Guest graduate student seminar 4 November 2025
Abstract
Michael the Grammarian, an eleventh-century teacher, composed a witty and biting satire against a bishop of Philomelion, a man who, according to the poem, gained his office not through merit but by providing girlfriends for his superior, the metropolitan of Amorion. My paper will argue that this text works best when read as a mock-encomium: a parody of the traditional praise speech, in which the bishop himself ironically “celebrates” his own lowly origins, incompetence, and vices. Michael’s model here seems to be the satirical spirit of Lucian, especially works like the Parasite and the Teacher of Rhetoric. At the same time, the poem draws inspiration from Theocritus’ eleventh idyll, the Cyclops Polyphemus’ comic love song for the sea-nymph Galateia, which blends in self-praise that Michael may have read as an ironic self-encomium. The poem also shows rare eleventh-century familiarity with Euripides’ Cyclops. In this presentation, I will explore how Michael’s poem combines satire and classical models to create a unique work that sheds light on the literary and educational culture of his time.
The seminar starts at 12:40 in the Philip and Thérèse Rousseau Memorial Library
(McMahon Hall room 209). A lunch will be provided before the lecture to those who RSVP.
Please rsvp here.
The 2025 Bellet Lecture, A Quantitative View of Coptic Linguistics, 30 October 2025
Speaker: Dr. Amir Zeldes Associate Professor of Computational Linguistics, Georgetown University
Abstract
The past ten years have seen a dramatic growth in the digital resources available for the study of the Coptic language. From a very low resource language with few openly searchable corpora and no dedicated analysis tools, we now have sizable collections of works from different periods and dialects, online lexicographical resources and natural language processing tools, many of which have been developed within the Coptic Scriptorium project (https://copticscriptorium.org/). In this talk, I will give an overview of some of the resources, workflows and standards that the project has established, and then present a series of case studies illustrating how we can use quantitative, machine readable data to study Coptic language and literature in new ways. The studies will cover aspects of constructivist approaches to Sahidic Coptic grammatical alternations, applications to dialectology focusing on comparisons with Bohairic Coptic and Greco-Coptic language contact, as well as the potential for typological studies connecting Coptic to other languages in the Afro-Asiatic family and beyond.
A buffet dinner will follow the lecture. Please RSVP here.
Colloquium on the Dies Irae, 30 October 2025
The St. Gregory Institute invites you to join a colloquium on the Dies Irae. You will learn so much about this sequence from its literary orgins and its escatology to its performance and incorporation into modern film music.
Program of the day
All sessions in the Happel Room of Caldwell Hall unless stated.
10:00 Msgr. Andrew Wadsworth: Introduction to the Dies Irae
10:30 Dr. Charles Cole: directed signing of the Dies Irae
11:00 Dr. Michael Root: "The Eschatology of the Dies Irae: Judgment, Mercy, and Grace"
11:45 Dr. William McCarthy: “…cum Sibylla”: Unpacking the Source(s) and Artistry of the Vexing Allusion
1:00 Lunch in Garvey Hall
2:00 Dr. Martin Baker: improvisation on the Dies Irae, Basilica, Upper Church
2:30 Dr. Andrew Simpson: The Reception of the Dies Irae
3:30 Q&A
4:00 End of the Colloquium
Medieval Banquet, 8 October 2025
Sign up for the Medieval Banquet on Wednesday, October 8, at 6 pm in Heritage Hall. Medieval dishes will be served, and there will be much rejoicing!
Esteemed Syriac scholar visits the Semitics Library
On Thursday, September 25, the Institute of Christian Oriental Research (ICOR) welcomed Rev. Fr. Saju K. Mathai Keeppanasseril to the Semitics Library. Fr. Saju is the director of the MIMRO Syriac Institute based in Kerala, India. Fr. Saju presented a copy of his recently published Tabular Syriac Grammar to ICOR and met with faculty and students from the department.
The 2025 year-opening lecture, Catholic Scholars in the Early Years of Dead Sea Scrolls Research, 25 September 2025
Speaker: Dr. Andrew Gross, faculty of Semitics, Department of Ancient and Medieval Languages and Cultures, Catholic University of America.
Dr. Nathan Tilley attends World Syriac Conference of the St. Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute (SEERI) in Kottayam, India
Faculty member Nathan Tilley attended the World Syriac Conference and 40th Anniversary (Ruby Jubilee) of the St. Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute (SEERI) in Kottayam, India from September 14 to 19. SEERI has served for forty years as a center promoting ecumenical research on the Syriac language and Christian tradition within India and internationally. The Faculty of Semitics at Catholic University have supported the work of SEERI since its inception in 1985. Dr. Tilley presented a paper ("Babai the Great, Deification, and the Exchange of Properties: A Development in East Syriac Christology”) and represented Catholic University during the celebration.
Guest lecture, 17 September 2025
The Department of Ancient and Medieval Languages collaborated with the Department of English to put on a guest lecture, Literature for its own sake: Tolkien and the contemplation of creation, given by Professor Giuseppe Pezzini (Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford).
Redefining Classics 2025
The Department of Greek and Latin participated in the 2025 Redefining Classics conference by co-organizing an exhibition of Dr. Michele Valerie Ronnick's installation 14 Black Classicists.
Really Dead Languages is back and deader than ever!
Join us for any or all of four workshop sessions offering introductions to ancient and medieval languages and their epigraphy! No prior knowledge is required; attendance is open to the public and is completely free.
Our speakers will equip you with a basic understanding of each language (and its script)--enough knowledge to recognize these languages when visiting a museum, or to be the star philologist of your pub trivia team.
Thursday 6 Feb 5:30pm - The Celtic languages
Friday 7 Feb 4pm - Mayan hieroglyphs
Friday 7 Feb 5:30pm - Tour of Semitics/Institute of Christian Oriental Research collections
Saturday 8 Feb 10am - Sanskrit
Saturday 8 Feb 11:15am - Phoenician
Saturday 8 Feb 12:30pm - lunch at Garvey Hall
Saturday 8 Feb 1:15pm - Tour of Semitics/Institute of Christian Oriental Research collections
Saturday 8 Feb 2pm - Iron Age Hebrew funerary inscriptions
Saturday 8 Feb 3:15pm - Runes: There and Back Again
Saturday 8 Feb 4:15pm - closing discussion
Departmental alumnus produces a Latin reader's edition of St. Augustine's Confessions
Emmaus Academic Press has published a Latin reader's edition of St. Augustine's Confessions by CUA Greek and Latin alumnus, Kevin Bergdorf (Certificate in Greek and Latin, August 2022).
Departmental alumnus publishes previously untranslated canon law Latin text
CUA Greek and Latin alumnus Dr. Lionel Yaceczko translated a previously untranslated Latin text of the Syllabus, part of defence documents submitted during the Mortara case (1858). Dr. Yaceczko's translation appears in the CUA Press book The Mortara Case and Thomas Aquinas's Defense of Jewish Parental Authority: With Original Documents from the Mortara Case: Pro-memoria, Syllabus, Brevi cenni, published in February 2025.
Faculty member receives award for excellence in teaching
Professor William McCarthy, faculty member in the Department of Greek and Latin, received the Ingrid Merkel Award for Excellence in Teaching at a ceremony in Heritage Hall on Tuesday 3rd September 2024. The citation of Professor McCarthy's achievements that Dean Tom Smith read praised Professor McCarthy for '[modeling] the very essence of the human “desire to know”: his ability to connect ideas across time and space is fed by his remarkable memory for detail and sustained by his voracious curiosity.'
Research Associate alumnus honored for scientific achievements
Luigi M. De Luca (Maturita' Classica, Capece State College, Maglie, Lecce, Italy; Doctorate, Organic Chemistry, University of Pavia, Italy; M.A., Classics (Latin), University of Maryland, College Park; M.A., Greek, Catholic University; Ph.D., Greek and Latin, Catholic University), alumnus and Research Associate of the Department of Greek and Latin, has recently been inducted as a Fellow of the American Society for Nutrition Foundation, an honor conferred upon senior-level academics for professional contributions to the field of nutritional sciences (in this case, specifically Nutritional Biochemistry). Dr. De Luca's diverse academic skills and interests were also clearly represented in his 2019 dissertation for this department, which studied Basil of Caesarea’s botany, pharmacology, and nutrition.
Departmental alumna wins ACLS fellowship
Jocelyn (Rohrbach) Moore (B.A., Catholic University; M.A., Washington University in St. Louis; Ph.D., University of Virginia) has recently been awarded a 2023 ACLS Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) to finish her book, If the House Would Speak: The House in Greek Tragedy, during the 2023-24 academic year. "The ACLS Fellowship Program supports exceptional scholarship in the humanities and interpretive social sciences that has the potential to make significant contributions within and beyond the awardees’ fields."