April 20, 2007

Human Sacrifice in Antiquity: Visiting Scholar at Kalamazoo College

KALAMAZOO, MI—University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA) classicist and archaeologist, Sarah Morris, will be speaking at Kalamazoo College as the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar of 2007. Her lecture, titled “Isaac and Iphigenia: Human Sacrifice in Antiquity,” will be at 8 p.m. on Thursday, April 26, in the Olmsted Room, Mandelle Hall, at Kalamazoo College. The lecture is free and open to public; for general information, call 337.7000.

Morris is the Steinmetz Professor of Classical Archaeology and Material Culture at UCLA. She taught at Yale University for eight years prior to joining the UCLA faculty. Morris, a graduate of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Harvard University, is the author of Daidalos and the Origins of Greek Art, winner of the Wiseman Book Award. She has co-edited a volume of essays, The Ages of Homer, on the archaeological, literary, and artistic background of and responses to Greek epic poetry, and has published several articles on the archaeology of ancient Greek slavery. Her teaching and research interests include early Greek literature, Greek religion, prehistoric and early Greek archaeology, Greek architecture and landscape studies, and Near Eastern influence on Greek culture. Morris has conducted fieldwork in Israel, Turkey, and Greece, and is currently excavating an early Iron Age burial mound in Albania.

The Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program makes available each year 12 or more distinguished scholars who visit 100 colleges and universities with chapters of Phi Beta Kappa. They spend two days on each campus, meeting with students and faculty members, taking part in classroom discussion, and giving a public lecture open to the entire academic community. The purpose of the program is to contribute to the intellectual life of the institution by making possible an exchange of ideas between the Visiting Scholars and the resident faculty and students. Now entering its 51st year, the Program has sent 529 scholars on 4,450 two-day visits since it was established in 1956. Phi Beta Kappa was founded in 1776, and is the nation’s oldest academic honor society with chapters in 270 colleges and universities.

A Fellowship in Learning: At Home in the World, Kalamazoo College is a national liberal arts college and the creator and home of the Kalamazoo Plan. By emphasizing scholarship, civic engagement, and foreign study, Kalamazoo College cultivates a fellowship in learning among students, faculty, and a community of scholars throughout the world. Its students shape elements of the Kalamazoo Plan—rigorous academics, career internships, study abroad, service-learning, and a senior individualized project—into an educational experience that provides insight into the meaning of the kind of citizenship that is at home in the world.