Movie Night
Wednesday, April 26, 5:00 PM
Location: Classics Lounge, 7321 Dwinelle

Professor Anthony Bulloch will host a movie night featuring O Brother, Where Art Thou, a modern-day take on Homer’s Odyssey. He will introduce the movie by way of its relationship to the Homeric epic, and conclude by leading a group discussion of its points of divergence and convergence with the original epic poem. Refreshments will be served.
Rach Hayes Steph

Jamie, Katie, Steph
(Pictures link to larger versions)
Cal Day 2006

April 22,
(Right) The welcoming representatives at their tables: Rachel Marks, President of NESSA; Professor John Hayes of NES; and Stephanie Pearson, President of The Classical Forum.

(Far Right) For Cal Day 2006, the Near Eastern Studies Student Association (NESSA) and The Classical Forum hosted information tables side-by-side. The groups serve a largely overlapping member population, as they are Cal’s only two undergraduate organizations concerned with the ancient world, and their partnership again proved fruitful at Cal Day. Below: Jamie Comstock-Skipp and Katy Loveless, of NESSA, and Stephanie Pearson, President of The Classical Forum, attract interest with their renditions of ancient costume.
TCF
Cal Day
Saturday, April 22, 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM
Location: All Over Campus!

[See photos from last year’s Cal Day here.] Cal Day is the annual extravaganza centered on the diverse offerings of UC Berkeley. The Classical Forum will be hosting a table on Upper Sproul next to Ludwig Fountain, so swing by to see the togate representatives tempt new admits with candy and laurels! If you are interested in helping recruit new members, a task involving standing at a highly decorated table and explaining the group to interested parties, contact Stephanie at stephip@berkeley.edu. It’s always fun, so come lend a hand!
Ron Stroud, eyes closed.
(Pictures link to larger versions)
Curses from Corinth

April 19, 2006
Great event, bad photo: Ron Stroud’s talk, “Curses from Corinth.”
Writing Red Figure
Curses from Corinth
Wednesday, April 19, 4:00 PM
Location: Classics Lounge, 7321 Dwinelle
Professor Ron Stroud will present a special talk on the tablets recently excavated from a sanctuary in Corinth. These tablets are inscribed with curses in Greek and Latin, from women and men cursing other women and men; come unwrap the mystery of these tablets and the religion from which they arise. Light refreshments served.

Roman Orator
Latine Loqui
Wednesday, April 12, 4:00 PM
Location: Classics Lounge, 7321 Dwinelle
Professor Trevor Murphy will give a special talk on the Latin language and its relationship to Latin culture. Light refreshments to be served.

Mycenae
“Cult Places and Practices at Mycenae”
Sunday, April 9, 3:00 PM
Room 101, Archaeological Research Facility
2251 College Building, UC Berkeley (behind Boalt Hall)
Kim Shelton, Director of Nemea Center, Department of Classics, UC Berkeley, and Field Director, Petsas House Excavation, Mycenae, Greece: Archaeological Society of Athens

This lecture will discuss the archaeological evidence for the location and mechanism of cult from primarily Bronze Age contexts at Mycenae. Prof. Shelton will focus her discussion on objects of cult use, architecture, and the origin and history of the Cult Center. She will consider (and discredit) the theories of a popular house shrine/cult versus an official/exclusive palace cult/cult center. continuity of cult at the site will also be mentioned. Co-sponsored with ARF and the UC Berkeley Department of Classics.

Thesmophoria
Thesmophoria BBQ
Friday, April 7, 11:30 AM-1:30 PM
Location: VLSB Northern Lawn
This event has been canceled due to rain, sorry.
Ancient Greeks celebrated the fertility of the season with a festival involving baking phallic cookies, telling jokes, and burying pig parts with which to sow the fields. We shall modify these rituals in our own BBQ: fun-shaped cookies, lots of jokes and merriment, and pseudo-pig (i.e., chicken sausages) and bell peppers on the grill. Swing on by to check it out! Buy a healthy grilled lunch à la Ancient Greece to support TCF’s future endeavors (at very reasonable prices!), share your best jokes, and leave with your own suggestive cookie. Those ancients knew how to party, so take your cue from them and join us!

Skeleton
Bone Talk
Wednesday, April 5, 6:00 PM
254 Barrows

NES grad student Jessica Kaiser will talk about her osteology experience in the field @ Giza, Egypt. She will be demonstrating techniques to identify age and sex on specific skeletal parts, followed by a hands-on workshop. [NOTE that TCF’s meeting will end in time for this event, and a crew will be heading to it directly from the meeting.]

TCF and NESSA take care to feed hungry bellies, so add that to the list of “pros” for attending these events.
TCF
April Meeting
Wednesday, April 5, 5:30 PM
Location: 205 Wheeler
It is that time again. Time to plan for the future and see what is in store for The Classical Forum.

TCF
March Meeting
Wednesday, March 1, 5:30 PM
Location: 205 Wheeler

Beware the Ides of March but not the beginning, because that is when we will be having our monthly meeting. If you are not a member, come and check us out. If you are, help us plan upcoming events and learn what the club has planned already.

TCF
Classics Undergraduate Reception
Friday, February 24, 4-6 PM
Classics/Rhetoric Lounge, 7321 Dwinelle

A meet-and-greet-and-eat for classicists! Meet the department faculty, staff, and GSIs; greet fellow Classics students and majors; and eat the provided fare. A great way to break into your community of ancient-o-philes.
As was the case last fall, a handful of volunteers will make the reception run smoothly. Any takers, please? Volunteers would help with A] setting up before; B] straightening up afterward, and C] posting fliers the week before. Last semester’s help was just lovely; please lend a hand as those volunteers did, bringing this event to fruition. All those interested in these small tasks may contact Professor Trevor Murphy, Classics Undergraduate Advisor and Great Supporter of TCF (this last title less official but just as true): tmmurphy@berkeley.edu.
Don’t forget to pitch in! See you there.

Electra
Image courtesy of Wikipedia
Electra Movie Night
Wednesday, February 8, 5-7 PM
Classics/Rhetoric Lounge, 7321 Dwinelle
Tim Doran, graduate student in Cal’s Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology group, is hosting a movie night featuring a filmed theater performance of the stellar Greek tragedy Electra. In this gripping story of revenge, manipulation, and the often tense conflict of the human spirit, Electra, obsessed with exacting revenge on her father’s murderer, uses her brother Orestes to help her kill both their mother Clytemnestra and her new husband. Don’t miss this opportunity to see a great theater performance, here complemented with Tim’s sharp commentary and a pizza dinner.

de Young Museum
de Young Reception
Friday, January 27, 7:30 PM
Koret Auditorium, de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park
From the flier:

“DR. ZAHI HAWASS, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of
Egypt, well-known Egyptologist, and internationally renowned TV personality and
author, will speak about the CT scans of the mummies of King Tut and
Hatshepsut, his discoveries at the Valley of the Golden Mummies and inside the
Great Pyramid of Khufu, as well as his other recent archaeological findings.
$25 per person.”

For more information, download the PDF.

Thieves of Bagdad by Matthew Bogdanos
Photo by Ozier Muhammad, New York Times
Baghdad Lecture
Monday, January 23, 7:30 PM
145 Dwinelle

U.C. Berkeley will host a lecture, discussion, and book signing by Matthew Bogdanos, author of Thieves of Baghdad. The speaker, a colonel in the Marine reserves and a New York homicide prosecutor with a lifelong passion for the classics, will describe his efforts to save irreplaceable antiquities looted from the Iraq Museum in 2003. For further information, see www.savingantiquities.org Co-sponsored by UC Berkeley and SAFE (Saving Antiquities for Everyone).
TCF Logo
First Meeting
Monday, January 23, 5:30 PM
Cafe Milano (2522 Bancroft Way at Telegraph)

The Classical Forum is planning for its first meeting of the semester, and yes, said meeting is brutally soon! Please join us at our local Cafe Milano for a discussion of the semester’s events to come. Bring your ideas and enthusiasm; experience, specific goals, and classical knowledge are not by any means necessary. We would love to hear from you, whether your input be general or focused, consistent or sporadic.

Please note that this time and place are merely provisional. We will set a regular monthly meeting time and place at this first meeting; if you cannot abide this first meeting time but would like to attend future meetings, email Stephanie at stephip@berkeley.edu so she can factor you into the future plans.

TCF Logo
Monthly Meeting and Card Making Party
Wednesday, December 7th, 5pm

We’re back, for now, to our first Wednesday of the month, 5pm time slot. Come share ideas and grab a cookie, get in on the esoteric art of planning, and be the first to know about the coming events.
Please note that the card making party has been rescheduled to coincide with this meeting. It’s a chance to craft some thank-you cards for the people who make TCF shine. Professors, staff, and guest lecturers need to be thanked for their contributions to TCF, so here’s your chance to cut-‘n’-paste in conjunction with our last meeting of the year.

Nemea Columns
(Photo courtesy of Nemea Excavations Archive, UC Berkeley)
Nemea Night
Tuesday, December 6th, 7:30pm
Chevron Auditorium, International House (on Piedmont at the end of Bancroft)

Open to the public and fully catered this event is hosted by Professor Kim Shelton who will be informing the attendees on what progress has been made in Nemea and what the future holds for the site.
TCF Logo
NESSA Feast for the Senses
Tuesday, November 22rd
254 Barrows Time 6:00pm

TCF’s sister group, the Near Eastern Studies Student Association (NESSA), will be hosting a Feast in honor of the seasonal tradition. Come feast your eyes on the studs in Oliver Stone’s Alexander, feed your belly on provided food and drink, and fuel your sense of humor with the silliness of the film. A great pre-holiday workout for those needing to stretch the stomach and capacity for fun.
Cookie Basket
(Pictures link to larger versions)
Cookie Basket

A holiday fund-raiser
Gift Basket of Cookies
(Courtesy of www.allisongourmet.com)
Cookie Party
Sunday, November 20th
Time TBA, residential venue TBA

Cookies! We like eating them. Money! We like spending it. Put them together, and we have a fun way to make money toward future theater tickets, movie nights, and museum outings. TCF will be having a Cookie Party to cut, bake, and package cookies to sell in the Classics Department for a suggested donation. Every member is cordially invited to come to the home of one lucky TCF host with one log of cookie dough. Sprinkles and frosting will be provided, a movie will entertain us while cookies bake, and sugary fun will be in abundance. Please come, eat, enjoy, and help us fill the piggy bank.
Tweed Conrad and Professor Mark Griffith
(Pictures link to larger versions)
Achilles and Patroklos

November 11, 2005
Tweed Conrad and Professor Mark Griffith eating pizza with the group before the performance.
Cole Smith in Achilles and Patroclus
Achilles and Patroclus
A new play about love and war.
Written by Gary Graves
Directed by Christopher Herold
Berkeley City Club (2315 Durant Ave.) Nov. 11, 8:00pm

URGENT!: Please RSVP Steph at stephip@berkeley.edu if you would like to come. As of this writing there are only about twenty tickets for this night left and in order to qualify for a group discount we need to buy 15-20 tickets. For further information see the Central Works website or the East Bay Express’es website. Also, a different article from the East Bay Express can be found here in a PDF (605kb).

We are going to try to set up a pre-party and and a post-play discussion panel, possibly with professor Griffith. As for the play, Frako Loden of the East Bay Express writes, “In the Iliad, these Greek heroes of the war against the Trojans are fierce comrades in armor. But centuries earlier, according to Plato’s Symposium, they are proof that ‘love is the eldest and noblest and mightiest of the gods, and the chiefest author and giver of virtue in life and of happiness after death.’ In other words, they’re the greatest lovers of all time.” It is within this context that Achilles and Patroclus takes place. Though based on the ancient epic, this drama is set in a modern war that resembles the current struggle in Iraq. “Meanwhile despite the carnage,” Loden says, “there’s the utopia of a ménage à trois among Achilles, Briseis, and Patroclus.” The director, Christopher Herold, is one of Berkeley’s own drama professors.
Greek Shield with a defeated Persian
(Courtesy of www.sikyon.com)
Greek Hate: Athenian War Propaganda and the Persians
Sixteenth Annual W. Kendrick Pritchett Lecture (AHMA)
Monday, November 7th, 8:00pm
Alumni House

Margaret C. Miller, University of Sydney
Come with TCF to see an unraveling of the Athenian-Persian conflict as elucidated by propagandistic material culture. A reception will follow the lecture.

Maltese Harbour
(Photo courtesy of the Maltese government www.gov.mt)
AIA Lecture
Ancient Malta: Crossroads of Mediterranean Cultures
Sunday, November 6th, 1:00pm
Room 101 Archaeological Research Facility(2251 College Building)

Cal’s department of Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology, AHMA, takes pride in its multifarious graduate students. One such is Amelia Brown, who will deliver a lecture on the cultural complexity of the little —but feisty— island of Malta.
Jane K. Sather
(Photo courtesy of The University of California Press)
Closing Sather Lecture
Writing on Ostraka: a Culture of Potsherds?
Wednesday, November 2nd, 8:00pm
2040 VLSB

Join us and Professor Bagnall for the closing lecture of his Sather professorship here at Cal. For details on the professorship and on Professor Bagnall himself, see the Classics Department website.
TCF Logo
Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, November 2nd, Time 7:00pm
205 Wheeler

We will meet, as usual, on this first Wednesday of the month. We are looking at a 7pm meeting time so we can head directly to the closing Sather Lecture afterward. We’ll keep you posted.
Columns of Nemea
(Photo courtesy of Nemea Excavations Archive, UC Berkeley)
Nemea Letter-Folding
Monday, October 31, 9:00-5:00
Nemea Archive Room: 7125 Dwinelle

Newly-hired Classics professor Kim Shelton, the director of Cal’s excavations at Nemea, is looking for hungry help. She shall provide her workers pizza in exchange for some serious letter-folding: all the Nemea Night invitations need to go out, and there are plenty of them to send. Please give the Classics Department a hand, and a tongue to lick stamps, and chow down on pizza. This will be a goes-till-it’s-done event, beginning around nine in the Nemea Room (near the conference room, 7205 Dwinelle Hall). Come early for pizza while it lasts!
de Young Museum
de Young Opening
Saturday, October 15th, evening
de Young Museum of San Francisco

The newly-built de Young art museum in Golden Gate Park will open its doors for free in honor of its opening weekend. The Classical Forum and the Undergraduate Near Eastern Studies Student Association are planning a trip over there on Saturday evening, likely leaving Berkeley around 6pm and returning around 10pm. We will be driving, however, so you MUST RSVP to reserve a seat in a car. Email stephip@berkeley.edu with your name and a note about seats for the de Young trip BEFORE TUESDAY AT 5PM. Note that while the general admission for the weekend is free, there is a $5 surcharge for the Hatshepsut Egyptian exhibit on show now, and gas and parking fees will be split among the passengers.
More information about the de Young Museum>>>
The Wicker Man
Movie with Murphy:
Thursday, October 13th, 7pm
Classics Lounge, 7321 Dwinelle Hall; meet outside Dwinelle at North entrance before 7pm

Undergraduate Adviser Trevor Murphy, in case you haven’t met him yet, is one of our hippest Classics professors. He will be hosting a movie night, complete with pizza and sodas, featuring one of his favorite cinematic romps through pagan society: “The Wicker Man.” Of this movie Leonard Maltin writes: “(three and a half stars) Harrowing, absorbing thriller by Anthony Shaffer…Scot police sergeant Woodward comes to a small island investigating disappearance of a child, discovers a society of modern pagans…with seemingly authentic local color and folk music; a must-see.” Join us for an evening of chatting with your adviser and professor, meeting your fellow classicists, and chowing down on pizza.
TCF Logo
TCF Meeting:
Wednesday, October 12th, 5pm
205 Wheeler

It’s time again to spawn new ideas, enact them, and check up on our website and funding. We’ll talk about the Achilles and Patroclus theater show coming up, as well as various lectures, movie nights, and festivals we’re planning.
TCF Logo
Lecture
Tuesday, October 11th, 5pm
Near Eastern Studies Lounge, 254 Barrows

NES professor Cathleen Keller, co-curator of the De Young Egyptian show, will present an hour long tour through Hatshepsut’s importance and twisting history. From Queen Mother to King, Hatshepsut’s career merits this closer look by one of the nation’s top Egyptologists.

Enjoy!
Greek Festival
Some of the members.
(Pictures link to larger versions)
Greek Festival

September 18, 2005
Cal Day 2005

Cal Day 2005
April 16, 2005