Beer historian and CU Boulder Assistant Professor Travis Rupp explains why canned beer, celebrating its 90th anniversary today, has been ‘immensely impactful’ for the industry

“It's Saturday, y'all, here's a plan
I'm gonna throw back a couple …
Until the point where I can't stand
No, nothing picks me up like a beer can.”

• From “Beer Can” by Luke Combs

On Jan. 24, 1935, some shoppers in Virginia were likely scratching their heads and gawking at something they hadn’t seen before―beer in cans―s��𳦾��ھ�����������, Krueger’s Cream Ale and Krueger’s Finest Beer from the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company. Up until then, beer drinkers had enjoyed their suds in bottles. 

Today, canned beer is commonplace, but according to beer archaeologist and historian Travis Rupp, a University of Colorado Boulder teaching assistant professor of classics, even though canning would prove to be “immensely impactful” for the industry, neither brewers nor consumers cared much for cans initially.

“There were false claims made about metal flavor leaching into canned beverages because the beer was coming in contact with the aluminum,” Rupp says. “Where this may have been the case with early steel or aluminum cans, it wasn’t true for most of the container's history.”

Rupp adds that even as late as 2015, glass bottles were viewed as better containers for beer, given that they were “nicer” for presentation.

Yet today, cans have emerged as the clear winner in the beer game. A Colorado example: MillerCoors Rocky Mountain Metal Container, based near the Coors campus in Golden, now churns out roughly .

“Cans are the best containers for beer. They don’t let in sunlight or oxygen, which are both detrimental to beer,” says Rupp. “Bottles let in sunlight. Even brown or amber bottles allow a small percentage of ultraviolet rays through, which can skunk or spoil the beer. Bottles also can leach in oxygen through the cap over time as the seal breaks down. Bottles still have a place for cellaring or aging high gravity barrel-aged beers or sours, but if you want your beer to stay and taste fresh the longest, you opt for cans.”

The case for cans

Over the decades, cans have also helped brewers’ bottom lines: “Cans are far cheaper because they’re much lighter to ship,” Rupp explains. “Freight shipping costs are mostly dictated by weight. This ultimately can result in higher profits for breweries and lower costs for consumers. They’re also far, far cheaper to store, since they require far less space than glass bottles and cartons.”

Long before cans made their debut, Rupp says some breweries tried replacing wooden casks with metal kegs throughout the 19th century, but no protective liner existed to prevent metallic leaching in these containers. “And given the long duration that beer would sit in the metal casks before serving, the flavor would become quite awful. It wasn’t until the 1960s that stainless steel kegs hit the market.”

About that metallic-flavor-leaching debate, Rupp says aluminum can producers now apply a patented protective liner to the inside of their cans to prevent leaching. “If you cut open a can produced by the Ball Corporation [the global packaging giant], you’ll find … a dull grayish-white crosshatched pattern in the can. This is the protective liner, and I assure you no metal flavor is leaching into your beer.”

But for Rupp, perhaps the most impressive technology comes in what’s called the seaming process on cans. The ends (or top) of the can are produced separately. Once the cans are filled, the end is placed on top and goes through a series of rollers and chucks to seam the top of the can.

“This bond is so tight that the sides of the can will fail before the seam does. It’s a really cool advancement in canning technology, as are canning machines in general that work hard to ensure no oxygen ends up in the beer before the cans are sealed. We’ve come a long way from church keys and pull tabs on beer cans.”

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Five years after a devastating fire, CU Boulder Professor Kirk Ambrose reflects on the significance of the renowned cathedral’s Dec. 7 reopening

When University of Colorado Boulder Professor Kirk Ambrose thinks of the famed cathedral Notre Dame in Paris, his mind goes back to when he lived near the site while researching European art and architecture.

He’d make a point of walking past the church every morning―repeated encounters that made him appreciate how much the building is part of the life of the city.

Kirk Ambrose, a CU Boulder professor of classics, notes that since its beginnings, Notre Dame has been the center of Paris.

He recalls that there was a regular vendor who sold pet birds in the cathedral’s shadow.

“I relished the entanglements of soaring towers and buttresses vis-à-vis these caged flying animals,” says Ambrose, whose great aunt was married in Notre Dame. “In other words, Notre Dame offers a lens through which one can understand Paris. This notion is underscored by the vista from its towers, which offer unparalleled views of the city.”

Ambrose, a professor in the CU Boulder Department of Classics who studies and teaches the art and architecture of medieval Europe, says from its beginnings in the 12th century, Notre Dame was at the center of Paris. (It is literally the city’s center: In front of the church, a small plate engraved with a compass is known as “point zéro des routes de France,” which marks where all distances to and from Paris are measured.)

Five years after the April 15, 2019, fire that collapsed the cathedral’s famed spire, consumed its wooden roof and heavily damaged its upper walls and vaults, Notre Dame is set to reopen to the public Dec. 7, with the first mass held the following day.

In his public remarks following the fire, French President Emmanuel Macron said, “Notre-Dame is our history, our literature, part of our psyche, the place of all our great events, our epidemics, our wars, our liberations, the epicenter of our lives.”

In the more than 800 years since its first stone was laid, Notre Dame has not only come to symbolize Paris but become one of the world’s great buildings. When it burned in 2019, people around the globe mourned, and its reopening is garnering international celebration.

An 800-year history

Throughout its multi-century history, Notre Dame has not been stagnant, but has reflected the shifting currents of culture, Ambrose says.

“This was the seat of the bishop of Paris and was a stone’s throw from the king’s residence,” Ambrose says. “Given these royal associations, there were many renovation campaigns to keep the building looking stylish, in line with the latest building trends.”

During the Middle Ages, the streets surrounding the cathedral were home to bookshops, ivory shops and other niche workshops. “The towers of the cathedral loomed large, both physically and conceptually, over these artistic activities,” Ambrose says.

After extensive renovation following a devastating April 2019 fire, Notre Dame will reopen to the public Saturday, and the first mass will be said Sunday. (Photo: Stephane De Sakutin/Getty Images)

The height of 's tower is 226 feet, and its spire is 315 feet. Until the Eiffel Tower was completed, Notre Dame was the tallest structure in Paris.

Historians note that the cathedral was an easy target during the Napoleonic Wars, when it took such a pummeling that officials considered razing it. To boost awareness for the church and revive interest in Gothic architecture, the renowned author Victor Hugo wrote the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in 1831.

Ambrose says Hugo’s novel made the building a vivid character for readers’ imaginations. The book was met with immediate success, and in 1844 King Louis Philippe ordered that Notre Dame be restored.

“By the way, Hugo was friends with many of the leading architectural historians of the day,” Ambrose says. “Thanks largely to Hugo, the building was subsequently the subject of films, of garden sculptures, of gargoyles, etc.”

But five years ago, all of Notre Dame’s beauty and history was nearly lost. According to news reports, a fire broke at about 6:20 p.m. April 15, and in fewer than two hours, the spire collapsed, bringing down a cascade of 750 tons of stone and lead. It’s been speculated that the fire was linked to ongoing renovation work, but officials have yet to name a definitive cause. By 9.45 p.m., the fire was finally brought under control.

Saturday, the cathedral will reopen supported by about 340,000 donors from 150 countries who contributed almost $1 billion.

Might Notre Dame become even more popular after the fire and subsequent restoration? Ambrose says there’s reason to believe it will.

“As a medievalist, I can say that fires often make buildings more popular,” he says. “The great cathedral of Chartres [a Catholic cathedral in Chartres, France, much of which was destroyed by a fire in 1194] leaps to mind as a comparison. In medieval lore, fires were often interpreted as expressions of divine will; that’s to say, they were interpreted as commands to make a building even more splendid.

“In the case of Notre Dame, the fire will, I believe, also make us appreciate this remarkable monument all the more, not taking this historical legacy for granted.”

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Even if historical films like Gladiator II, debuting Friday, are inaccurate on key points, CU Boulder Department of Classics Assistant Teaching Professor Travis Rupp sees value in them as a gateway to getting students interested in real history

As an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he on ancient sports, Travis Rupp gives the Roman-era period film Gladiator decidedly mixed marks for historical accuracy.

That does not mean he is not big fan of the movie, however.

CU Boulder classics scholar Travis Rupp teaches a course called Ancient Sport and Spectacle.

“I get asked about the movie Gladiator all the time. Most people just assume that I hate the movie. And actually, I love it. Gladiator is one of my top five movies of all time,” says Rupp, who teaches Greek and Roman archeology, Egyptology and Roman history, with a special focus on ancient food, alcohol and sports.

“What’s funny about it is that the movie came out in 2000, while I was an undergrad at the University of Iowa, and one of my roommates and I got so obsessed with the film that, no joke, I think we saw it a dozen times. I wasn’t even a classics major at the time; I was an English major. We just loved the movie that much.”

With Gladiator II hitting the big screens Friday, Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine asked Rupp for his take on what Hollywood gets wrong (and right) about gladiators, how today’s movies about the Roman era compare with those made in the Golden Age of Hollywood and whether historical films can ever be 100% accurate and still engaging.

Question: What did Gladiator director Ridley Scott get wrong and right in the 2000 film?

Rupp: There are some big deviations. One thing I would say they got right is the setting of the film. The film starts off with Emperor Marcus Aurelius at war on the northern frontier with ‘barbarian’ tribes, and that’s accurate. Marcus Aurelius spent essentially his entire principate at war.

And one thing I think Scott did well was with the casting of (Richard Harris) as Marcus Aurelius, because he (Harris) captured the role with his cerebral manner and trustworthy cadence and delivery. The real Marcus Aurelius was a philosopher and someone far more literarily focused on his philosophical ideologies than he was war, even though he spent his entire time as emperor at war.

Things begin to deviate pretty quickly from there. When Commodus (played by Joaquin Phoenix) is introduced in the film, there is this idea that Commodus is still trying to curry his father’s favor and get his dear old dad to name him heir to the throne. However, we know from history that Commodus was declared co-ruler before the death of Marcus Aurelius, and there is nothing to suggest that Commodus had his father killed, like in the movie. But it works in the movie to create the idea of him as the antagonist. There’s no way you can’t hate Commodus from that moment on in the film.

At the same time, the movie does capture that Commodus, as he’s recorded in history, was kind of a looney. He was megalomaniacal in a lot of ways, and he was hated by a lot of people, including a lot of people in the Roman Senate. He wanted to be this dictatorial ruler in every sense of the word.

Actor Russell Crowe starred as General Maximus in the 2000 film Gladiator. (Photo: Universal/Getty Images)

He also fancied himself a gladiator, as depicted in the movie. He was actually trained as a full-fledged gladiator, and he was obsessed with the games.

Then there is the character of General Maximus (played by Russell Crowe), who is entirely fictitious. Ridley Scott said Maximus represented a composite of several historical figures.

In terms of the storyline that’s been built into the film, of this idea of a general of such high esteem or regard being singled out for execution, that’s not out of the question. These guys (Roman leaders) were pretty rough with each other, and if you crossed the line with the wrong person, they would find a way to get rid of you.

But the idea of Maximus ending up in a gladiator school is pretty far-fetched. That seems highly unlikely, especially given that he was a free man. He had rights as a citizen. But the storyline needed that to drive the film forward. Obviously, that’s how Scott creates our protagonist, so I suppose it’s understandable.

As for what happened to Commodus, he was assassinated, but there is no indication he was killed in the arena, as in the movie. And Commodus was emperor for about 12 years, whereas in the movie it seems like he is barely into his rule when he’s killed, so the film’s timeline doesn’t really play out right.

Question: As it relates to the gladiator battles in the Colosseum in the film, how realistic are those to actual history?

Rupp: I would say the games are 50-50 in terms of accuracy and how they are presented in the film. Some of the accuracy concerns how the Colosseum is displayed in the film, including with trapdoors and these surprises that could jump out at you, like wild animals, to shock and awe the crowds.

But what’s not real is the way the fighting is displayed or portrayed. Today we don’t actually think that most of the fights were to the death. Up until the 1990s, most scholarship presented the idea that most gladiators died probably within their first three battles, which would mean most of them only survived about two weeks.

As we’ve dug deeper into the topic over the last 30 years, we don’t have the archeological evidence to support that. We do have gladiator graves or cemeteries, but they’re not full of tens of thousands of people that were killed in the games.

Kirk Douglas starred as gladiator Spartacus in the 1960 film. (Photo: Bettmann Archives/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, we have a great deal of evidence that there were rules to these games, and that there were hand gestures and signals gladiators could give to stop a fight. There were two referees on the arena floor at all times who were watching for hand signals and could stop the contest if needed. So, why all of these rules and why referees if they are no-holds-barred events?

Hollywood has glorified the bloodthirst and the idea people wanted to watch gladiators die day after day, but the brutal truth of gladiation is that most of these men and women were enslaved, and to put it bluntly, they were really expensive property. Their owners put a tremendous amount of money into feeding them, training them and getting them ready for the games, so they would not want to see them get killed or maimed.

Question: Do you think Hollywood has to fictionalize certain story elements to make a film that audiences are interested in seeing?

Rupp: I think so, absolutely. With a lot of these ancient storylines, if they were to make it 100% accurate, I think they’d lose their audience immediately.

I have friends and colleagues who are probably going to scoff at this new Gladiator film. I’m sure some people are going to want to tear it down because of its inaccuracies.

For my part, I don’t think that’s the way to approach these things, even from a scholarly perspective. … We’ve all watched these super-dry documentaries, and it’s like, ‘Can you Ken Burns it up a little bit here, so I can actually get engaged in the subject?’

It’s the same thing for these (historical period) movies. It’s reviving these storylines and giving them a new voice for a new era to keep the story moving.

Question: The film industry has been making period pieces about the Roman era for a long time, including Ben-Hur and Spartacus, from the ‘Golden Age’ of Hollywood. Any thoughts as to whether movies today are more or less historically accurate than those from past eras?

Rupp: That is a great question. I think it really depends upon the film. When you look back on Kirk Douglas in Spartacus, that was just a phenomenal film. With Spartacus, there was a lot of research and analysis from scholars telling them how the military worked. There is that really cool scene at the end of the movie, the last battle, with Spartacus’ men against the combined forces of Pompey and Crassus, where there’s the slow movement of troops over the hill and you can just feel the tension of war as you see how the Roman legions move.

With Ben Hur, the chariot race sequence is really well done. It is phenomenally accurate in so many ways.

Pedro Pascal (left) and Paul Mescal (right) star in Gladiator II, opening Friday. (Photo: Aidan Monaghan/Paramount Pictures)

I think there’s been more deviation in the modern era, just in trying to tell a good story, and often accuracy is sacrificed in that way. In Troy, for example, it’s a highly contentious film in the field of classics because, for the lack of a better term, it just butchers the stories of the Trojan cycle in a lot of ways. But at the same time, it’s a really entertaining film, and it dared to do something that no other filmmaker had really done before, which was to try to give this comprehensive look at what the Trojan war looked like in that last year. How does one judge the reality or authenticity of what was heavily mythologized in the first place?

Question: Do you think movies are a good way to learn about history?

Rupp: I do, actually, even when the movie itself may not be very historically accurate. I think it’s a good way to hopefully get people curious and get them to go explore and learn more. For those who are naturally curious, I think historical-themed movies are kind of like a gateway drug to the classics, so to speak. So, a movie like Troy might actually get a student or an adult to pick up a copy of the Iliad and start reading it.

Even movies and TV series that majorly deviate from history have merit, I believe. The Spartacus Blood and Sand series on Showtime was like the movie 300 meets Spartacus. There was just blood everywhere.

But I love it because it keeps history alive. It keeps a select portion of my students interested in history, and saying, ‘I’m going to go to the library and find a book on this,’ or ‘I really want to go to Rome and see these things for myself.’

Without that, our field dies, and we lose history. So, I think Hollywood and films are helping us keep history alive in a lot of ways.

Question: So, are you planning on seeing Gladiator II in the theater?

Rupp: Absolutely, yes. I’ll be seeing it as soon as I possibly can, and I’m really excited to see what they do, because they have an all-star cast including Denzel Washington and Pedro Pascal. I’ve always liked Ridley Scott’s films; they’re very entertaining. Say what you will about him, Ridley Scott knows how to make a good movie.

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CU Boulder Classics scholars identify previously unknown fragments of two lost tragedies by Greek tragedian Euripides

After months of intense scrutiny, two University of Colorado Boulder scholars have deciphered and interpreted what they believe to be the most significant new fragments of works by classical Greek tragedian Euripides in more than half a century.

In November 2022, Basem Gehad, an archaeologist with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, sent a papyrus unearthed at the ancient site of Philadelphia in Egypt to Yvona Trnka-Amrhein, assistant professor of classics. The two scholars have also recently discovered the upper half of a colossal statue of the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II in their joint excavation project at Hermopolis Magna.

She began to pore over the high-resolution photo of the papyrus (Egyptian law prohibits physically removing any artifact from the country), scrutinizing its 98 lines.

CU Boulder classicists Yvona Trnka-Amrhein (left) and John Gibert (right) spent months studying a small square of papyrus and became confident it contains previously unknown material from two fragmentary Euripides plays, Polyidus and Ino.

“It was very clearly tragedy,” she says.

Using the , a comprehensive, digitized database of ancient Greek texts maintained by the University of California, Irvine, Trnka-Amrhein confirmed she was looking at previously unknown excerpts from mostly lost Euripidean plays.

“After more digging, I realized I should call in an expert in Euripides fragments,” she says. “Luckily, my mentor in the department is just that!”

Working together, Trnka-Amrhein and renowned classics Professor John Gibert embarked on many months of grueling work, meticulously poring over a high-resolution photo of the 10.5-square-inch papyrus. They made out words and ensured that the words they thought they were seeing fit the norms of tragic style and meter.

Eventually, they became confident that they were working with new material from two fragmentary Euripides plays, Polyidus and Ino. Twenty-two of the lines were previously known in slightly varied versions, but “80 percent was brand-new stuff,” Gibert says.

“We don’t think there has been a find of this significance since the 1960s,” he says.

“This is a large and unusual papyrus for this day and age,” Trnka-Amrhein says. “It’s kind of a big deal in the field.”

Retelling a Cretan myth

Polyidus retells an ancient Cretan myth in which King Minos and Queen Pasiphaë demand that the eponymous seer resurrect their son Glaucus after he drowns in a vat of honey.

“Actually, it has a relatively happy ending. It’s not one of these tragedies where everyone winds up dead,” Trnka-Amrhein says: Polyidus is able to revive the boy using an herb he previously saw one snake use to revive another.

The papyrus contains part of a scene in which Minos and Polyidus debate the morality of resurrecting the dead, she says.

A marble statuette of Euripides, found in 1704 CE in the Esquiline Hill at Rome and dated to the 2nd century CE, lists several of the tragedian's works on the back panel. It is on display at the Louvre-Lens Museum in France. (Photo: Pierre André/Wikimedia Commons)

Ino came close to being one of Euripides’ best-known plays, Gibert says. Part of the text was inscribed on cliffs in Armenia that were destroyed in modern conflict. Fortunately, early 20th-century Russian scholars had preserved the images in drawings.

The eponymous character is an aunt of the Greek god Dionysus and part of the royal family of Thebes. In previously known fragments of a related play, Ino is an evil stepmother intent on killing her husband the Thessalian king’s children from a previous marriage. The new fragment introduces a new plot, Trnka-Amrhein says.

“Another woman is the evil stepmother, and Ino is the victim,” she says. “The third wife of the king is trying to eliminate Ino’s children. … Ino turns the tables on her, causing her to kill her own children and commit suicide. It’s a more traditional tragedy: death, mayhem, suicide.”

Of course, in matters of ancient Greek, there is always room for interpretation, and such bold claims will receive careful scrutiny from other experts. Gibert and Trnka-Amrhein decided not to pull any punches with their conclusions.

“We could play it safe,” Gibert says. “We are establishing a solid foundation, and on top of that we are sticking our necks out a little.”

They’ve already entered the gauntlet of scrutiny, making their case to 13 experts in Washington, D.C., in June and having their first edition of the fragment accepted for publication in August.

On Sept. 14, they will host the Ninth Fountain Symposium on the CU Boulder campus, supported by long-time Boulder resident and classics enthusiast Dr. Celia M. Fountain. The day-long event will feature three illustrious experts: Professor Paul Schubert, a Swiss specialist in papyrology; specialist in ancient Greek literature and drama Laura Swift of Oxford University; and Professor Sarah Iles Johnston, an expert in Greek religion, goddesses and magic from the Ohio State University. They will be joined by Trnka-Amrhein, Gibert and Associate Professor of Classics Laurialan Reitzammer.

“In a departure, instead of having the guests give hour-long papers, we’re going to present for 20 to 25 minutes each, in pairs, in dialogue, followed by Q-and-A,” Gibert says.

And as the academic year gets underway, Gibert says he and Trnka-Amrhein will “take the show on the road” to such places as Dartmouth and Harvard.

“John’s contacts and readers in the Euripides world have given us reassurance we’re not going to have too much pie on our faces,” Trnka-Amrhein says. “We feel extremely lucky to have worked on this material and look forward to the world’s reactions.”

Top image: A marble bas-relief show Euripides (seated), a standing woman holding out a theater mask to him (left) and the god Dionysus (right), dated to between the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE, from the Misthos collection in the Istanbul (Turkey) Archaeological Museum. (Photo: John-Grégoire/Wikimedia Commons)

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Team co-led by CU Boulder classics researcher unearths the upper portion of a huge, ancient pharaonic statue whose lower half was discovered in 1930; Ramessess II was immortalized in Percy Bysshe Shelly’s ‘Ozymandias’

In 1930, German archaeologist Günther Roeder unearthed the lower half of an enormous statue depicting pharaoh Ramesses II, also known as Ramesses the Great, ruler of Egypt some 12 centuries before the common era.

Nearly a century later, an Egyptian-American archaeological team co-led by Yvona Trnka-Amrhein, assistant professor of classics at the University of Colorado Boulder, discovered the upper portion of the enormous statue while conducting research in the ruins of the ancient city of Hermopolis, about 150 miles south of Cairo.

The 12.5-foot-long upper half depicts the pharaoh seated and wearing a double crown and headdress topped with a royal cobra. The researchers determined that the complete statue would have stood approximately 23 feet tall when it was erected.

Yvona Trnka-Amrhein, CU Boulder assistant professor of classics, co-led an Egyptian-American archaeological team that discovered the upper portion of a statue of Ramesses II.

“We knew it might be there, but we were not specifically looking for it,” says Trnka-Amrhein, who teamed up with Basem Gehad, an archaeologist with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. “It was plausible that the rest of the statue might be there, but it was a total surprise. … Getting the text was amazing.”

Trnka-Amrhein, a specialist in papyri whose PhD dissertation at Harvard University examined a “mostly lost Greek novel” about a pharaoh, had been eager to conduct research in Egypt since researching them at Oxford University as a graduate student.

In 2022, Gehad offered her access to conduct research on a papyrus that turned out to be 98 lines containing “substantial excerpts” of two lost works by Greek playwright Euripides. She soon brought in CU Boulder Classics Professor John Gibert, a specialist in tragedy, to continue research on that unusual find.

After the two met, Gehad asked her to co-lead a team of field researchers at Hermopolis. Gehad submitted a proposal and obtained all the necessary permissions to begin work at the site. Theirs was the first major excavation at the site since one led by the British Museum in the 1980s.

“Hermopolis is the second-most productive site for Greek ,” Trnka-Amrhein says. “In addition to research, our goal is to preserve the site and make it a viable part of the Egyptian economy.”

Clues to Egypt's history

Trnka-Amrhein was in the United States awaiting the birth of a child when the piece was discovered in a face-down position in January. She and her teammates were thrilled but had to temper their excitement pending further excavation.

“One problem with Hermopolis is that it’s close to the Nile (River). After (the building of) the (the 1902-built) Aswan Low Dam, the water table became a huge issue. There was no guarantee that the stone would be OK. Sometimes sandstone is uncovered that is basically just sand or degraded limestone,” Trnka-Amrhein says. “It could have just been a lump of rock.”

A bas-relief of Ramesses II on his chariot during the Battle of Kadesh on the south wall in the Hypostyle Hall of the Great Temple of Abu Simbel, Egypt. (Photo: Diego Delso)

Additional excavation revealed that the pharaonic face was remarkably well preserved. The team even found traces of ancient blue and yellow pigment that can be analyzed to deepen their understanding of the time period and the circumstances of the statue’s creation; Gehad specializes in paintings of the Greco-Roman period.

“It will be quite exciting to have a scientific analysis of the pigment,” Trnka-Amrhein says, noting that soil mixed in with the paint will also be scrutinized for clues to Egypt’s history.

Ramesses II is one of the few Egyptian pharaohs widely known to non-experts in the Western world. He was the inspiration for Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous poem, “,” was played by Yul Brynner in Cecil B. DeMille’s movie The Ten Commandments and voiced by actor Ralph Fiennes in the animated movie The Prince of Egypt.

The lower half of the statue remains at the site and Gehad has submitted a proposal to reunite the two pieces, which Trnka-Amrhein expects will be approved. It’s uncertain what would happen to a reassembled statue, but it would likely remain at the site or be placed in a museum, she says.

In the meantime, the team continues intensive study of the piece, and she hopes they will publish a paper on their work sometime this year. Trnka-Amrhein says she hopes to involve more CU Boulder graduate students in the project as it proceeds.

“I came to CU after finishing my PhD because the Classics Department is a really great place where everyone is willing to think outside the box; it’s less canonical than typical classics departments,” she says. “I love Homer and Virgil, but it’s fun to do other things, too.”

Top image: The recently discovered top portion of a limestone statue of Ramesses II unearthed by an Egyptian-U.S. archaeological mission in Al Ashmunein, south of Minya, Egypt. (Photo: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities)

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Nick Romeo’s ‘The Alternative’ uses real-world examples to push back on ‘unempirical dogmas’ of modern economics

Following World War II, economists in the West began to compare their field to natural sciences, physics and chemistry, perpetuating a set of enduring ideas that slowly ossified into the rigid, pessimistic dogma of neoliberal capitalism.

Ideas such as the need for extremely high executive compensation; the inevitability of unemployment and insecure housing; and beliefs that people are inherently selfish, profit should always be maximized, private markets are superior to public ones, harmful externalities are a necessary byproduct of economic growth, and others flourished.

CU Boulder alum Nick Romeo argued that modern economics is “misunderstood as analogous to physics or chemistry, when it’s more properly located within political philosophy.”

“These are unempirical dogmas that are treated as laws of the universe,” says journalist, author and University of Colorado Boulder graduate Nick Romeo (MAClassics’14, MFAEngl’12), who teaches journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. Modern economics is “misunderstood as analogous to physics or chemistry, when it’s more properly located within political philosophy.”

That technocratic approach to economics washes out critical ethical and political questions that are—or should be—at the center of the discipline, Romeo says. He notes that for most of history, economics was the province of political philosophy, examined and argued by such historical giants as Aristotle, John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes.

“That is a much healthier and accurate way to understand the discipline. … Economists don’t have a monopoly on insight, and political philosophy is potentially in a better position to be more insightful,” he says.

Diverse solutions

Romeo has been honing his own intellectual chops for years, first as an undergraduate at Northwestern University and later as a graduate student at CU Boulder. He’s also spent years living in Greece with his wife, Grace Erny, MA Classics, 2014, an archaeologist he met in Boulder. He’s also become a nationally respected writer, publishing in such publications at The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone and The New York Times. 

In his new book, “” (PublicAffairs), he explores real-world examples from around the globe that challenge “some of the sacred shibboleths and economic dogmas of neoliberal capitalism.”

“The eight cases studies in ‘The Alternative’ present diverse solutions to the problems of paltry wages, rampant unemployment, unstable housing and exploitative labor practices,” according to a in The Washington Post, calling it “a brisk and sensible book that details bold and ingenious proposals in measured tones.”

The first chapter zeroes in on the problem of economics education, which was almost exclusively taught through unchallenged dogma until recent decades.

“The American economist Paul Samuelson once  said, ‘I don’t care who writes a nation’s laws, as long as I get to write the economic textbooks,’” Romeo says. “We need to change economics education and what counts as cultural ‘common sense.’”

Nick Romeo's The Alternative explores real-world examples from around the globe that challenge “some of the sacred shibboleths and economic dogmas of neoliberal capitalism.”

He goes on to examine a job-guarantee program in Austria; climate-focused budgeting in Norway; the Well-Paid Maids cleaning service in Washington, D.C., which pays its employees $22 an hour and provides generous paid time off and benefits; a cooperative in Spain that restricts executive compensation to no more than six times that of workers and gives every worker a vote; and other examples of innovative, progressive capitalism.

“Everything I am describing already exists. Many times, these problems are presented as an inevitable feature of the universe, or certainly the American economy, that we can’t get rid of without entirely dismantling capitalism and adopting communism,” Romeo says.

Trying new ideas

While he recognizes traditional critiques of such efforts—they can’t scale, for instance—he suggests that that hasn’t been tried, and stranger things have happened.

“Many things we take for granted today once seemed really farfetched and controversial—the 40-hour work week, eliminating child labor, occupational and environmental legislation, worker safety rules,” he says.

When hard-core libertarians argue against such widely accepted adaptations, and even pass laws to undermine them, such as the recent loosening of child-labor laws in some states, they’re not making a good-faith argument, Romeo says.

“I think if you asked a lot of those folks if they would like to have their kids work in dangerous factories or live in a town where the water is unsafe, it would be hard to find someone truly committed to those views when they are directly impacted,” he says.

Romeo continues to write for The New Yorker and other publications on a wide variety of subjects and teach at Berkeley. He says he’s “developing a few ideas” for his next book.

During his time at CU Boulder, Romeo was particularly impressed with the Herbst Program for Engineering, Ethics and Society, which “engages students with the essential questions of human existence, and links those issues with the ethical practices of science and engineering,” noting the work of and .

“It’s a hidden gem, almost like a shadow department, and the teachers are excellent,” he says. “They have to interact with engineers, always bringing their best. They can’t assume everybody is interested, so they have to know a good way to reach them.”

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntamj5A46jU]

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In a critically acclaimed new translation of The Iliad, CU Boulder classics Professor Laurialan Reitzammer sees the enduring relevance of Homer

It’s not easy to create a work of literature that truly lasts. Many authors considered the brightest lights of the 20^th century are now virtually unknown, while countless critically acclaimed novels fade into oblivion once they slide too far down TheNew York Times bestseller list.

So, it’s no little feat that The Iliad and The Odyssey—attributed to the ancient Greek writer Homer, but the product of a thousand-year oral tradition—are not only read and studied nearly three millennia after their creation, but still generate excitement among both critics and readers.

Enter Emily Wilson, a University of Pennsylvania classicist who earned rave reviews for her 2017 English translation of .

“In the history of Odyssey translations, few have exerted such a cultural influence that they become ‘classics’ in their own right,” one critic wrote. “I predict that Emily Wilson will win a place in this roll-call of the most significant translations of the poem in history.”

CU Boulder classicist Laurialan Reitzammer notes The Iliad's enduring relevance may stem, in part, from how it reflects the real world's complexity and messiness.

The enthusiasm and plaudits have continued with the release of Wilson’s translation of (W.W. Norton & Co.) in September, which TheWashington Post called “a genuine page-turner,” despite its reputation as the considerably more challenging of Homer’s two famous epic poems.

Not everyone’s a fan, of course. Some critics and scholars have balked at her modern sensibilities, word choices and even the meter of her translations.

But whatever the translation, Homer clearly remains relevant all these centuries later. Why does the work continue to speak to modern audiences?

“Because some things don’t change—we still have war, unfortunately, and (The Iliad) doesn’t really take a side; it shows that everyone is human, the cost of war, what violence does to people and what is left behind when people die,” says Laurialan Reitzammer, associate professor of classics at the University of Colorado Boulder. “The end of the poem is about grief and pain, big issues that speak to us all.”

Yet The Iliad complicates that sense of familiarity with its portrait of a “deeply alien, radically foreign” culture, Reitzammer says.

She points to a famous episode in which Hector stands on the walls of Troy and prays to the gods that his infant son will grow up to “kill his enemies and bring home the bloody spoils”—not exactly the first impulse of most contemporary parents when trying to sooth a crying baby. Hector feels utterly compelled to go to war to maintain his status, and his wife agrees, though both understand that she will be violated and enslaved, and his own child will be hurled from the same high walls, as a result.

“These moments are about the glory of the warrior and violence. … Yet the end of the poem is a scene of lamentation in which three women speak about what it means to lose Hector,” Reitzammer says.

Having read The Iliad in English and the original Greek dozens of times over the past three decades, Reitzammer also is struck by how different facets of the poem have shone through or faded away with each new season of her life.

For example, when she first read the poem as an undergraduate, she took little notice of Achilles’ mother, the minor goddess Thetis, who seeks intervention by Zeus, the big dog of the Greek pantheon, when her valiant warrior son comes to her for help.

“She was really involved in his life. In a lot of ways, she was the first ‘helicopter mom’,” Reitzammer says with a laugh.

Yet now that she’s been a mother herself for some 13 years, Reitzammer better understands the powerful impulse to protect and help one’s children.

“We see ourselves in this epic, but in different ways each time, because we ourselves change,” she says.

Wilson has chafed at oft-made, well-intended praise for being the first woman to translate, and providing the first “feminist” translation, of Homer into English, which generated a backlash on social media (no doubt by many who had not read the book) accusing her of being “woke.”

“It may be the first non-misogynistic translation,” Reitzammer notes wryly.

"Achilles Defeating Hector" by Peter Paul Rubens (1630-1632)

For example, she praises Wilson's avoidance of words like “servant” or “maid” to describe the enslaved women slaughtered by Odysseus upon returning from his eponymous journey, a translation of a Greek word usually rendered as “sluts” or “disobedient maids.”

She praises Wilson’s careful choices in bringing Homer to a modern audience without diluting his potency or poetry. She points to Wilson’s use of “cataclysmic” wrath for a Greek word that similarly has four syllables describing Achilles’ rage in the first lines of the poem, usually translated as “destructive.”

“It defamiliarizes ‘destructive’ and makes us think of a washing over, torrential violence, being flooded with emotions, and flooded with rage that will have such dire consequences,” Reitzammer says.

“(Wilson’s) attention to these kinds of things shows why we need new translations,” Reitzammer says. “We don’t see things the way someone in 1950 or even 2000 saw them.”

The fact that women in Homer’s time were viewed as objects and property is part of what gives The Iliad its “alien nature,” she says.

“I think (Homer) is worth reading,” she says, “in part because our own culture has deeply embedded misogyny.”

And rather than flatly rejecting Homer because of offensive norms held by a culture so far removed in space and time, Reitzammer argues that studying his work can help students think about modern societal ills.

“When teaching ancient Greek literature, especially fifth^-century Athenian literature, I get to have intense conversations with students about gender or citizenship or immigration, in the context of a culture from thousands of years ago,” she says. “My hope is that they will come back to modern times and think about our modern constructions in different ways.”

Reading Homer may be uncomfortable, Reitzammer says, but it’s a valid reflection of the real world’s complexity and messiness. And that’s another reason we’re still reading, translating and arguing over his work.

“(The Iliad) offers this complexity, celebrating the warrior, then showing us what is left behind,” she says. “It’s so much harder to hold different strands and perspectives at once than to have just one perspective.”

Top image: "" by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (1786)

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In his Distinguished Research Lecture Nov. 28, Professor Kirk Ambrose will discuss how institutions used art to authenticate religious relics, as well as condemn counterfeiting

During the Middle Ages in Europe, religious relics were highly prized—not just by individuals, but also by institutions. Possessing them could bolster prestige and wealth, as well as enhance spiritual credibility.

So, the temptation to forge relics and make fake claims about them was strong. In fact, the years between 1000 and 1150 CE are called the “golden age of medieval forgery.”

How did institutions strengthen their claims to possess authentic relics? Kirk Ambrose, a University of Colorado Boulder professor of classics and founding director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, will explore this question in a Distinguished Research Lecture from 4 to 5 p.m. Nov. 28, with a question-and-answer session and reception following.

Kirk Ambrose will give a Distinguished Research Lecture at 4 p.m. Nov. 28.

Ambrose will discuss relics and authenticity claims through the example of the French monastery of Sainte-Foy, Conques, examining how this community used the visual arts to advance their claims and condemn those who engaged in counterfeiting.

About Kirk Ambrose

Ambrose earned master’s and doctorate degrees in the history of art from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, after earning a bachelor’s degree in art history from Oberlin College.

He specializes in the art and architecture of medieval Europe and has published four books and dozens of scholarly articles on the topic. In partnership with Steven Martonis, exhibitions manager in the CU Art Museum, he curated two exhibitions on the art of the American West at the CU Art Museum, including “Pioneers: Women Artists in Boulder, 1898-1950,” which was the basis for a feature-length documentary film. He served seven years as the chair of the Department of Art and Art History and a term as editor-in-chief of The Art Bulletin, the journal of record for art historians in the United States.

Among other research projects, Ambrose is working on a book provisionally titled The Frailty of Eyes, which connects medieval studies and art history with the rich theoretical concerns of disability studies. His published books include The Marvellous and the Monstrous in the Sculpture of Twelfth-Century Europe and The Nave Sculpture of Vézelay: The Art of Monastic Viewing.

In 2019, Ambrose helped launch the CU Boulder Center for Teaching and Learning, which develops and supports CU’s teaching community of practice. Its foundations are grounded in research-based practices, inclusive pedagogy, and equitable assessment techniques.

“Much of my work as a medievalist has focused on the production and reception of knowledge within communities, especially monastic communities,” Ambrose of the University of California-San Diego. “I think that has positioned me to regard teaching less as an isolated activity of a teacher transmitting knowledge to a group of students, than as a deeply collaborative enterprise.

   What: 122nd Distinguished Research Lecture: The Authentic and the Counterfeit in Medieval Art

  Who: Professor Kirk Ambrose of the Department of Classics

  When: 4-5 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 28

  Where: Chancellor’s Hall and Auditorium, CASE

“To my mind, this works on a number of levels. Teachers collaborate with their students to advance learning. Teachers collaborate with one another to share effective practices. And our center serves as a space that collaborates with units and specialists from across campus to support educators in achieving their goals.”

About the Distinguished Research Lectureship

The Distinguished Research Lectureship is among the highest honors given by faculty to a faculty colleague at CU Boulder. Each year, the Research and Innovation Office requests nominations from faculty for this award, and a faculty review panel recommends one or more faculty members as recipients. 

The lectureship honors tenured faculty members, research professors (associate or full) or adjoint professors who have been with CU Boulder for at least five years and are widely recognized for a distinguished body of academic or creative achievement and prominence, as well as contributions to the educational and service missions of CU Boulder. Each recipient typically gives a lecture in the fall or spring following selection and receives a $2,000 honorarium.

Ambrose and Rebecca Safran, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, have been recognized with 2023-24 Distinguished Research Lectureships. Safran will deliver her Distinguished Research Lecture on Tuesday, March 12.

Top image: the reliquary statue of St. Foy (photo by )

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Dimitri Nakassis, classics professor and former ‘genius grant’ winner, lands support from National Endowment for the Humanities to complete paradigm-shifting study of ancient Greece

Dimitri Nakassis, an archaeologist and classicist at the University of Colorado Boulder, has landed a substantial grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to advance his paradigm-shifting study of ancient and Mycenaean Greece.

Nakassis, who is professor and chair of the CU Boulder Department of Classics and was a MacArthur “genius grant” recipient, has won a $60,000 NEH fellowship that will support his research and writing that will yield a book that will challenge the “historical periodization of ancient Greece and the historical construction of Mycenaean Greece as a unified, homogeneous world from 1650 to 1075 BCE.”

Nakassis’ project is titled “Reassembling Mycenaean Greece, ca. 1650–1075 BCE.” It is .

Top of page:   from  (1250-1180 BCE). Archeaological Museum Mycenae. Above: Dimitri Nakassis (PhD Texas 2006) studies the material and textual production of early Greek communities, especially of the Mycenaean societies of Late Bronze Age Greece.

In documents outlining his plans, Nakassis notes that the stories that archaeologists tell about the past matter in the here and now. “Yet, although we know that ancient societies were complex and heterogeneous, we often present them as monolithic entities, even as simplifications and caricatures. We are conditioned to do so by a long tradition focused on isolating and studying individual cultures, a tradition that emerged from the search for national, ethnic and even racial origins,” he writes. 

This way of thinking perpetuates “simplistic narratives in which such cultures are arranged serially across time to produce master narratives, like the rise of Western civilization,” he observes, adding: “But in order to understand the past productively and accurately, we require approaches that reject categories rooted in racial and ethnic essentialism and instead embrace the complexity of the past. If we use outmoded categories, we will tell outmoded stories.”

These problems appear specifically in the study of ancient Greece, Nakassis says, because people have traditionally imagined Classical Greece (ca. 480-323 BCE), and especially Athens, as the originator of so much: democracy, philosophy, tragedy and so on.

“In the master narratives that attempt to explain the emergence of the so-called ‘Greek miracle,’ the Mycenaean societies of the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1650-1075 BCE) that preceded the Classical era have wrongly been reduced to a caricature: the oppressive, hierarchical, and centralized early state,” he observes.

Nakassis plans to use the NEH support to write Reassembling Mycenaean Greece, a book that will propose a new way of understanding the archaeology of mainland Greece in the Late Bronze Age.

“Its goals are to undermine the reductive role that Mycenaean Greece plays in Eurocentric master narratives and to unlock the enormous amount of new archaeological evidence has been published in recent years, but which has had little effect on our understanding of this critical phase in Greek (pre)history,” Nakassis writes. 

 

I argue that a paradigm shift is needed to activate this data and transform the field. The shift is, in short, to eliminate the notion of a culturally homogeneous Mycenaean world and to replace it with a post-cultural archaeology that focuses on specific practices. We can trace the histories of these practices through time and space, and assemble them to produce rich, textured historical understandings.”

He adds: “I argue that a paradigm shift is needed to activate this data and transform the field. The shift is, in short, to eliminate the notion of a culturally homogeneous Mycenaean world and to replace it with a post-cultural archaeology that focuses on specific practices. We can trace the histories of these practices through time and space, and assemble them to produce rich, textured historical understandings.”

Nakassis has developed new methods for investigating individuals named in the administrative Linear B texts, and he argued from this evidence that Mycenaean society was far less hierarchical and much more dynamic than it had been considered in the past. He is the co-director of the Western Argolid Regional Project, an archaeological survey in southern Greece, and the Pylos Tablets Digital Project, a museum-based research project that makes use of computational photography and other techniques.

Nakassis holds an MA and PhD in classics from the University of Texas at Austin. He joined the CU Boulder faculty in 2016. He won a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship—also called a MacArthur “genius grant”— in 2015. Nakassis is one of nine CU Boulder professors to win the award.

NEH Fellowships are competitive awards granted to individual scholars pursuing projects that embody “exceptional research, rigorous analysis and clear writing.” Recipients must clearly articulate a project’s value to humanities scholars, general audiences or both. Nakassis is the 12^th CU Boulder professor to win an NEH fellowship.

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Specialist in art, architecture and archaeology of ancient Rome wins 2021 Excellence in Teaching Award from Archaeological Institute of America

Diane Conlin, associate professor of classics emerita at the University of Colorado Boulder, has joined a “small group of elite educators” who’ve been recognized as outstanding teachers in the field of archaeology. 

Conlin has won the 2021 Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award, the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) . She is one of 10 scholars whose work was recognized by the institute this year.

Conlin, who joined the CU Boulder faculty in 1998, has taught both in classics and art and art history and specializes in the art, architecture and archaeology of ancient Rome. 

At the top of the page: A funerary inscription from Ara Pacis, wanted by Augustus to recall who his life and accomplishments. Rome, 9 AD. Above: Diane Conlin

She been routinely recognized for her teaching; she’s been named a CU President’s Teaching Scholar and has won the “Best Should Teach” Gold Award and the Boulder Faculty Assembly Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Dimitri Nakassis, professor and chair of classics, noted that Conlin joins a small group of “elite educators” who have won the AIA teaching award. 

He added, “This is a wonderful national and international recognition of what all of us here at CU have known for a long time: Professor Conlin is a superb educator.” 

In a recent departmental newsletter, some of Conlin’s former students echoed that view: 

“It really isn’t enough just to say that Diane Conlin is an outstanding professor,” observed Amelia Chouinard, who earned her BA in classics this year. “During my four years at the University of Colorado Boulder, she was a mentor, a counselor, a friend, and an inspiration to me and to so many others.” 

Travis Rupp, who earned his MA in classics from CU Boulder in 2010 and now serves as a lecturer in the department, said he was deeply indebted to Conlin. Inspired by Conlin’s work on the Ara Pacis, a Roman altar to Pax, the goddess of peace, he applied to CU Boulder in 2008 hoping to study with her. 

“She is an amazing mentor and aided in the academic success I have experienced over the last decade. She drove her students to be better writers, scholars and teachers,” Rupp said, adding that Conlin “inspired my lifelong dedication to the fields of archaeology and art history.”

Elspeth Dusinberre, a college professor of distinction in classics, said the award recognizes Conlin as the “nation’s outstanding teacher of archaeology at the college level.”

“Diane is electrifying in the classroom, whether teaching hundreds of students at the lower-division level or just a few in advanced graduate seminars,” Dusinberre said, adding that Conlin’s “engaged, involved approach to helping students learn” includes active learning projects such as designing a Roman house, building a mosaic and visiting local sculptors’ workshops, and including her students in organizing and attending international conferences. 

Conlin led the charge in 2000-01 to create a new curriculum in classical archaeology, including a new undergraduate major and a new MA degree, Dusinberre said. Conlin also worked with Education Abroad to introduce a new archaeological field school in Rome, where she and teams of students excavated the monumental Villa of Maxentius over the course of many summers. 

Conlin has collaborated closely with the CU Art Museum to teach multiple seminars using their collection of ancient coins—“work that has culminated not only in an extraordinarily valuable gift of ancient Roman coins to the museum … but also most recently in a remarkable new exhibit at the museum showcasing the ways ancient coins can be used to understand ancient art more broadly,” Dusinberre said. 

She is an amazing mentor and aided in the academic success I have experienced over the last decade.​"

Dusinberre also praised Conlin for working closely with major donors to realize these projects, including the current loan of “stupendous Greek coins” to be displayed alongside the university’s “now remarkable collection of Roman coins.” 

Dusinberre added: “Amidst all of this, she has mentored students and supervised theses, served for years as Classics’ Honors Council representative, and—a thing of great importance for me—been a wonderful colleague, mentor, friend and inspiration for her colleagues.”

“I am so psyched about this recognition,” Dusinberre said, adding: “Boy, does she deserve it.

Conlin herself said she was “thrilled and rather overwhelmed” by the latest award: 

“The greatest gifts of my career have been the opportunities to share my passion for all things ancient Rome with generations of young scholars while also learning alongside them both in the classroom and in the field.”

She added: “I want to extend many heartfelt thanks to all of my amazing students over these past decades here at CU Boulder, and also to my super-talented, supportive colleagues in the Department of Classics and the Department of Art and Art History.”  

Winners will be formally recognized at the AIA Awards Ceremony, which will take place during the virtual annual meeting in January.

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