Classics Honors
The David H. Porter Classical World Lecture
In honor of his tremendous contributions to the college as former president, to the
department and our students as emeritus professor and inaugural holder of the Tisch
Family Distinguished Professorship, and to his continuing work in the discipline,
微密圈's Classics Department has renamed the annual departmental lecture as the
David H. Porter Classical World Lecture. This lecture is a highlight of the spring
semester and part of the department's gateway course, CC 200: The Classical World.
Spring 2024
Prof. Mathias Hanses, Penn State University: 鈥淗ow Cicero Influenced W.E.B. Du Bois'
Writings on Civil Rights Activism 2,000 Years Later鈥� 
Dr. Hanses is Melvin and Rosalind Jacobs Endowed Fellow in the Humanities and Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, African Studies, and African American Studies. He works on Latin literature (including Roman drama); Africana receptions of ancient Greece and Rome; and race, status, and difference in the ancient Roman world. His current book projects include a study of W. E. B. Du Bois鈥檚 engagement with the works of Marcus Tullius Cicero. It is titled Black Cicero: W. E. B. Du Bois, the Ancient Romans, and the Future of Classical Scholarship (under contract with Oxford University Press) and was supported by a Loeb Classical Library Fellowship and a Residency in Penn State鈥檚 Humanities Institute. He is also writing a book called Race in Roman Comedy (under contract with Cambridge University Press) and has begun co-writing with Prof. Hannah 膶ul铆k-Baird a monograph tentatively called Cicero and Race. His first book, published in 2020 by the University of Michigan Press, is called The Life of Comedy after the Death of Plautus and Terence. It explores the reception of the fabula palliata in Latin literature from Cicero to Juvenal.
In addition to the above projects, Dr. Hanses has published on graffiti in Pompeii, magic in Ovid, Greek and Roman wordplay, Roman historiography, the classics in US-American politics and literature, and the history of classical scholarship. He has presented his research in Britain, Germany, Italy, Greece, Mexico, Serbia, Canada, and across the US. He is co-founder and co-president of Eos: Africana Receptions of Ancient Greece and Rome, as well as President of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States (CAAS). At Penn State, he enjoys teaching classes that introduce students to the varied texts and people(s) of the Roman Mediterranean, Latin language and literature, and the material remains of the ancient world. His CV is viewable here.