September 26, 2003: Volume 59, Number 3

Prof. Scullion heading to Oxford

Scott Scullion, associate professor of classics and chair of the department, will be leaving Union at the end of this term to take a position at Worcester College of Oxford University.

At Union since 1989, Scullion will hold the titles of fellow and tutor in classics of Worcester College and university lecturer in Greek and Latin language and literature. Scullion spent a sabbatical year at Oxford three years ago.

Scullion interviewed for the position in July, delivering a paper, "Maenads and Men," in which he argued that the female followers of Dionysus carried on their rituals in the presence of men.

Scullion holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Toronto, and master's and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. He specializes in Greek literature and religion.

At Oxford, Scullion will deliver one hour of formal lecture each week, but most of his teaching will be tutorial-based. He will meet with one or two undergrads at a time to discuss essays they have written. He will also advise graduate students.

Scullion, a Toronto native who holds Canadian citizenship, is the first Canadian ever to be appointed to a position in Classics at Oxford, where there are three Americans on the 52-member faculty.

"I'm hugely excited about going to Oxford", says Scullion, "which is probably the best place in the world for a classicist to be. The libraries are superb, unmatched elsewhere, and the place is full of first-rate scholars, both those who work there and the many who come to visit from all over the world."

And as if the move to Oxford wasn't enough of a life change, he'll be joined there by the woman he married last summer, Vasiliki Giannopoulou, a Greek national and fellow classicist who is turning her Oxford dissertation into a book. The couple met, perhaps fittingly, at a conference on Euripides held in Banff, Alberta. They were married in a village high in the mountains of Arcadia, Greece.

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