Bolchazy-Carducci 2018–2019: A Year in Review

Omnium enim rerum principia parva sunt.   
The beginnings of all things are small.
–Cicero, De Finibus 5.58     
 

The end of summer is nigh. As the new school year begins and autumn slowly creeps in, we are reflecting on the past twelve months and looking ahead at what’s to come!

The B-C booth at AIA/SCS 2019 in San Diego, CA.

Conferences. B-C representatives zigged and zagged all over the country in 2018–2019, attending conferences galore! Conference season opened with Monmouth College’s delightful public outreach Classics Day Festival in Monmouth, IL. October 2018 then brought on a slew of conferences: the Classical Association of the Atlantic States Fall Meeting in Philadelphia, PA; the Illinois Classical Conference Annual Meeting in Evanston, IL; and the Classical Association of the Midwest and South–Southern Section Meeting in Winston-Salem, NC. Bolchazy editors rounded out the 2018 calendar year with travel to Saratoga Springs, NY (Classical Association of the Empire State), Franklin, TN (Tennessee Classical Association), and New Orleans, LA (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages).With the advent of 2019, B-C staff were off to San Diego, CA (Archaeological Institute of America/Society for Classical Studies) before dashing to Worcester, MA (Classical Association of New England), Lincoln, NE (Classical Association of the Midwest and South), and Kalamazoo, MI (International Congress on Medieval Studies). Finally, president Bridget Dean and editors Laurel Draper and Don Sprague were thrilled to celebrate the American Classical League’s centennial in New York City; B-C finished up the summer with some high-energy fun at the National Junior Classical League convention in Fargo, ND.
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Bolchazy staff loved connecting with longtime friends and colleagues as well as meeting new ones throughout the last twelve months. We hope to see you at one of the many conferences that await in 2019–2020!

Contests. At conferences, fishbowl drawings offered participants the chance to win some brand-new B-C books. On social media, Bolchazy continued some of its highly anticipated contests while instituting a few new giveaways. To celebrate our one-thousandth Twitter follower milestone, B-C ran a #millesequentes giveaway; Michael Sweet of Hyde Park School (Cincinnati, OH) won the prize of highly coveted sententiae buttons. October, ushering in Halloween season, brought with it our annual Dolus aut Dulce costume contest. We received a number of creative entries, but Mercedes Barletta of Harvard-Westlake School (Los Angeles, CA) took top prize in the individual category with her imaginative recreations of the goddess Thetis and baby Achilles. UMass Amherst graduate students offered up a creative take on the judgment of Paris in their group entry. Our fifth annual Martia Dementia pit various ancient figures against some fearsome mythological monsters, with the goddess Nike snatching the laurel crown from Medusa. Top honors went to Michael Mangel and Will Joseph of New Trier High School (Winnetka, IL). Finally, while heading into the ACL Centennial Institute, B-C held a button giveaway on Twitter, with ten winners receiving buttons at the conference!

If you’re hoping to earn some kleos (and win some great prizes) in our many contests throughout the year, make sure that you are following us on Facebook and Twitter! We announce contests and provide updates regularly throughout the year via social media.

The Latin of Science features twenty-two

Latin readings in subjects ranging from 

general knowledge to mechanics to optics. 

New Books. Lectiones Memorabiles III and IV—texts designed to accompany the current IB Latin Syllabus—debuted in 2018. Volume III, authored by Marianthe Colakis and Yasuko Taoka, includes selections from Caesar, Horace, Livy, Ovid, and Vergil. Volume IV, written by Mary Jaeger, features excerpts from Horace, Livy, Martial, Sallust, and Vergil. • B-C is proud to have helped bring William Sanders Scarborough’s First Lessons in Greek back into print. This new facsimile edition includes a foreword by Ward Briggs, Jr. and an introduction by Michele Ronnick; both features provide important historical and intellectual context for this pioneering work by a nineteenth-century African American classicist and educator. • Ken Kitchell’s They Said It First offers a twist on quotation collections. Ancient and more modern quotations are paired to show how ideas evolve (or stay the same) over time. Stay tuned for an upcoming blog post describing ideas on how to use this reference in the secondary classroom. • The Latin of Science by Marcelo Epstein and Ruth Spivak is an anthology of twenty-two science readings in what was for centuries the universal language of science—Latin. Look out for a companion volume with English translations and additional scientific context coming out this year!

Founder’s Day. Every summer, the B-C family honors our late founder, Dr. Ladislaus “Lou” Bolchazy. This past July 19 marked Founder’s Day VII. Colleagues and friends gathered for a delicious lunch followed by a rousing game of B-C trivia.

Looking Ahead. Keep an eye out for upcoming books, including the companion volume to Latin of Science and An Introduction to Greek Inscriptions. We have recently released Lumina, an online interactive program to accompany Latin for the New Millennium 1 and 2. Be on the lookout for Lumina for Artes Latinae, our interactive self-teaching course based on the program designed by Dr. Waldo Sweet of the University of Michigan.

Remember to participate in our annual contests. The Dolus aut Dulce 2019 costume contest is right around the corner in October, and Martia Dementia 2020 is sure to be as entertaining as ever. We will also be introducing some new features on this blog: in addition to sharing more information about recent titles, we will be creating special posts to accompany each month’s mythological monster portrayed in the 2019–2020 Roman calendar. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter and check our blog so that you never miss a contest, newly released book, or mythology post!