News

For the second annual issue of Epic Threads, the journal’s editors Madelynne Parish and Mary Harper vowed several prizes (worth $1,000 in total), thanks to the generosity of the Classical Studies Department and the UW Shalom Trust. They thus attracted international attention to our student-run journal for creative writing – or should we better say ‘creative engagement’, as two of the winning contributions combine textual with visual art?

The winter term ended with a symposium that honoured the legacy of Homer’s epics through the ages. Hosted in St. Jerome’s Dragen Lab, Professors from North America and Europe explained the experiences and traditions that inspired Homer to compose his Iliad and Odyssey.

The winners of the Classical and Medieval Studies Awards were given out on Friday night at the Wine and Cheese Event.  

The Department of Classical Studies at the University of Waterloo proudly announces the release of the inaugural volume of Epic Threads. Here, emperors fall, soldiers dream, women rise, and gods doubt. Created and edited by students with faculty mentorship, Epic Threads invites readers to explore the ancient and medieval worlds through poetry, prose, drama, and art that bridge creative imagination with scholarly insight. We believe that creative writing is not a departure from scholarly engagement—it’s a powerful extension of it. Our first volume brings together works inspired mostly by the Classical tradition, but we remain open to adjacent fields including Near Eastern, Biblical, and Medieval studies. Each piece reimagines the past while reflecting on the timeless human questions that continue to shape us today.

On Monday, Oct. 6, 2025, Classical Studies co-hosted the international workshop ‘Female Roles in Ancient Foundation Legends’. The event was spear-headed by the Waterloo Institute for Hellenistic Studies (WIHS) and invited into the Dragen Lab at St Jerome’s University, which allowed for zooming in colleagues from around the world. 

Prof. Andrew Faulkner participated in a two-day seminar in April 2025 hosted by the Pappas Patristic Institute at Holy Cross in Boston, where he and his colleague Dr Christos Simelidis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) together presented their Collaborative research on a newly identified Byzantine paraphrase of the Psalter in iambic verse. Please see video.

Congratulations to Bel Cairns, winner of the 2024 Society for Linguistic Anthropology Undergraduate Paper Award in the Course Paper category for their Anth 221/GSJ 221 paper:  "Cis is a Slur": Twitter Takes on Performative Language Ideology

Congratulations to Dr. Christina Vester and Dr. Pauline Ripat (University of Winnipeg in winning the The Elaine Fantham Award in Public Engagement.  The Award is given out by the CAC to individuals with exceptional projects, performances, or events that address communities outside the academy and that engage those communities with the ancient world, its reception, and/or individual research into these fields.

Read the latest copy of Tiresias, our student journal, Volume 5.  Also, go to Volume 4 for the past journal.  If you need more information about how to be part of this, please contact me.  

In tribute to Mac Lewis, who passed away in March 2020, the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Waterloo is honoured to create the Mac Lewis Memorial Award in Classics, in collaboration with his family and friends.