A Florida State University classics researcher has been recognized as one of the top educators in her field by the largest professional organization of classics scholars in the United States.</p>
<p>Laurel Fulkerson, an associate professor in Florida State’s Department of Classics, has received the American Philological Association’s Award for Excellence in Teaching at the Collegiate Level. The award — the highest for teaching in the field of classics in the nation — was presented to Fulkerson and two others at the association’s annual meeting, held in Philadelphia on Jan. 10.</p>
<p>“Dr. Fulkerson represents the best in the Florida State faculty — excellent in the classroom, excellent in research (she recently won a Developing Scholar award), and excellent in service,” said Professor Daniel Pullen, chairman of the Department of Classics. “She has been a great asset to our department since she joined it, and I’m pleased to see that her colleagues on the national level have also recognized this.”</p>
<p>Classics, or classical studies, is the branch of the humanities dealing with the languages, literature, history, art and other aspects of the ancient Mediterranean world, especially ancient Greece and ancient Rome, during the time known as classical antiquity. The era roughly spanned from the Ancient Greek Bronze Age in 1000 B.C. to the Dark Ages circa 500 A.D.</p>
<p>Fulkerson specializes in Latin and Greek poetry and gender in antiquity. Her research focuses primarily on classical Latin poetry, such as the works of Ovid and Virgil. In 2005, her book, “The Ovidian Heroine as Author: Reading, Writing, and Community in the Heroides,” was published by Cambridge University Press. Its subject, the Heroides, was a collection of 15 poems presented as though written by a selection of aggrieved heroines of Greek and Roman mythology, addressing their heroic lovers who have in some way mistreated, neglected or abandoned them.</p>
<p>Fulkerson is currently writing a monograph on a completely different subject — the rhetorical presentation of changes of mind and questions of consistency (still in antiquity, but both Greek and Roman). She has published a number of articles on various aspects of the topic thus far.</p>
<p>“I very much enjoy the subjects and the students I teach,” Fulkerson said. “Like so many of my colleagues at Florida State, I find that teaching brings its own rewards; we don’t do this for the fame. That said, it is of course a great honor to be acknowledged in this way, particularly when I consider the inspirational teachers I have known. I’d like to thank my nominators and the students and faculty at FSU who wrote letters of support for this award.”</p>
<p>The citation on the certificate announcing Fulkerson’s award, though written in Latin, was translated as follows: “The president and trustees of the American Philological Society have decided to select three each year among those who are the best teachers of the literature, the history, the art, the culture, the ways, and the civilization of the Greeks and Romans, and to publicize their names individually each year at the convention of philologists, and also to adorn them with a bounty, out of the number of whom this year, it was decided to decorate Laurel Fulkerson to whom those who are present at this our convention offer their congratulations as well-deserving.”
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