NEWS

Nine ancient statuettes of Greek divinities and heroes and the goddess Roma will be the focus of a talk at UNC Tuesday (Feb. 10) by a leading researcher on Roman archaeology.

"Pagan Statuary in Early Christian Corinth" will be the title of the free public lecture at 8 p.m. in 116 Murphey Hall by Dr. Lea Stirling, Canada research chair in Roman archaeology at the University of Manitoba and the president of the Archaeological Institute of America for Canada.

Stirling will display slides of the statuettes, which date to approximately the third to fifth centuries, said Jeffrey Becker, a graduate student in the UNC classics department. At that time, Christianity was beginning to become prominent in Corinth, he said. The statuettes were in their day primarily leftovers from pre-Christian religions in the area. "They are among the last surviving vestiges of pagan cults in Corinth," he said.

Stirling directed archaeological fieldwork in Greece that uncovered the items. The work, ongoing since 1896 in the Panayia Field southeast of the Forum, has yielded remains of a Roman town house with mosaic and marble floors and other buildings of the sixth century. The work has been a project of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, a major research institute on archeology and history in Greece.

Stirling’s talk will explore the iconography of the statuettes and set their use into the context of cultural and religious change, Becker said. It is sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America’s North Carolina Society, the nation’s oldest, which is based at UNC.

For more information, contact at Becker at 919-962-7663 or jabecker@email.unc.edu.

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Leloudis to speak Feb. 12
on role, history, of UNC

"What’s a University For?: Reflections on Carolina’s History," will be the title of a free public lecture at UNC by Dr. James L. Leloudis, associate dean for honors and associate history professor, on Feb. 12.

The lecture will begin at 6 p.m. in the Pleasants Family Assembly Room of Wilson Library. The talk, presented by the North Carolina Collection in Wilson, will be the first Gladys Coates University History lecture.

Leloudis specializes in the history of North Carolina and the South, with emphases on women, labor, education, race and reform. He co-wrote "Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World," with UNC colleagues, and wrote "Schooling the New South: Pedagogy, Self, and Society in North Carolina, 1880-1920."

Currently Leloudis is conducting a study of race, politics, and leadership in the War on Poverty in the South. This work focuses on the North Carolina Fund, an anti-poverty program in the 1960s, and is based largely on oral history interviews with the fund's staff, clients and student volunteers. The second project is a study of black education in the early 20th-century South.

The lecture honors Coates, who, with her husband, Albert Coates, founded UNC’s Institute of Government, now the School of Government. Albert Coates directed the institute from its founding in 1931 until 1961. He described his wife as the institute’s indispensable "staff member without portfolio."

Gladys Coates, an avid university historian, frequently researched, wrote or spoke about the history of women at the university, the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies and author Thomas Wolfe. She died in September 2002.

For more information on the lecture, please contact Robert Anthony at 919-962-1172 or ranthony@email.unc.edu.

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Faculty and student composers from the music departments at UNC and Duke University will showcase their latest work in a free public concert Feb. 15 at UNC.

The Mini-Milestones Concert, at 3 p.m. in Hill Hall, will feature "The New Ragtime" by Dr. Anthony Kelley and "Held in the Weave" by Dr. Allen Anderson -- faculty composers at Duke and UNC, respectively. "Anaphora," by Dr. Ross Bauer of the University of California, Davis, also will be performed.

Students performing their three new electro-acoustic compositions will be John Bower and Mikhail Krishtal, graduate composition students at Duke, and Luke Selden, a UNC undergraduate.

Kelley’s work will be performed by UNC music faculty Jim Ketch, professor and department chair, on trumpet, and Dr. Thomas Warburton on piano. UNC music faculty Richard Luby on violin, Brent Wissick, cello, and Mayron Tsong, piano, will perform Anderson’s work. Bauer’s composition will be played by UNC music faculty members Brooks de Wetter-Smith on flute, Luby, Warburton and Wissick, and Youram Youngerman of the East Carolina University faculty on viola.

UNC and Duke have collaborated for several years on a Milestones Series of concerts presenting new and recent music. Milestone Festivals in 2000 and 2002 featured concerts on both campuses that included student performing groups, Anderson said. For more information, contact Anderson at 962-1039 or anderso7@email.unc.edu.

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Contact: L.J. Toler, 962-8589, laura_toler@unc.edu