APA Outreach
updated 13 September 2006
The Division of Outreach is designed to promote a wider public understanding and appreciation of classics. Its goal is to strengthen our organization's ability to communicate with a broadly constituted audience. We are eager to reach out to teachers and students in secondary and elementary schools; academics in a variety of other disciplines; K-12, college and university administrators; lawyers, physicians, the clergy and members of other learned professions; journalists and the mass media; public policy makers and public opinion shapers. We also hope that our outreach efforts will attract the interest of individuals from a diverse group of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. We welcome suggestions both from our members and from others interested in the ancient world about how best we can spread this interest as widely as possible.
The Division sponsors a number of programs that link professional classicists with others interested in ancient Greece and Rome. It produces Amphora ®, a semiannual publication aimed at a broad audience of both those who already have an interest in the classics and eager readers who will be given a chance to discover the excitement that our field offers. The first issue of Amphora® appeared in Spring, 2002; its Editor Anne-Marie Lewis (amlewis@yorku.ca) welcomes comments on the new publication and suggestions for future issues. Amphora now has a new editorial board comprised of the following people: T. Davina McClain, Louisiana Scholars College, Northwestern State University, Assistant Editor; Mary-Kay Gamel, UC-Santa Cruz; Helene Foley, Barnard College; Judith P. Hallett, University of Maryland; Ann Koloski-Ostrow, Brandeis University; Daniel Mendelsohn, Princeton University; Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, Wesleyan University; Susan Ford Wiltshire, Vanderbilt University; Sally Davis, Arlington County (Virginia) Public Schools; Elaine Fantham, Princeton University; Chris Ann Matteo, The Edmund Burke School; Barbara Gold, Hamilton College, Vice-President for Outreach, ex-officio; Anne-Marie Lewis, York University, Editor, Amphora , ex-officio; Adam Blistein, ex-officio, as Executive Director of the APA.
The Division is also developing a list of other print venues where classicists can publish for a general audience. APA members with good experiences in this area as well as representatives of interested publications are encouraged to communicate with David Frauenfelder (Frauenfelder@ncssm.edu), the coordinator of this effort. The Division's Speakers Bureau helps interested groups to find enthusiastic speakers who are prepared to give entertaining talks on a variety of classical topics. Anyone with any information about current classically-related events (lectures, films, plays), please contact Judith Hallett (jeph@umd.edu) or Mary Kay Gamel (mkgamel@ucsc.edu). Each year the APA holds its annual meeting jointly with the Archaeological Institute of America. While the majority of presentations at this meeting are for a scholarly audience, the Outreach Division arranges one or two sessions or performances each year that are open to the public. The next annual meeting is in Chicago, Jan. 3-6, 2008. Future plans include expansion of the "Agora" section of this web site, a listing of the growing number of newspaper and magazine articles; radio/television segments and programs; documentaries and feature films; and comments by public figures that deal with the languages, literature, history and culture of classical antiquity.
The Vice President for Outreach is Barbara Gold of Hamilton Collge. She can be reached at bgold@hamilton.edu. The rosters of the several committees in the Outreach Division are published in the APA's list of Officers, Directors, and Committees . The APA is blessed with a wealth of resources in the talents, creativity, and, above all, energies of its diverse membership. There is much that our organization can do to heighten awareness of our field and to expand our intellectual community if we pool these resources. Professor Gold is eager to hear from members who would like to work with the Committee on Outreach in its various initiatives, as well as from nonmembers who can let us know what programs and information would be of particular interest.
The Forum for Classics, Libraries, and Scholarly Communication, an affiliated group of the APA (web site: http://library.nyu.edu/fclsc/), has prepared a bibliography of books about classics that it recommends for public libraries. Included are books on ancient history, literature, and the other major subfields of classical studies. The bibliography is an attempt to reach out to public librarians, especially to those with responsibilities for materials selection. To view the bibliography, click here.
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