W&L’s Caleb Dance Awarded Prestigious Margo Tytus Visiting Fellowship Classics professor will use the fellowship to research his project “Annotated Amores” at the University of Cincinnati this spring.

By Brian Laubscher
July 13, 2023

Caleb Dance, associate professor of classics at Washington and Lee University, has been awarded the prestigious Margo Tytus Visiting Scholarship Program Fellowship offered by the University of Cincinnati Classics Department.

The program offers fellowship recipients the opportunity to study and research the fields of philology, history or archaeology at the John Miller Burnam Classics Library on the University of Cincinnati campus. Fellows receive a monthly stipend of $1,500 plus housing near campus, along with a transportation allowance and office space attached to the Burnam Classics Library.

“Thanks to the generous sabbatical support of the Provost’s Office, I knew I would be able to dedicate the upcoming academic year to this new project,” said Dance. “The Tytus Fellowship offers me proximity to a world-class collection of classical studies resources, in addition to the community of faculty and graduate students at the University of Cincinnati, a world-class collection in human form.”

Dance’s fellowship will run from January-April 2024, though he expects to work beyond the terms of the fellowship. His project “Annotated Amores” is a book-historical digital edition of the first century B.C.E. Roman poet Ovid’s “Amores Book 3,” which is a collection of 15 poems that concludes Ovid’s initial foray into the genre of Roman elegiac poetry.

Dance expects to document the similarities and variations across three distinct physical versions (or “witnesses”) of Ovid’s book, presenting a commentary attuned to appearance as well as content. One of the witnesses is a rare 17th-century edition held in W&L’s Special Collections. The project facilitates interpretation of the ways in which the materiality of a book shapes readers’ engagement with textual works, their literary content and their historical context.

“Several years ago, Kathleen Lynch (University of Cincinnati Professor of Classics) visited W&L and delighted students and faculty with her lecture about the Greek symposium, said Dance. “That’s definitely when I started thinking about applying for a Tytus Fellowship. I know that my research and the project will benefit from the proximity to such a community of scholars.”

Dance has been a member of the W&L faculty since 2014. He holds a bachelor’s degree in classics and philosophy from Tulane University, as well as master’s and doctoral degrees in classics from Columbia University.

If you know a W&L faculty member who has done great, accolade-worthy things, tell us about them! Nominate them for an accolade.