in a Roman house in Herculaneum.