News
Newsletter: Autumn 2024
5 December 2024
Welcome to Europa Ciceroniana’s first newsletter!
Every two months, our team will update you on the latest developments regarding our project. Of course, we will also look forward to upcoming events. Do you wish to receive these updates in your personal mailbox? Sign up using this form. Your address will only be used for the intended purpose and will not be shared or used for any other reason.
Reading groups 📕
In all participating countries, Pro Archia reading groups have been or are currently being set up. The goal of these groups is to facilitate intellectual exchange between teachers and students on a national level. At the same time, these reading sessions will hopefully provide useful starting points for future international exchange.
🇫🇷 In France, students ranging from middle school to university are now working with Cicero’s Pro Archia. Together wih their teachers, they study the linguistic, grammatical, and cultural aspects of this text. When possible, students are encouraged to investigate different avenues of translation and commentary.
These very diverse groups of students and teachers will come together during a study day in Paris on the 21st and 22nd of January, organized by the Sorbonne Université and the Institut National Supérieur du Professorat et de l’Éducation. They will compare their respective insights and obstacles, and participate in different workshops. The intention is to further improve the French contribution to the international conference on the rhetoric of Cicero’s Pro Archia only a week later (30 jan.-1 feb.).
🇳🇱 The Dutch team has organized a Pro Archia reading group with participating secondary school teachers from all over the country. Each bringing along their own expertise, they come together digitally every two weeks. Under the guidance of dr. Lidewij van Gils (University of Amsterdam) and dr. Christoph Pieper (University of Leiden) and with the help of the student-assistants, they work toward creating a comprehensive commentary for secondary school students. This commentary should eventually be accessible online and consist of notes on three different levels: linguistic, rhetorical and contextual.
🇮🇹 The Europa Ciceroniana project has also been launched successfully in Italy. In addition to commenting on sections of Cicero’s Pro Archia, secondary school teachers have also explored more complex themes such as the linguistics of politeness, pragmatics in oratorical communication, and the relationship between virtus and doctrina. The network of participating schools continues to grow, while in the academic sphere, dr. Andrea Balbo and dr. Ermanno Malaspina (University of Turin) have decided to dedicate courses and seminars to an in-depth analysis of the Pro Archia.
🇩🇪🇸🇮 In Germany and Slovenia, participants are about to kick off their work on the Pro Archia. More on these countries in the next newsletter!
Available online 💻
Several English spoken lectures on Cicero’s Pro Archia have been uploaded in full on our YouTube channel. Every lecture approaches the text from a different scholarly angle. Dr. Altay Coşkun (University of Waterloo, Canada), for instance, uses the Pro Archia to investigate different aspects of Roman citizenship. Our YouTube channel can be found here.
Bonus content for those who understand Dutch: dr. Lidewij van Gils and dr. Christoph Pieper made an appearance on the podcast ‘Oudheid’ to talk about Cicero’s defense of Archias. This episode can be found on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Meet the new project assitants 💭
In order to support the partners of Europa Ciceroniana, several project assistants were appointed. They introduce themselves on the English page of our website!
Looking forward: Paris (January 2025) 🗓️
As mentioned before in this newsletter: Sorbonne Université is organizing an international conference in Paris from the 30th of January to the 1st of February. This conference will be centered around the rhetoric of Cicero’s Pro Archia. More information should be published on our website shortly.
Thank you for reading this first newsletter! If you wish to be included in the mailing list, please sign up here. Your address will not be used for anything else.
Any questions? Please don’t hesitate to contact us at europaciceroniana@gmail.com.
