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.

Photo by Thomas Graning/Ole Miss Communications

Associate Professor and Chair of Classics Dr. Molly Pasco-Pranger was awarded the College of Liberal Arts' 2018 Cora Lee Graham Award for Outstanding Teaching of Freshmen. The award was announced in May 2018. Read more here.

Associate Professor of Classics Dr. Brad Cook will spend February-June 2018 at the American School for Classical Studies in Athens, having been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in support of his work on two inscriptions in the University of Mississippi Museum's Robinson collection. For more here on the project and the fellowship.