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Newsletter from the Chairperson of the Classical Association of South Africa
June 2004
At the halfway mark between our biennial
conferences it seems appropriate to report on events over the past year.
Apart from the ongoing meetings and lectures at local branches (the most
important activities of the Classical Association!), matters of general
interest are the following:
Conferences
The Twenty-Fifth Biennial Conference
The Twenty-Fifth Biennial Conference held
at the University of Stellenbosch from 30 June to 2 July last year was very
well attended and proved to be as stimulating as always. There were 67
attendees and 45 papers were presented. We were grateful to have several
participants from overseas as well, including 8 scholars from the USA, the
UK, the Netherlands and Germany. Our conferences are attracting more and
more overseas scholars, which is a trend to be encouraged, not only because
it gives local scholars the opportunity to meet international colleagues,
but also because the latter help set a standard for our own work.
Some of the important decisions taken at
the Business Meeting during the conference were the following:
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Judge Deon van
Zyl was elected as the first Honorary President of CASA, with Professors
P.J. Conradie, W.J. Henderson and D.B. Saddington as Honorary
Vice-Presidents. The office of the Honorary President was instituted to
involve influential persons outside academia in the activities of the
Association, while that of the Honorary Vice-President gives recognition
to persons who contributed to the Association and to Classical scholarship
in South Africa over many years.
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It was decided to
enter into some form of formal affiliation with the Dutch Classical
association called OIKOS (more on this later).
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The following officers
were elected to serve on the new CASA Executive Committee: Johan Thom
(Chairperson), Betine van Zyl Smit (Vice-chairperson), Marianne Dircksen
(Secretary), Christoff Zietsman (Treasurer), John Hilton (provisionally
elected as Conference organiser) and Corrie Schumann-Bosman (additional
member).
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The Business Meeting
gratefully accepted the invitation by the University of Natal (now the
University of KwaZulu-Natal) to host the next conference in 2005.
The Pacific Rim Roman Literature Seminar
The 2003 Conference was itself preceded by
the annual conference of the Pacific Rim Roman Literature Seminar, held at
Stellenbosch on 25-28 June, and organised by Sjarlene Thom. The theme of
this conference was Representing and Interpreting Republican Rome and
was attended by 30 participants. Although small, the focussed nature of this
conference allows for an in-depth discussion of each paper. South African
Latinists are strongly encouraged to become involved with this Seminar! For
more information, contact Sjarlene Thom (st@sun.ac.za).
The Twenty-Sixth Biennial Conference
Our next conference will be held at
Pietermaritzburg from 5 to 8 July 2005. The theme of the conference is
The Classical Tradition. Persons wanting to present a paper should send
an abstract of ca. 250 words to Mrs Anne Gosling (gosling@ukzn.ac.za).
More information is available at the conference website (www.casa-kvsa.org.za/
casa_conference_2005.htm).
CASA Website
CASA now has its own website at
www.casa-kvsa.org.za (alternative URL:
www.expertise.und.ac.za/casa), with John Hilton as webmaster. Please
send news of forthcoming events and other information to be posted on the
website directly to John (hilton@ukzn.ac.za).
We would like to develop this website as the primary source of information
about CASA, and we depend on your cooperation.
As you may know, John has also served over
the past couple of years as moderator for all e-mail messages to be
distributed to CASA members. If you have an e-mail address and have not
received messages from him, please send him your e-mail address and other
details.
OIKOS
One of the overseas scholars who attended
the 2003 conference was Dr Manfred Horstmanshoff from Leiden University, who
invited CASA to form closer links with our Dutch equivalent, OIKOS, as part
of renewed cultural ties between South Africa and the Netherlands. As you
will have noticed, CASA members now already receive e-mail notices of all
Classics events sponsored by OIKOS. CASA members may also become associate
members of OIKOS, allowing them to participate in conferences and research
projects. OIKOS welcomes contributions in both Afrikaans and English. For
more information, please contact Louise Cilliers (cilliers.hum@
mail.uovs.ac.za) or Joris Stolwijk, the coordinator of OIKOS (oikos@
let.leidenuniv.nl). The website address is
www.oikos.leidenuniv.nl.
The position of
Latin in the Further Education and Training (FET) curriculum
As many of you may have seen in the
newspapers, the Department of Education considered excluding Latin from the
National Curriculum for Grades 10 to 12. After representations by the
Executive in which we offered CASA’s assistance, the Department invited CASA
in November last year to form a working group to submit working papers
demonstrating that Latin could be described in terms of the Draft National
Curriculum Statement for Second Additional Languages. Because of severe time
constraints the working group was made up mostly of Latin lecturers and
teachers from the Western Cape, with Carina Malan, moderator for Latin in
the Western Cape, as convenor. As a result of their very many hours of hard
work over December and January, the Department decided to add Latin to the
list of second additional languages included in the National FET Curriculum.
Much still needs to be done, but Latin teachers can look forward to an
exciting new syllabus which will be phased in with Grade 10 in 2006, with
the first matric examination in 2008. The present syllabus will remain in
effect until then. We are grateful to the working group for all their
efforts, and to the officials of the Department of Education for their
support.
Johan Thom (Chairperson of CASA)
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