Should the Study of the Classics Be Revived?

The IRIS Project was the subject of a previous blog entry. Earlier this week, Lorna Robinson, the founder of the project and editor of IRIS Magazine, was interviewed on the British Broadcasting Company's Radio 4. Visit the Woman's Hour website to hear the program.

5th National Latin Teacher Recruitment Week

Mark your calendars because National Latin Teacher Recruitment week is coming soon!

This year NLTRW is March 5-9, 2007, which is the first full week in March! The National Committee for Latin and Greek has put together a terrific website where you can find all sorts of promotional items, including downloadable articles, posters, brochures, and bookmarks. There's an informative F.A.Q., a list of universities which provide training for Latin teachers, and lots of ideas you can use to help inspire future Latin teachers.

Also check out Anima Altera, where you can purchase some fabulous t-shirts designed specifically for NLTRW!

The Iris Project

The IRIS Project was created by Dr. Lorna Robinson, a Classics professor from the United Kingdom. The mission of the IRIS Project is to promote access to Latin, Ancient Greek and Classical Civilisation in state sector schools across Britain. Project organizers are setting up free workshops, pilot courses and theme days for schools. The IRIS Project hopes to ensure that the languages, myth, history, religion, literature of the Classical World are accessible to students from all socio-economic backgrounds. IRIS Magazine, described by the editor as a "a Classical magazine with a new and eclectic slant" is one of the major outreach initiatives of the project. The magazine is aimed at a secondary school audience and includes articles, poetry, puzzles, games, recipes and reviews. Overseas subscriptions are available.

Articles of note in the Spring '07 issue include Africanising the Classics (focusing on post-apartheid South Africa), Reinterpreting the Past in Popular Culture, and Modernising Monsters: Classics and Computer Games.

Latin, the Classics and Black History Month

In celebration of Black History Month, Bolchazy-Carducci is sharing three scholarly articles from the Classical Bulletin 76.2. Racial Ideology and the Classics in the African-American University Experience by Michele Valerie Ronnick; A Source for Ideology: The Classical Education of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Trudy Harrington Becker; and Socrates as a Model of Civil Disobedience in the Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. by William C. West.

Another outstanding resource for Black History Month is the 12 Black Classicists website, which was originally designed by Michele Valerie Ronnick as an accompaniment to the travelling photo exhibit of the same name. The photo exhibit debuted in 2004 and is currently being displayed (February 2007) at Trinity University in San Antonio. The website includes biographies of 12 prominent and historical African American Classicists as well as media, coverage, exhibit photos, and a bibliography. Michele Valerie Ronnick is an associate professor of Classics at Wayne State University in Detroit Michigan. She is the editor of The Works of William Sanders Scarborough: Black Classicist and Race Leader from the Collected Black Writings Series. She also wrote the introduction to The Autobiography of William Sanders Scarborough: An American Journey from Slavery to Scholarship. You can visit Professor Ronnick's website here.

Harry Potter Kai He Tou Philosophou Litho

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone has been translated into over 60 languages, including Ancient Greek and Classical Latin. (When it was translated into American English, the publishers even decided to change the title!)

To find out more about the Ancient Greek translation, you can visit Andrew Wilson's Classics Pages, where you will also find some vocabulary and notes to accompany your reading. If you want to know just why Andrew decided to translate Rowling's work, you should read this article from the Opinion Journal.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows

Everyone is eager for the new Harry Potter book to be released but we'll all have to wait a few more months to find out if Harry lives or dies. In the meantime, do you realize how much Latin is in Harry Potter? A lot!

Latin teachers Ginny Lindzey and Clint Hagen have written a wonderful article Just Charming: Tapping into the Latin Magic of Harry Potter. In this article, Lindzey and Hagen explore the Latin and Classical connections in the series. They also give a few ideas to teachers on bringing Harry into the Latin classroom.

Wikipedia has a nice compendium of Spells from the Harry Potter series.