The McKibben Lecture in Classical Studies was established in 2006 to honor Bill and Betty McKibben who fulfilled a combined century of service to Grinnell College and the wider Grinnell community, spending the greater part of that time as inspiring and beloved teachers, and the whole of it as esteemed colleagues, friends and active members of the intellectual and cultural life of Grinnell. The lectureship is intended to carry on the values that the McKibbens embodied by presenting on campus each year recognized scholars to give public lectures and seminars in classical studies.
The McKibben Lecture is an opportunity for the Department of Classics both to honor scholars producing some of the finest work in the discipline of classics and to showcase to the entire community of Grinnell the exciting work that continues to make classics a dynamic field of study. For this annual lecture, we invite scholars whose research refines the methods that have made classics a cornerstone of the liberal arts for generations and whose scholarship will inspire students of Greek and Roman antiquity for generations to come.
The Lecturers
- Michael Weiss (Cornell University)
“Other Voices: The Linguistic Remains of Pre-Roman Italy”
April 23, 2026 - James Uden (Boston University)
“Love in a Time of Bankruptcy: Calculations in Catullus”
April 24, 2025 - Jenifer Neils (Case Western Reserve University)
“Athenian Heroes: Re-reading the West Pediment of the Parthenon”
April 18, 2024 - Matthew Roller (Johns Hopkins University)
"The Curious Case of Manius Curius: A Contested Will, a Trial, and Competitive Oratory in Republican Rome"
April 22, 2023 - Emily Greenwood (Princeton University)
“Whose Classical Tradition? Greek and Roman Classics and the Struggle for Black Women’s Suffrage, 1892–1953”
April 28, 2022 - Sheila Dillon (Duke University)
“Crossing the Corrupting Sea: Women on the move in the ancient Mediterranean”
April 25, 2019 - Jeffrey Henderson (Boston University)
“Lysistrata Through the Ages: Receptions of An Iconic Heroine”
April 19, 2018 - Kathleen Coleman (Harvard University)
“Laid Out for Posterity: A Roman Tombstone Carved with a Child’s Portrait and His Poem”
May 4, 2017 - Jeffrey Hurwit (University of Oregon)
“Helios Rising: The Sun, the Moon, and the Sea in the Sculptures of the Parthenon”
April 21, 2016 - Andrew Stewart (University of California, Berkeley)
“Inventing the Female Nude: Praxiteles, Phryne, and the Knidia”
April 23, 2015 - Ruth Scodel (University of Michigan)
“Homeric Folk Psychology”
April 25, 2014 - John Oakley (College of William and Mary)
“Athenian White Lekythoi: Masterpieces of Greek Funerary Art”
April 27, 2013 - Erich Gruen (University of California, Berkeley)
“Identity Theft in the Ancient Mediterranean”
April 19, 2012 - Brian Rose (University of Pennsylvania)
“Assessing the Archaeological Evidence for the Trojan War: Recent Excavations at Troy”
April 21, 2011 - Gerald V. Lalonde (Grinnell College)
“Thucydides on Human Nature and Violence: Realist or Pessimist?”
April 29, 2010 - Christopher Parslow (Wesleyan University [Middletown, CT])
“Love and Life in the Praedia of Julia Felix in Pompeii”
April 23, 2009 - Susan Ashbrook Harvey (Brown University)
“Housework in the Classical Tradition”
April 14, 2008 - Josiah Osgood (Georgetown University)
“The Pen and the Sword: Writing and Conquest in Caesar’s Gaul”
April 10, 2007 - James Arieti (Hampden-Sydney College)
“Ἀχιλῆος αἵρεσις [Akhilē̂os haíresis]. Achilles’ Choice”
March 14, 2006