Hans Mueller is the William D. Williams Professor of Classics at Union College in Schenectady, New York. Professor Mueller is the author of Roman Religion in Valerius Maximus.

On March 23, 2012, he came to Temple University to discuss his preliminary research on nocturnal Rome. What happened at night in the Roman world? What beliefs did people hold of the night? Before he spoke in the Classics Department, he was kind enough to stop by my office for an interview.

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—Fred Rowland

On Tuesday, February 28, Professor Jeffrey Kahn of Johns Hopkins University gave a talk in Gladfelter Hall entitled “Chimpanzees in Research: Ethics, Necessity & Why It Matters”. The context for his talk was a recently released report by an ad hoc committee which he chaired, entitled Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research: Assessing the Necessity, available for free on the National Academies Press web site. The committee was formed by the Institute of Medicine at the request of the National Institutes of Health and a congressional inquiry, with the charge of determining the necessity of using chimpanzees in NIH-funded research and making recommendations for future use. The report’s recommendations were immediately accepted by the NIH (see press release).

Before his talk, he graciously agreed to stop by Paley Library for an interview.

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—Fred Rowland

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On November 14, 2011, The Center for Afro-Jewish Studies held its 6th Annual Symposium on “Passing”: Religion, Politics & Peoplehood, a topic inspired by the 50th anniversary of the publication of John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me and Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth.

“Both Griffin and Fanon, though primarily concerned with racism and colonialism, were in dialogue with Jewish history and experience. “Passing”: Religion, Politics & Peoplehood will explore both the impact of their works at their time of publication and the after-effects of the texts’ publication in Jewish and African-American communities in America and Israel.” —from Pre-symposium press release

Press Release      Symposium Program

Before the symposium began, I spoke with two of the day’s participants, Robin Washington, editor of the Duluth News Tribune, and Lewis Gordon, Temple professor of religion and philosophy and director of the Center for Afro-Judaic Studies.

—Fred Rowland

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On September 30, Professor Frederick Ahl of the Cornell University Classics Department spoke at Temple University about “Wordplay in the Aeneid”. The Zeta Beta Chapter of Eta Sigma Phi invited him to campus for its second annual lecture. Zeta Beta is a group on campus that promotes the teaching, study, and appreciation of Latin, Greek, and the ancient world.

On Saturday morning, Oct. 1, I interviewed Professor Ahl. We discussed wordplay in the Aeneid, the unease with which modern scholars encounter and interpret wordplay, and his love of the plays of Gilbert & Sullivan, on whom he is currently writing a book. Anyone who is interested in wordplay, or in the cultural and intellectual life of the ancient world, will find this interview very interesting.