Impersonating Priapus

This is a preprint (author's original) version of an article published in The American Journal of Philology in 2007. The final version of this article may be found at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ajp/ (login may be required). The version made available in OpenBU was supplied by the author.Whenever Catullus is sexually aggressive or brutally frank in his poetry, modern commentators will often call him "Priapic," an adjective that tends to obscure rather than elucidate the various ways in which Catullus uses the figure of Priapus in crafting his poetic persona. This article attempts to read poems 47, 56, and, in particular, 16, as Catullus' experiments in the Greek and Roman subgenre of Priapic poetry. Once we see that these poems are focalized through the generic perspective of Priapus, Catullus' impersonation of Priapus becomes less an assumption of hyperphallic masculinity and more a witty way in which to lampoon a world-view dominated by an obsessive focus on penetration. Impersonating Priapus meant, in fact, exposing the garden god and his hopeless rusticity to urbane critique

The Contest of Homer and Hesiod and the ambitions of Hadrian

This is a publisher's version of an article published in The Journal of Hellenic Studies in 2010. The offprint is posted here in accordance with existing publisher policy.This article examines the compilation known as the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. More usually mined for the material it preserves from the sophist Alcidamas, here I advance a reading that seeks to make sense of the compi- lation as a whole and situates the work ideologically in its Imperial context. An anecdote early in the compilation depicts the emperor Hadrian enquiring about Homer’s birthplace and parents from the Delphic Oracle; he is told that Telemachus was Homer’s father and Ithaca his homeland. When the text says that we must believe this self-evidently absurd response on account of the status of the emperor, its author is satirizing Hadrian’s ambitions to participate in the Greek intellectual world and the pressures on scholars to accept Hadrian’s authority in their field. Moreover, the compiler has linked this anecdote to the long account of the poetic contest between Homer and Hesiod in order to draw an unflattering parallel between Hadrian and King Panedes, who, as writers such as Lucian and Dio Chrysostom suggested, exposed his ineptitude in choosing Hesiod over Homer as the victor of the contest

Conserving the classical past: Elizabeth Carter, “On his Design of Cutting Down a Shady Walk” (1745)

This article was published digitally in an open-access collection of essays and poems in honor of Olga M. Davidson (http://www.thehollyfest.org/).Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806) was the most famous female classicist of the eighteenth century. This short essay focuses on a poem in which Carter protests the cutting down of a grove of trees. She inserts herself in a tradition of male classical figures whose thoughts were inspired by the environment, casting the natural grove as a gendered space for scholarly thought.Accepted manuscrip

A crowd of Gods: atheism and superstition in Juvenal Satire 13

Accepted manuscrip

Quintilian and Juvenal's Fourteenth Satire

Working paper, first published in 2013 on the Literary Interactions website, hosted at the University of St Andrews (https://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/literaryinteractions/?page_id=4).This working paper explores Juvenal's fourteenth satire (published c. 127 CE), and its connections with Quintilian's monumental, first-century treatise on education, the 'Institutes of Oratory'

The Elegiac Puella as Virgin Martyr

This is a postprint (author's final draft) version of an article published in the journal Transactions of the American Philological Association in 2009. The final version of this article may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/apa.0.0023 (login may be required). The version made available in OpenBU was supplied by the author.This paper explores the ideological currents running through Maximianus's subversive revival of the genre of Augustan love elegy in the beleaguered Rome of the mid-sixth century. The third elegy narrates an apparent childhood reminiscence of the poet, a failed romance with a young girl, Aquilina. But it soon becomes clear that, in the character of Aquilina, Maximianus has deliberately blurred the literary archetypes of the elegiac puella and the virgin martyr from Christian hagiography. This bizarre configuration allows the elegist simultaneously to provoke questions about the representation of female figures in both genres. By likening the elegiac puella to the martyr, Maximianus highlights the latent violence of elegiac topoi. By likening the martyr to the elegiac puella, Maximianus highlights the eroticism that often has a prominent place in accounts of virgin martyrdom. Not merely a formal experiment or the product of Augustan nostalgia, Maximianus's elegies represent a real attempt to reinvent elegy's questioning stance in a new social and religious context

Online peer support for patients with somatic diseases

With the availability of the Internet, so rose the opportunity to share concerns and experiences with peers online. In this thesis the meaning of online support groups for patients with rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia and breast cancer was examined from different perspectives. To this aim, six studies were performed. In study 1 a content analysis was conducted on 1500 messages derived from various discussion groups for the aforementioned conditions. The main aim was to examine if the disadvantages that are mentioned in literature, actually occur. In study 2 a group of participants of various online discussion groups were (qualitatively and quantitatively) questioned about their use of these groups, the perceived advantages and disadvantages and if and how their participation empowers them. In the third study a representative sample of patients, derived from 2 hospitals, were asked to fill out written questionnaires to examine their use of Internet for health-related reasons and their participation in face-to-face and online support groups. The factors that are associated to this were also examined. In study 4 a group of patients with rheumatoid arthritis was qualitatively questioned about reasons for (not) engaging in (online) peer-to-peer support. In the fifth study a survey was sent to all Dutch rheumatologists and oncologists to explore their experiences and attitudes with regard to their patients’ health-related Internet use. Finally, in study 6, 23 webmasters of online support groups were interviewed to explore their reasons for initiating online support groups and the factors that determine the success of these groups. The main finding of our studies was that patients who use online support groups benefit in various ways, however, only a small proportion of Dutch patients participate in these groups

Extreme Fire as a Management Tool to Combat Regime Shifts in the Range of the Endangered American Burying Beetle

This study is focused on the population of federally-endangered American burying beetles in south-central Nebraska. It is focused on changes in land cover over time and at several levels of spatial scale, and how management efforts are impacting both the beetle and a changing landscape. Our findings are applicable to a large portion of the Great Plains, which is undergoing the same shift from grassland to woodland, and to areas where the beetle is still found

Redistricting Effect in a Non-Partisan World: Toward a Theory of Reapportionment at the County Board Level of Government

Electoral redistricting shapes political scientists\u27 perceptions of partisan polarization and incumbency. This paper examines the redistricting process at the county level of government, using the cases of McLean and Champaign Counties, Illinois. This research analyzes the McLean County board\u27s voting cleavages in order to highlight considerations of nonpartisan electoral bodies. With Champaign County as a comparison, it also uses a series of linear regression models to analyze redistricting\u27s effects on county incumbency and board composition. Redistricting impact proved insignificant, but the study demonstrates correlations between county electoral composition and state-level electoral trends, and also confirms the important influence of partisanship on redistricting and electoral outcomes

The Vanishing Gardens of Priapus

This is a publisher's version of an article published in the journal Harvard Studies in Classical Philology in 2010. The offprint is posted here by special permission via correspondence