This year’s academic conference launched on Wednesday, April 27, when senior Classics and Catholic Studies major Joseph MacNeill gave his Fenwick Scholar presentation, titled “Encountering God as Logos: A Postmodern Theology.” Click here for more on Joe’s presentation and here to read about the reading group that Joe formed in the fall.
On Thursday Maggie MacMullin ’16, a Classics major with a minor in Visual Arts, spoke about “Meaning and Making in the Holy Cross Art Department.” Three other seniors presented on their thesis research: Steven Merola ’16 presented “Apologetic Epinoiai: Christ as Light and Wisdom in Origen’s Contra Celsum“; Christopher Ryan ’16 spoke about “A Contemporary Understanding of Free Will in Augustinian Death”; and William Callif ’16, a double-major in Classics and Political Science, addressed “Montesquieu and the Republic.”
Friday afternoon’s events included four presentations by groups in the Manuscripts, Inscriptions, and Documents Club. Nicholas Guarracino ’18, Michael Shun ’18, Julia Spiegel ’19, and Allyn Waller ’18 addressed their study of Gregorian chant in the presentation “Neumes: Notation and Abbreviation in Tenth-Century Chant Manuscripts.” For more on this group’s ongoing work, click here.
Three presentations covered work on the Homer Multitext project: “Observations on Scholia to Iliad 17 in the Venetus A manuscript” by Michael Kelley ’18, Corey Scannell ’18, and Melody Wauke ’17; “Validation and Verification in the Homer Multitext Project” by Chris Ryan ’16 and Alex Simrell ’16; and “Mysteries in the Escorial Omega 1.12 manuscript of the Iliad” by Kevin Cogan ’19, Liam Prendergast ’19, and Zachary Sowerby ’19. Claude Hanley ’18 and Charlie Schufreider ’17 spoke about the Kanones system, which they have assisted Prof. Neel Smith in developing, in a presentation titled “Developing a Corpus-Specific Ancient Greek Parser.”
Friday’s events concluded with a reading – to a packed room – by Nicholas Jalbert ’16, from his novel manuscript In Sacred Flame. The reading was followed by a lively discussion of the ancient and modern influences on Nick’s characters and themes.
