The First Annual Jeffrey T. Chamberlain Memorial Lecture

Thursday, March 24, 2011 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM EDT
Grand Tier, Center for the Arts

This new lecture series, organized by colleagues and friends in Jeff’s department, is intended to honor his memory, as he was an exceptional teacher, scholar, and administrator.

Before his untimely death in 2009, Jeff Chamberlain taught French language, literature, and linguistics at Mason for well over twenty years and served two terms as chair of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages. He was deeply involved in all aspects of academic and community life and served as University Marshal.

The speaker of the inaugural lecture is Frederick Ahl, Professor of Classics at Cornell University. His topic is “Humor and Wit in Virgil’s Aeneid.” Professor Ahl is an internationally recognized scholar—with books and articles on classical authors such as Homer, Sophocles, Ovid, Lucan, Statius, and others—and translator of Greek and Roman tragedy and epic. His translation of Virgil’s Aeneid was published in hardcover by Oxford University Press in 2007. Although numerous verse translations of the Aeneid into English have been done since the sixteenth century, his is the first that preserves the epic poem’s original meter, the dactylic hexameter, which had previously been considered to be inimitable in English. Professor Ahl’s version of the Aeneid was the last work of world literature which Jeff Chamberlain read and greatly enjoyed.

The lecture is free and open to the public. Refreshments will follow.

View the flyer. (PDF)

Sponsored by The Department of Modern and Classical Languages.