Princeton Classics

05/26/2026

Congratulations to our forty-one majors and minors of the great Class of 2026 on completing four spectacular years at Princeton!

Special shoutouts to Laurie Drayton, Gabriel Duchovny, and Jack Geld for winning the John J. Keaney Prize for best senior thesis, and to M.C. McCoy and Valarie Rubinstein for three years of outstanding work in the department office.

(Click below for more information on this amazing, prize-winning class.)

Miss you all and see you at Reunions!

The Department of Classics congratulates our fourteen majors of the Class of 2026, as well as our twenty-seven minors in ancient history and classical studies, on graduating today in Princeton University's 279th Commencement. As previously announced, department major Madeleine Murnick delivered the....

05/26/2026

We are extremely proud to congratulate Nadia Makuc '26—classics major, honor committee chair, and manifold club president—on receiving the Harold Willis Dodds Award, one of Princeton's four university prizes for graduating seniors!

https://www.princeton.edu/news/2026/05/25/students-honored-leadership-and-service-class-day

05/22/2026

As ever, a delight to welcome back generations of our department's Princeton Alumni for Princeton Reunions 2026—be well, keep in touch, and we'll see you again next year!

(feat. Andrew Feldherr '85 & Joan Breton Connelly '76)

05/19/2026

A bittersweet occasion today as we celebrated the retirement of David T. Jenkins, who has served since 2009 as Princeton University Library's Librarian for Classics, Hellenic Studies, and Linguistics.

A brilliant librarian and Byzantinist, Dave has worked indefatigably, through periods of great technological change, to not only maintain our collections, but counsel our students, co-teach our classes, and singlehandedly maintain manuscript databases that have "transformed the study of Greek paleography" (to quote Prof. Emmanuel Bourbouhakis).

Thank you, Dave, for all you've done for our students, research, and community—and congratulations on a well-earned retirement!

05/14/2026

Congratulations to announce Adriana Clark '27, winner of this year's Stinnecke Prize!

The Stinnecke Exam Prize is one of Princeton's oldest awards and is given to the sophomore or junior in any department who receives the highest marks on a three-hour examination involving translation of Greek and Latin passages as well as grammatical questions on both languages. The prize was established at Princeton in 1870 by the will of the late Henry A. Stinnecke, Class of 1861, and is judged by a national panel of classicists.

The Department of Classics is delighted to announce Adriana Clark '27 as the winner of this year's Stinnecke Prize! One of the university's oldest awards, the Stinnecke Exam Prize comes with a one-time stipend of $3,000 and is given to the sophomore or junior in any department who receives the highe...

05/12/2026

Shout-out to the amazing graduate students in Princeton Classics, Religion, Art and Archaeology, English, and the Center for Collaborative History who work tirelessly to organize Princeton’s Late Antique, Medieval, and Byzantine Workshop—a vital interdisciplinary forum for graduate research into the premodern world!

Check out these photos from LAMB’s final session of the year, led by Riccardo Brighenti, visiting student researcher at Princeton Classics from the Università degli Studi di Milano. See you next year!

LAMB Organizing Committee, 2025–26:
Maria-Claire Apostoli (Classics)
Melissa Yorio (Religion)
Jenica Brown (A&A)
Gabriel Medina (English)
Alice Morandy (History)

05/06/2026

We are proud to congratulate Prof. Daniela Mairhofer and Prof. AnneMarie Luijendijk, Department of Religion, on receiving a Humanities Council Magic Grant for their workshop, “Textuality, Materiality and Reading Practices.”

In twice-monthly meetings throughout the 2026–27 academic year, the workshop will gather faculty and graduate students from departments across campus for guest speaker research presentations examining reading as a historical practice across a range of media.

Link to the full story in the comments!

05/05/2026

Bravissimi to the students of Prof. Ilaria Marchesi’s Latin 102 and 103 classes for their semester-end performance of AURICULA MERETRICULA, a modern Plautine comedy!

As the photos show, it’s a hair-raising tale of wealth, wantonness, and (of course) high educational value—entirely in Latin. Special thanks to Theatre Intime for hosting us, and to Prof. Simone Marchesi, French & Italian, for his standout turn as the hideous daughter. Plaudite!

AVRICVLA MERETRICVLA
by Mary Whitlock Blundell and Ann Cu***ng
Directed by Ilaria Marchesi, Olivia May, and Jay Houston

05/04/2026

We are proud to share that Brooke Holmes, Susan Dod Brown Professor of Classics, has been named of the Humanities Council's 2026–27 Old Dominion Research Professors!

During her professorship, Holmes will develop a research project titled "An Archive of Knots," which traces the diasporic development of ancient sympathy (sumpatheia) in the early Afro-Eurasian world. She will also advance work on a book project that explores how modern appeals to ancient Greek ideas about life and nature have shaped secular ethics over the past two centuries.

Congratulations, Prof. Holmes!

We seek to foster creative scholarship, transformative teaching, and intellectual collaboration by bringing humanities departments and programs into dialogue with arts and sciences.

05/01/2026

And a huge round of applause for Prof. Katharine Huemoeller (UBC Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies) for finishing this year's lecture series on a fascinating high with "'Why do you begrudge us your daughter?' Genealogy as Slaveholding Practice."