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34-645: The APA was inaugurated by William D. Whitney , of Yale , at Poughkeepsie, New York , in 1869 as an outgrowth of the Classical Section of the Oriental Society . Of the 151 inaugural members, just 8 were women, including Alice Robinson Boise Wood , the first woman to study (informally) at the University of Michigan and to graduate with a B.A. from the Old University of Chicago . Originally its members studied

68-979: A bowing acquaintance." In more recent years, Gildersleeve has received critical attention for his unapologetic defense of slavery , during and after the Civil War . In Soldier and Scholar: Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve and the American Civil War , Ward Briggs published editorials written by Gildersleeve while he served as a staff officer in the Confederate Army and as a professor at the University of Virginia , which feature vitriolic attacks on critics of slavery with parallels drawn to ancient Greek authors and situations. He expressed his contempt for Confederate President Jefferson Davis , whom he considered inept. Jews also came under attack in his writings, including Confederate cabinet officer Judah P. Benjamin , and those accused of miscegenation . Gildersleeve House, one of

102-551: A great variety of texts and languages, but as disciplines such as linguistics and modern languages have created their own societies, the APA came to be concerned with classical antiquity and fields closely related to the study of antiquity, while the definition of "philology" broadened to include many approaches to understanding the ancient world. In 2013, the American Philological Association elected to change its name to

136-415: A heart ailment in his later years, he was editor-in-chief of the first edition of the respected Century Dictionary , which appeared from 1889 to 1891. NB: Dates marked * may not be first publication. Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve (October 23, 1831 – January 9, 1924) was an American classical scholar . An author of numerous works, and founding editor of

170-536: A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as of various learned societies. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1896 and the American Philosophical Society in 1903. He received the honorary degree of LL.D. from William and Mary (1869), Harvard (1896), Yale (1901), Chicago (1901), and Pennsylvania (1911); D.C.L. from the University of

204-658: A newsletter, Amphora, for non-specialists, and the electronic newsletter The Dionysiac, which gives information about performances of classical plays and other events related to ancient performance. Many notable scholars have served as executives of the APA and SCS, including Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve , William Watson Goodwin , Herbert Weir Smyth , Paul Shorey , Lily Ross Taylor , Berthold Ullman , Thomas Robert Shannon Broughton , Gerald Else, Helen F. North , Bernard Knox , Charles Segal, Emily Vermeule , and Shelley Haley . William D. Whitney William Dwight Whitney (February 9, 1827 – June 7, 1894)

238-506: A wider public (outreach), and of the Goodwin Award of Merit, which recognizes a recently published book. At every meeting, an Outreach Division conducts two events that are open to the general public. One is a special panel that is of interest to non-specialists. Topics have included the movie Troy , Classics and Contemporary Fiction and the HBO series Rome and Classics and Comics. The second

272-526: Is "that which is." He published a Latin Grammar (1867; revised with the cooperation of Gonzalez B. Lodge, 1895 and 1899; reprinted 1997 with a bibliography of twentieth-century work on the subject) and a Latin Series for use in secondary schools (1875), both marked by lucidity of order and mastery of grammatical theory and methods. His edition of Persius (1875) has been attributed great value. Gildersleeve's bent

306-413: Is agreed upon remains indifferent." Jakobson writes, Arbitrariness is posited as the first of two basic principles for defining the nature of the verbal sign: "The bond uniting the signifier with the signified is arbitrary." The commentary points out that no one has controverted this principle "but it is often easier to discover a truth than to assign to it the appropriate place." Although he suffered from

340-671: Is notable in part for the criticism it contains of the Ashtadhyayi , the Sanskrit grammar attributed to Panini . Whitney describes the Ashtadhyayi as "containing the facts of the language cast into the highly artful and difficult form of about four thousand algebraic-like rules (in the statement and arrangement of which brevity alone is had in view at the cost of distinctness and unambiguousness)." In his Course in General Linguistics in

374-1331: Is the staged reading of a classical or classically themed play, by the Committee on Ancient and Modern Performance. The productions have been: The Invention of Love ( Tom Stoppard , directed by Mary-Kay Gamel, produced by Judith Hallett ), The Heavensgate Deposition (based on Apocolocyntosis by Seneca the Younger , adapted by Douglass Parker, directed by Amy R. Cohen, produced by Thomas Jenkins), The Golden Age (by Thomas Heywood , directed by C. W. Marshall), Iran Man (based on Persa by Plautus , directed by Mary-Kay Gamel), Thespis (by W. S. Gilbert and A. S. Sullivan , with new music by Alan Riley Jones, directed by John Starks, produced by John Given), The Birds (by Aristophanes , directed by Thomas Talboy), Cyclops (by Euripides , directed by Laura Lippman and Mike Lippman), Thersites (perhaps by Nicholas Udall , directed by C. W. Marshall), Thesmophoriazusae (by Aristophanes , directed by Bella Vivante), The Jurymen (by Katherine Janson, directed by Amy R. Cohen) and Alcestis (by Euripides , translated by Mary-Kay Gamel, directed by Gamel and Mark Damen). Through its divisions of Research, Education, Publications, Professional Matters, and Program,

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408-680: The American Journal of Philology , he has been credited with contributions to the syntax of Greek and Latin , and the history of Greek literature . Gildersleeve was born in Charleston, South Carolina , to Emma Louisa Lanneau, daughter of Bazille Lanneau and Hannah Vinyard, and Benjamin Gildersleeve (1791–1875). His father was a Presbyterian evangelist , and editor of the Charleston Christian Observer from 1826 to 1845, of

442-746: The Lake Superior region in 1849, having charge of the botany, the barometrical observations and the accounts. On this expedition, he began the study of Sanskrit in his leisure hours. Around this time Whitney was living at Yale University in Connecticut . In 1850, Whitney left the United States to study philology, and especially Sanskrit, in Germany. There, he spent his winters at Berlin studying under Franz Bopp and Albrecht Weber , and his summers were devoted to research under Rudolph von Roth at Tübingen . It

476-593: The Richmond, Virginia Watchman and Observer from 1845 to 1856, and of The Central Presbyterian from 1856 to 1860. His maternal grandfather was Bazile Lanneau (born Basile Lanoue), one of the many French Acadians who were forcibly expelled by the British from present day Nova Scotia during the French and Indian War . His maternal grandmother was Hannah Vinyard. Gildersleeve graduated from Princeton University in 1849 at

510-540: The Johns Hopkins University opened in 1876, Gildersleeve was one of five original full professors and was responsible for setting up a program in the study of Greek and Roman literature, at which he succeeded admirably. He chose junior faculty and graduate students who went on to make a major impact in classical studies, at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere. His hiring also helped to reassure the Baltimore community that

544-648: The Society conducts a variety of activities to support and disseminate knowledge of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. For example, it operates a Placement Service, gathers statistical information about the demographics of classicists, hears complaints of violations of professional ethics, provides advice and funding for major research projects (such as the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World ), and publishes monographs, textbooks and software. The Outreach Division produces

578-636: The Society for Classical Studies. The Society holds its annual convention in January, meeting jointly with the Archaeological Institute of America . About 400 scholarly papers are delivered at the Society's meeting, which is also the site for interviewing for college and university positions and for the meetings of the many committees and affiliated groups. It is also the occasion for the presentation of Society awards for teaching at both pre-collegiate and collegiate level, for projects that bring classics to

612-642: The South (1884); L.H.D. from Yale (1891) and Princeton (1899); and Litt.D. from Oxford and Cambridge (1905). Gildersleeve retired from teaching in 1915. He died on January 9, 1924, and was buried at the University of Virginia Cemetery in Charlottesville, Virginia . In a memorial published in the American Journal of Philology , Professor C. W. E. Miller paid tribute to Gildersleeve, stating, "Of Greek authors, there were few with whom he did not have more than

646-601: The State of Connecticut . They had six children: He died at his home, on Whitney Avenue , on June 7, 1894. Whitney revised definitions for the 1864 edition of Webster's American Dictionary , and in 1869 became a founder and first president of the American Philological Association . In the same year he also became Yale's professor of comparative philology. Whitney also gave instruction in French and German in

680-612: The University of Breslau. He also taught modern languages at the Sheffield Scientific School , and served as secretary to the American Oriental Society from 1857 until he became its president in 1884. The American Philosophical Society elected Whitney to membership in 1863. On August 28, 1856, Whitney married Elizabeth Wooster Baldwin. She was the daughter of Roger Sherman Baldwin , US Senator and Governor of

714-482: The age of eighteen, and went on to study under Johannes Franz in Berlin , under Friedrich Ritschl at Bonn and under Friedrich Wilhelm Schneidewin at Göttingen , where he received his PhD in 1853. Upon returning to the United States, he was offered a position as a Classics professor at Princeton University , but he turned it down. From 1856 to 1876, he was professor of Greek at the University of Virginia , holding

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748-651: The chair of Latin also from 1861 to 1866. He married Eliza Fisher Colston on September 18, 1866 in Middlebury, Virginia. After service for the Confederate States Army in the American Civil War , during which Gildersleeve was shot in the leg, he returned to the University of Virginia . Ten years later, he accepted an offer from Daniel Coit Gilman to teach at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore . When

782-460: The chapter on the 'Immutability and Mutability of the Sign', Ferdinand de Saussure credits Whitney with insisting on the arbitrary nature of linguistic signs . The linguist Roman Jakobson (Jakobson 1965, 23-4) remarks that Whitney exerted a deep influence on European linguistic thought by promoting the thesis of language as a social institution. In his fundamental books of the 1860s and 1870s, language

816-600: The college until 1867, and in the Sheffield scientific school until 1886. He wrote metrical translations of the Vedas , and numerous papers on the Vedas and linguistics, many of which were collected in the Oriental and Linguistic Studies series (1872–74). He wrote several books on language , and grammar textbooks of English , French , German , and Sanskrit. His Sanskrit Grammar (1879)

850-511: The language were displayed in this most unlikely of places. His Syntax of Classic Greek (Part I, 1900, with CWE Miller ) collects these formulae. Gildersleeve edited in 1885 The Olympian and Pythian Odes of Pindar , with what was called "a brilliant and valuable introduction." His views on the function of grammar were summarized in a paper on The Spiritual Rights of Minute Research delivered at Bryn Mawr on June 16, 1895. His collected contributions to literary periodicals appeared in 1890 under

884-421: The new university was not just a northern institution transplanted south. Johns Hopkins was known to be opposed to slavery , founding president Daniel Coit Gilman was from Connecticut , and most other faculty were from the northern states, which led to suspicion regarding the intent of the new institution. In 1880, the American Journal of Philology , a quarterly published by the Johns Hopkins University,

918-582: The title Essays and Studies Educational and Literary . The Atlantic Monthly published an article by Gildersleeve titled "The Creed of the Old South" in January 1892, and an essay, "A Southerner in the Peloponnesian War", in September 1897. Johns Hopkins Press later published them in a book in 1915. He was elected president of the American Philological Association in 1877 and again in 1908 and became

952-478: The undergraduate dormitories at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Gildersleeve Portal at Brown Residential College at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia , are both named in his honor. His granddaughter Katherine Lane Weems made the two rhinoceros sculptures at Harvard University . Fannie Manning Gildersleeve, a black woman born approximately 1869, lists Basil Gildersleeve as her father on her funeral records. Fannie Gildersleeve

986-533: Was Josiah Dwight Whitney (1786–1869) of the New England Dwight family . His mother was Sarah Williston (1800–1833) of Easthampton, Massachusetts . Whitney entered Williams College at fifteen, graduating in 1845. He continued studying and worked at a bank in Northampton for several years. He was at first interested in natural sciences, and assisted his older brother Josiah Whitney on a geological survey of

1020-489: Was an American linguist , philologist , and lexicographer known for his work on Sanskrit grammar and Vedic philology as well as his influential view of language as a social institution. He was the first president of the American Philological Association and editor-in-chief of The Century Dictionary . William Dwight Whitney was born in Northampton, Massachusetts , on February 9, 1827. His father

1054-463: Was defined as a system of arbitrary and conventional signs. This doctrine was borrowed and expanded by Ferdinand de Saussure , and it entered into the posthumous edition of his 'Course', adjusted by his disciples C. Bally and Albert Sechehaye (1916). The teacher declares: "On the essential point it seems to us that the American linguist is right: language is a convention, and the nature of the sign that

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1088-487: Was during his time in Germany that Whitney began a major life project, "preparation of an edition and translation of the Atharva-veda ." He gained wide reputation for his scholarship in the field. In 1853, Yale University offered Whitney a position as "Professor of Sanskrit", a position made just for him and the first of its kind in the United States. It was not until 1861, however, that he received his doctoral degree from

1122-451: Was established under his editorial charge, and his strong personality was expressed in the department of the Journal headed "Brief Report" or "Lanx Satura," and in the earliest years of its publication every tiny detail was in his hands. His style in it, as elsewhere, is in striking contrast to that of the typical classical scholar, and accords with his conviction that the true aim of scholarship

1156-578: Was toward Greek more than Latin. His special interest in Christian Greek was partly the cause of his editing the Apologies of Justin Martyr (1877), which claimed to have "used unblushingly as a repository for [his] syntactical formulae." Gildersleeve's studies under Franz had no doubt quickened his interest in Greek syntax , and his logic , untrammeled by previous categories, and his marvelous sympathy with

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