Invitation -- retirement event for David Scourfield

Friday, September 8, 2023 - 16:00 to Saturday, September 9, 2023 - 19:00
Lecture Hall 7, First Floor, John Hume Building, North Campus

Colleagues,

The Department of Ancient Classics would like to cordially invite you to a colloquium in celebration of the career and retirement of Professor David Scourfield.  

David has had a long and distinguished career, including over twenty years of service to the Department in Maynooth and to the discipline more broadly in Ireland. He took regular retirement during the Covid lockdown and we were unfortunately unable to organize an event for him until now. But better late than never! In exactly two weeks, we will be holding a 2-day colloquium 

(Friday, September 8 - Saturday, September 9) on a subfield of Classics related to David's current research: 'Modes of Classical Reception in the 19th and 20th Centuries'. Attached is the full schedule of events. In particular, please note that David's own talk at 4pm on Friday (September 8) will be immediately followed by a drinks reception--on the first floor of the John Hume Building. You are very welcome to attend one or both events, as well as any or all of the short talks on Saturday from David's friends and colleagues.

If you have any questions, feel free to be in touch by email

Modes of Classical Reception in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Friday, September 8 (Lecture Hall 7, First Floor, John Hume Building, North Campus)

4:00-5:30 David Scourfield (Maynooth University, Emeritus),

‘Edward Fairfax Taylor’s Epic Task: A Victorian Aeneid’

5:30-6:30 Drinks Reception

Saturday, September 9 (Lecture Hall 7, First Floor, John Hume Building, North Campus)

9:30-10:00 Christine Morris (Trinity College Dublin), ‘Thoroughly Modern Minoans: re-imagining the

Cretan Bronze Age in poetry and art’

10:00-10:30 Shelley Hales (Bristol), ‘Once and Future Dead: remembering and forgetting London’s

Grand National Cemetery’

Coffee Break

11:00-11:30 Will Desmond (Maynooth), ‘Absolute moments: Walter Pater’s aesthetic Platonism’

11:30-12:00 Quentin Broughall (Independent scholar), ‘A Shropshire fad? British public-school classical

reception in The Salopian, 1860-1914’

12:00-1:30 Lunch

1:30-2:00 Donncha O’Rourke (Edinburgh), ‘Heaney’s Dido’

2:00-2:30 Charlie Kerrigan (Trinity College Dublin), ‘Virgil and Natalia Ginzburg’

Coffee Break

2:45-3:15 Shushma Malik (Cambridge), ‘The Classicism of Mary Danvers Stocks and her Socialist Nero’

3:15-3:45 Douglas Cairns (Edinburgh), ‘Beyond Böll: the Resonance of Antigone in Deutschland im Herbst’

3:45-4:00 Concluding remarks and refreshments

6:00 - Dinner and drinks in the Roost Pub (Main Street)