Posted on Mar 29, 2002

Schenectady, N.Y. (March 29, 2002) – Katherine Geffcken, professor emerita of Latin and Greek at Wellesley College, will speak on “The First American Women Classicists in Rome” on Thursday, April 4, at 5:30 p.m. in Union College's Nott Memorial.

Her talk, free and open to the public, is sponsored by the College's chapter of Phi Beta Kappa through the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholars Program.

Geffcken, a recognized authority in classics and archaeology, taught at Wellesley from 1963 to 1998. Past president of the Vergilian Society of America, she is a life member and
former director of the American Philological Association and a member of the Archaeological Institute of America. She has been a visiting scholar at the American Academy in Rome and directed four of the Academy's summer sessions. She is also a fellow and former trustee of the Academy.

She is the author of Comedy in the Pro Caelio with an Appendix on the In Clodium et Curionem; and 11 articles on Garibaldi's defense of Rome (1849) and the buildings of the
Janiculum in Newsletter of the Classical Society of the American Academy in Rome. She is a contributor to the Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists and to the exhibition catalogue Esther Van Deman:
Images from the Archive of an American Archaeologist in Italy at the Turn of
the Century.
Her special research interests are Latin literature of the
first century B.C.; Roman comedy; American scholars and archaeologists in
Italy; ancient numismatics; and topography and history of the Janiculum, Rome.

For calendar listings:
Speaker: Katherine Geffcken, professor emerita of Latin and Greek at Wellesley College
Topic: “The First American Women Classicists in Rome”
Date: Thursday, April 4
Time: 5:30 p.m.
Place: Union College's Nott Memorial
Cost: free and open to the public
Information: 388-6131