Scott Scullion, associate
professor of classics and chair of the department, will be leaving Union
at the end of this term to take a position at Worcester College of Oxford
University.
At Union
since 1989, Scullion will hold the titles of fellow and tutor in classics of Worcester
College and university lecturer in
Greek and Latin language and literature. Scullion spent a sabbatical year at Oxford
three years ago.
Scullion interviewed for the
position in July, delivering a paper, “Maenads and Men,” in which he
argued that the female followers of Dionysus carried on their rituals in the
presence of men.
Scullion holds a bachelor's degree
from the University of Toronto,
and master's and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard
University. He specializes in Greek
literature and religion.
At Oxford,
Scullion will deliver one hour of formal lecture each week, but most of his
teaching will be tutorial-based. He will meet with one or two undergrads at a
time to discuss essays they have written. He will also advise graduate students.
Scullion, a Toronto
native who holds Canadian citizenship, is the first Canadian ever to be
appointed to a position in Classics at Oxford,
where there are three Americans on the 52-member faculty.
“I'm hugely excited about going to
Oxford”, says Scullion, “which is
probably the best place in the world for a classicist to be. The libraries are
superb, unmatched elsewhere, and the place is full of first-rate scholars, both
those who work there and the many who come to visit from all over the world.”
And as if the move to Oxford
wasn't enough of a life change, he'll be joined there by the woman he married
last summer, Vasiliki Giannopoulou, a Greek national and fellow classicist who
is turning her Oxford dissertation into a book. The couple met, perhaps
fittingly, at a conference on Euripides held in Banff,
Alberta. They were married in a village
high in the mountains of Arcadia, Greece.