This spring, with generous support from the School of Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, three UIUC students have been contributing to the Dickinson College Commentaries project. Pictured here are James Stark and Katherine Cantwell at a poster session last Friday, as they presented their work, which is being carried out under the supervision of Professor Arian Traill, a member of the editorial board.

James has done outstanding work creating complete vocabulary lists for the selections of Vergil’s Aeneid covered in the College Board’s AP Latin course, aligning those lists with the DCC core vocabulary in a way that will greatly ease the creation of a future DCC edition. This Vergil edition will eventually form a companion to the existing editionof the AP Caesar selections. Katherine has been working on the edition of Callimachus’ Aetia by Prof. Stephens of Stanford, making the existing content conform to the format and goals of the DCC. In both cases, the key activity is working on the vocabulary lists that accompany the (untranslated) Greek or Latin text. These lists are hand-designed and human-edited, not computer-generated. The expertise of the student in making these lists correct and properly targeted to the intended readership is a major part of what makes DCC distinctive and useful.

Wes Heap (not pictured) has been working with Prof. Mulligan of Haverford on his forthcoming DCC edition of Cornelius Nepos’ Life of Hannibal.

I would like to extend a big thank you to James, Katherine, and Wes for all their work, and to Prof. Traill for applying for the grant that is funding it, and for her expert supervision.

–Chris Francese