Classics Students Win Fellowships for Study In Greece

Submitted by James Sickinger

Thomas Henderson at work on an ancient Greek inscription from the 2nd century BC and now housed in the Stoa of Attalos in Athens, Greece.

For the second year in a row, an FSU graduate student has been awarded a fellowship at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece. Christina Trego, who received her MA in Classical Archaeology in May, has been named the Lucy Shoe Merritt Fellow for the 2009/10 academic year. The fellowship, valued at over $20,000, is awarded on the basis of a research proposal, references, and a nine-hour entrance exam.

Trego, who completed an MA Paper on Mycenaean fortifications under the Direction of Classics chairman Dr. Daniel Pullen, will participate in the American School's academic program, which offers graduate students the opportunity to study firsthand the sites and monuments of Greece.

Trego will follow another Classics graduate student, Thomas Henderson, who held the Eugene Vanderpool Fellowship at the American School during the 2008/9 academic year. Henderson spent the year conducting research on his dissertation, “Civic Ideology in Hellenistic Athens,” supervised by Classics associate professor James Sickinger. It focuses on Athens in the two centuries after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE, after which Athenian democracy went into decline and Athens was no longer a major military power. Henderson studied ancient inscriptions, sculpture, and buildings to decipher how Athenians attitudes toward citizenship and civic duty changed in response to Athens’ diminished political standing.

“For a long time, scholars concluded that the Hellenistic period of Greek history was an age of decline,” says Henderson. “Yet, new research conducted over the past few decades has been steadily chipping away at this view. I hope to further this trend by shedding light on the beliefs, values and robust involvement of the Athenians in the life of their city-state during this period.”

The American School is one of more than a dozen American overseas research centers whose purpose is to facilitate research by American scholars in foreign countries. Founded in 1881, it provides advanced graduate students and scholars a base for the study of Greek history, archaeology, and literature, from antiquity to the present. The School and its programs are supported by more than 150 cooperating North American institutions, including Florida State University. For further information visit its website at http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/.