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Dear Colleagues,

As I write this, the fires in southern California are still raging, and largely uncontrolled. Many thousands have lost their homes and their livelihoods in what will be a defining natural disaster for 2025. Among them are surely large numbers of our colleagues, friends, and students. The UCLA campus is currently on alert but not in immediate danger. I learned recently that the unincorporated community of Altadena, a historically Black community with a large Latinx population, is among the most severely damaged. At the moment there is little that we can do, as an organization or as individuals, to help. But in the weeks and months to come there certainly will be, and I encourage all of us to be on the alert for ways to support those hardest hit in the LA region. For those of us who can afford to do so, donations to legitimate aid organizations are always a good idea.

I turn now to a more mundane matter that has been on my mind for some months. Since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic, members of the SCS have reported rumors that the annual meeting was coming to an end. I am writing today to put these rumors to rest: our annual meeting will continue, albeit with some changes and possible experiments with format. We have just signed a contract to hold our annual meeting, in conjunction with the AIA, in Boston in 2027 and are currently considering locations for 2028 and 2029, both of which also would be with the AIA.

There are good reasons for our members’ uncertainty about the fate of the annual meeting. Even before the pandemic hit, members of the Board were concerned that with the removal of the job market from the convention (as more and more colleges went to zoom for initial interviews), graduate students and early-career scholars would be less inclined to attend. The pandemic, and the advent of various forms of on-line meetings and conferences, provided an alternative model that is less costly and in some ways more attractive. And the report of the task force on the annual meeting proposed a range of possible changes to the meeting, some of which would have altered the nature of the meeting fundamentally.

Feedback from the membership has confirmed that our community is still keenly interested in meeting on a regular basis, and in particular meeting in person. Numerous people have expressed to Board members, formally and informally, the value of delivering papers and workshops face-to-face, as well as facilitating the kinds of chance meetings and encounters – in the elevators, the lunch line, after talks, and yes, at the bar – that are simply not possible over streaming services. And the last two meetings, in Chicago and Philadelphia have served as proof of concept. Not only have both meetings been highly successful and intellectually stimulating, it appears that early-career scholars recognize the value of the in-person meeting. Thank you for showing up – and giving papers – in large numbers! If anything, the removal of the job market has made the meetings less stressful, more enjoyable, and more clearly focused on intellectual exchange.

In addition, the Board has heard clearly from the membership that we value our interaction with AIA members. We have therefore committed to continuing to meet with the AIA for at least the next three meetings.

We are still in a period of evaluation; the Board has taken the report of the recent task force seriously and we are continuing to evaluate the rich array of suggestions in that report. In particular, we are committed to making the meetings more accessible, especially for those who cannot travel to the conference in person. This year’s conference had twice the number of “hybrid” panels as last year, and we anticipate that as the technology improves and (we hope) prices come down, we will expand more in this direction. Some other, more sweeping changes have proven impracticable, at least for the moment, but the Board remains committed to making the annual meeting as accessible, affordable, and attractive as we can. We remain a community of scholars; I can think of nothing more central to our mission than creating opportunities to exchange ideas about the Greco-Roman past, Greek and Roman interactions across the ancient Mediterranean, the reception of the same.

It seems appropriate in closing to mention a few statistics about the most recent meeting in Philadelphia. We had a total of 2,158 attendees. Of those:

  • 1,992 attended in-person, of whom 1,625 were SCS or AIA members
  • 166 attended virtually, of whom 160 were SCS or AIA members
  • 211 gave individual papers, including 4 “lightning talks”

The conference also hosted:

  • 4 SCS committee panels
  • 12 regular panels
  • 19 affiliated group panels
  • 3 organizer-refereed panels
  • 8 workshops
  • 7 roundtable discussions

A rough count suggests that close to 50% of the SCS members attending were actively giving papers or leading panels and workshops. Though my time at the meeting was a little busy, the vibe at the panels I attended was ideal: I heard smart papers, which generated thoughtful questions asked in a professional and supportive manner. Though the humanities are once again under threat from various quarters, our annual meeting suggests to me that our field is engaged, resilient and energetic.

In closing, I would like to raise one issue about the annual meeting that I hope to begin changing. Over the past two decades, attendance at the Plenary Session has been declining steadily. This, it seems to me, is a shame: at the Plenary Session we honor our members, announcing our most prestigious awards for scholarship, translation, and teaching. When I first attended the (then) APA, attendance was de rigueur, and the reception after the Plenary was where I first met scholars whose work I’d read and admired. But as attendance fell, we cancelled the reception that followed, and then attendance fell even more. At next year’s annual meeting we may experiment with the timing and format of the Plenary Session to make it easier to attend (without missing out on your dinner dates). But I would also simply like to make an appeal to members, old and new: come to the Plenary. Honor your colleagues. It is an important moment to come together as a scholarly community and celebrate. I hope to see you there, in San Francisco, in 2026.

Kirk Ormand
SCS President

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