A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff
Professor of Classics, Philosophy and Religion Joseph Romero
Joseph Romero, who has served as professor and chair of UMW’s Department of Classics, Philosophy, and Religion has been selected as the next dean of Texas A&M University – Commerce’s College of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Arts. The selection follows a national search and is effective June 1, 2024. Read more.
Professor of Classics Joe Romero joined COPLAC Panel on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusive Excellence at the Annual Meeting of AAC&U on January 20, 2022.
Transforming Historical Biases – Creating Safe and Brave Spaces: Joseph Romero (Professor of Classics and Chair, CPRD) joined colleagues from several COPLAC institutions in person to present a set of tools for advancing the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion at this year’s annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. The panel was entitled, “Collaborative and Community-led Approach to Sustaining Racial Equity within Public Liberal Arts Institutions” and presented to higher education leaders from across the country. Plans are in the works to present it again in an entirely digital format to for the COPLAC community.
Romero Convenes Conference on Classics and Social Justice
On March 20, 2021, Joseph Romero (CPRD) collaborated with Hannah Čulík-Baird (Boston University) to present a second online conference in an ongoing series entitled, Res Difficiles, which attracted over 300 registrants from across the globe to engage in difficult conversations about the past, present, and future of the discipline. Our keynote speaker was the esteemed classicist, Dr. Patrice Rankine (Professor of Classics, Dean of Arts and Sciences, University of Richmond). The papers are now posted on the conference website: resdifficiles.com. Romero and Čulík-Baird have been invited to guest edit a selection of papers from the ongoing series for the online Classics journal, Ancient History Bulletin in this and the coming year. A third installment of the popular series is planned for 2022.
Eleven UMW faculty from a variety of disciplines worked together in 2020 as the Advocacy, Deliberation, and Civic Engagement Learning Community. The group was led by Leslie Martin and Anand Rao, representing the Center for Community Engagement and the Speaking Intensive Program. The goal of the group was for the participants to work together to develop course materials that incorporate advocacy and deliberation activities to support civic learning in their courses. Modeled after a similar initiative at VCU, the UMW faculty learning community met through the Spring 2020 semester to study the ways that advocacy, deliberation, and debate, could be used in class, and the faculty then developed materials, including activities, assignments, and rubrics, for use in college classes. The materials were collected and were recently published online through UMW Eagle Scholar. The publication is titled “Supporting Advocacy, Deliberation, and Civic Learning in the Classroom,” and includes contributions from the following faculty: Leslie Martin (Sociology), Anand Rao (Communication), Adrienne Brovero (Communication, UMW Debate), Gonzalo Campos-Dintrans (Spanish, FSEM), Steve Greenlaw (Economics, FSEM), Pamela Grothe (Environmental Sciences), Jason Hayob-Matzke (Philosophy), Jodie Hayob-Matzke (Environmental Sciences), Christine Henry (Historic Preservation), Joseph Romero (Classics), and Andrea Livi Smith (Historic Preservation).
US and UK Scholars tackle social justice and the uses/misuses of Classics in Western education
The departments of Classics, Philosophy, and Religious Studies and Classical Studies at Boston University co-sponsored a webinar entitled “RES DIFFICILES: A Conference On Challenges and Pathways for Addressing Inequity In the Ancient Greek and Roman World,” on Friday, May 15, 2020, with American and British scholars and broadcast to nearly 250 attendees in the U.S., U.K., and a dozen other countries from Australia to Russia. The co-hosts, Joseph Romero (UMW Classics) and Hannah Čulík-Baird (BU Classical Studies), assembled a group of scholars to address a critical issue in a discipline that is rapidly transforming itself into a significant contributor in the humanities for social justice. Romero also delivered a paper entitled, “Walking the the Cleopatra Ode (Hor. carm. 1.37), Then and Now.” The conference had originally been scheduled to take place on the UMW campus, but the pivot to webinar after the COVID-19 interruption produced the happy result of convening scholars from all over the world.
Professor of Classics, Philosophy and Religion Joe Romero Contributes Essay to Volume on Ancient Greek Epigram
Professor of Classics, Philosophy and Religion Joe Romero (CPRD) has contributed an essay, “‘From atop a lofty wall’ Philosophers and Philosophy in Greek Literary Epigram,” edited by Maria Kanellou, Ivana Petrovic, and Chris Carey and published by Oxford University Press in a volume entitled Greek Epigram from the Hellenistic to the Early Byzantine Era (2019) pp. 288-304.
Classics, Philosophy and Religion Professor Joe Romero joined colleagues from other colleges to present on a panel for the Anchor Institutions Task Force in Washington, D.C.
Classics, Philosophy, and Religion Professor Joe Romero joined colleagues Monica Cowart (Merrimack College), Claudia Nelson (Coppin State), and Michelle Stewart (Lane College) to consult with the presidential subcommittee of the Anchor Institutions Task Force on anchor leadership development at their quarterly meeting in Washington, D.C.
Romero also joined colleagues Monica Cowart (Merrimack College), Kyle Farmbry (Rutgers University-Newark), and Sundeep Muppidi (University of Hartford) to present “The Diverse University: ACE Fellows on the Challenges of Diversity, Equity, and Student Success,” at the AAC&U conference in Pittsburgh.
Joseph Romero, Department of Classics, Philosophy, and Religion
Professor Joseph Romero (Department of Classics, Philosophy, and Religion), is organizing a panel of fellows from the American Council on Education (2017-18) to chart recent successes of anchor universities and barriers to anchor work at the Annual Meeting of the Anchor Institutions Task Force in New York, New York, Nov. 15-16. Higher education leaders from Merrimack College (MA), Georgia Gwinnett College, Lane College (TN), and Coppin State College (MD) will join him to also answer the question, Where will the next generation of anchor university leaders come from?
“Anchor institutions” are networks of well-resourced organizations committed to collective impact solutions to persistent problems in the communities where they reside. Universities are attractive anchor partners but come with significant structural and cultural challenges that can limit or prevent optimal success. Perhaps the greatest challenge, it turns out, is developing anchor leaders capable of realizing an anchor vision and creating a culture and legacy that extends beyond a single presidency.