Department of Classics

On February 22-23, the seventh annual colloquium of the Theodore B. Guérard Lecture Series will address the Greek poet Sappho’s place within the corpus of Classical Greek literature, and her continuing influence on music and poetry today. This year’s colloquium invites leading voices in Classics, English, and Musicology. The colloquium will culminate in a recital of contemporary compositions which set Sappho’s poetry to music.

Thursday, February 22 (Alumni Center, SOEHHP)

• Sappho on Papyrus: Reading Some New Poems, Dr. Leslie Kurke (4:00pm)

Dr. Leslie Kurke is Gladys Rehard Wood Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.  She is the author of The Traffic inPraise: Pindar and the Poetics of Social Economy (Cornell University Press, 1991), Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold: The Politics of Meaning in Archaic Greece (Princeton University Press, 1999), and Aesopic Conversations: Popular Tradition, Cultural Dialogue, and the Invention of Greek Prose (Princeton University Press, 2011), as well as many articles on ancient Greek literature (especially archaic poetry) and cultural history.  She is the recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship (1999-2004) and of the Goodwin Award of Merit from the American Philological Association in 2012 (for Aesopic Conversations).

• Sappho’s Newest Songs and Fragments, Diane Rayor (5:15pm)

Dr. Diane Rayor is Professor of Classics at Grand Valley State University. She is a scholar and translator of Greek poetry and co-founder of the Classics Department at Grand Valley State. She teaches Greek language, literature, literary translation, women in antiquity, and classical mythology. Her published translations include Sappho: A New Translation of the Complete Works, the complete surviving works of ancient Greek women poets, the Homeric Hymns, Sophocles’ Antigone, and Euripides’ Medea. She is currently completing Euripides’ Helen and Hecuba for Cambridge University Press; Hecuba will be performed at the University of Colorado, Boulder in November 2018. 

Friday, February 23 (Recital Hall, Simons Center)

• Sappho Fragments, composed by Graham Lynch with a translation of Sappho by Diane Rayor; performed by Paul and Kayleen Sánchez (6:00pm)

Dr. Paul Sánchez is Director of Piano Studies & Artistic Director of the International Piano Series at the College of Charleston. Praised as “a great artist” (José Feghali, 2013), the pianist/composer is a co-founder of the San Francisco International Piano Festival. He was a Fulbright fellow in Spain from 2005–2007, and received his DMA in 2013 at the Eastman School of Music (University of Rochester).

Kayleen Sánchez is a recitalist, pedagogue, and recording artist with particular passion for early and new music. The soprano “has the perfect voice, pure and unshakably direct in delivery….[her] purity of voice and total control of her instrument is utterly remarkable” (Fanfare Magazine, 2016). She has been praised for her “keen technical virtuosity…her voice [that] thrills along the spine” (Sherod Santos, 2016). She received her MM in 2012 at the Eastman School of Music (University of Rochester), and she is Adjunct Professor of Voice at the College of Charleston.

• Lyric’s Winded, Wing-Beat Rush: An Introduction to Sherod Santos’s Sappho, Emily Rosko (6:15pm)

Dr. Emily Rosko is Associate Professor of English at the College of Charleston. She is the author of three poetry collections: Weather Inventions (forthcoming, University of Akron); Prop Rockery (University of Akron 2012); and Raw Goods Inventory (University of Iowa 2006). She co-edited A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line (University of Iowa 2011), and she has authored many essays and individual poems. She is also a student of the poet Sherod Santos, whose translations of Sappho will be used in the final performance of this colloquium.

• Sappho as a Figure of Hope in Paul Sanchez’s ‘The Journey’, Michael Morey (6:45pm)

Dr. Michael Morey is a guitarist, composer, and musicologist whose distinctive style has developed from a unique synthesis of classical, rock, and jazz/fusion music. He holds a DMA from the University of North Texas, and he is currently completing a second doctorate in historical musicology. He has composed over 30 concert works and released 4 commercial CDs. His research focuses on building new methodological frameworks for interpreting meaning, manner, and motive in musical borrowing procedures of 20^th century music.

• The Journey, composed by Paul Sánchez with a translation of Sappho by Sherod Santos; performed by Paul and Kayleen Sánchez (7:15pm)