Reflections from New York

On October 17, 2015, about 30 students from Stockton studying Greek and Roman art, history, culture, and languages journeyed to New York City to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with a focus on their Cypriot collection. With monetary assistance from the Dean and Zoe Pappas Fund for Greek Art and Architecture, students, faculty, and members from the community spent the day amongst great pieces of Greco-Roman art and immersed themselves in the lives of the ancients. We traveled from the Cypriot Bronze Age, to Pre-Classical Greece, to High Classical Rome observing the artistic innovations of awe-inspiring times.

In the Cypriot art, we could see the Eastern influences of the Egyptians, Phoenicians, and later the Turks. We stopped and admired the great stone sarcophagi and the ornate scenes depicted along the sides. The Greek influence appeared in the mythological scenes on the sarcophagi and the statues of Herakles and Geryon, along with the “archaic Greek smile” that adorned the statues of unknown men. Most of the statues even still retained a few specks of their original paint, giving us an insight into how the statues may have originally appeared. Wandering afterwards from room to room, age to age, we circled funerary monuments made to celebrate the deaths of those who led the most lavish of lifestyles. Along the way we stumbled upon the smallest trinkets of everyday civilians sharing space with the armor of battle-worn soldiers. We stood alongside the likenesses of emperors, heroes, and gods, such as Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Augustus, Alexander, Homer, Socrates, Hercules, Fortuna, Apollo, and the Graces. The Museum impressively uses its layout to intersperse many aspects of life to show the diversity of ancient culture. As students of Greco-Roman languages, we were particularly drawn to the various inscriptions in the galleries to test our mettle through translating these ancient texts.

After our visit to the ancient past, we ventured deeper into New York City to Ithaka Restaurant to experience an authentic Greek dinner. Over the expanse of three hours we enjoyed five courses of exquisite Greek cuisine, including stuffed grape leaves, tzatziki, taramosalata (Greek caviar), loukaniko (Greek sausage), pastitsio, and loukoumades (Greek donuts). Just as our cups and plates were never empty, so too did our eclectic conversations never cease. Sitting in such a festive and genuine atmosphere gave us a look into the modern lifestyle of the descendants of the people we came to know at the museum.

Ultimately, our trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened our eyes to the art and splendor of the past and our hearts to the culture and people of the present. We spent the day learning, teaching, and reveling in the glory of a past that will continue to inspire us and others for years to come.

Elementary, My Dear Watson.

On October 2, the Performing Arts Center hosted the Aquilo Theatre Company production of “Sherlock Holmes.” The production included three of the stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Copper Breeches,” “The Adventure of the Yellow Face,” and “A Scandal in Bohemia.” I was intrigued when the first act began and a woman entered on stage beautifully playing the violin. I knew that this was not going to be an average story of Sherlock Holmes.

The play was infused with much more humour than I had expected. Oftentimes the character of Dr. Watson was the comic relief of the play. His flurrying fits of typing made the crowd roar in laughter. At another point, Watson’s character played a horse for an imagined carriage ride. Immediately after, two of the characters were set to be married. The one told Watson to “[s]top horsing around and play the vicar.” This also got a rather large reaction from the audience.

The constantly changing way that the scene was set was also well done. The play used images projected onto a screen to act as a scene for the outside environments, ranging from cityscapes to individual rooms within houses to Holmes’s own apartment. This multi-media approach was able to create interesting effects that would not otherwise have been possible, such as in Act 2 when Holmes unmasked the “Yellow Face.”

Overall, the play was superbly well done. The actors were noticeably professional. Even when faced with a couple of minor setbacks, they still played wonderfully and did not once leave their characters. This play shattered my expectations and left me with a new look at Sherlock Holmes and the versatility of using the stage as a medium of portraying literature.

Stockton at Cyprus

Recently, Stockton University, in collaboration with the European University of Cyprus, hosted an international conference in Nicosia, Cyprus. This conference was the brain-child of Stockton University’s own Dr. David Roessel, who has worked on this project for several years. The first lecture in the fall series of the Classical Humanities Society of South Jersey (CHSSJ), on September 23, was about the work put into the organization of the conference by students and faculty and the subsequent excursions across the Western coast of Cyprus around the excavation site at Polis-Chrysochous.

The organization and manning of the conference was done by both faculty and students of Stockton including, Dr. Lisa Honaker, Dr. David Roessel, Dr. Amy Papalexandrou, Dr. Tom Papademetriou, Ciara Barrick, Sean McCullough, and many more. The conference began with an opening in front of the Famagusta Gate. The opening was then followed by lectures and presentation of papers from students and professors from across the world, including Dr. Rain Ross on “Developing Community through Dance in Lebanon” and Dr. Christina Morus on “Imagining Dubrovnik”. At the end of the conference, everyone experienced Cypriot culture through music and art.

The students shared their experiences in Cyprus at such places as the site in Polis-Chrysochous, Kykko Monastery, and Petra tou Romiou (the legendary birthplace of the goddess Aphrodite). The consensus of the students was awe and a sense of actually being at the places that most only read about in books. The only thing I can relate their experience to is going to a museum and imagining the sea of time flowing back to when a certain item was used and who would have used and imagining that the item in front of you was used millennia ago. Stockton’s time in Cyprus ended with the group discussing several classical works, like Aristophanes’ comedies and the Aeneid, over dinner. At the end, Sean McCullough rightly explained to us that “nerds are great to have dinner with.”