Adele Scafuro
Associate Professor of Classics:
Wilbour Hall 104
Phone: +1 401 863 2999
Phone 2: +1 401 863 1267
Adele_Scafuro@brown.edu
In 1997, her book, The Forensic Stage: Settling Disputes in Graeco-Roman New Comedy, appeared. There she compares legal scenarios of New Comedy to those in the 4th century Attic orators. Also in 1997, she began studying epigraphy in Athens. Naturally, she has gravitated toward 'legal inscriptions.' She is now finishing a book on Athenian law (The Economy of Risk: Prosecutor and Legal Procedure in Classical Athens) and a translation of some speeches of Demosthenes.
Interests
Her 1983 Ph.D. thesis was Universal History and the Genres of Greek Historiography. In the early 1980s, when she began teaching at Brown, her interest shifted to Athenian law (and later to Roman law, as well), and since that time she has incorporated law into numerous courses (lecture courses – Sociology of Gender in Ancient Athens, Athenian Law, Ancient Law and Jurisprudence in Athens and Rome; advanced Latin courses – Roman Law and Literature, Apuleius Apologia, Cicero; advanced Greek courses – Documents on the Mysteries; and graduate seminars on Demosthenes and Greek Legal Epigraphy – the last, team taught with Gerhard Thür in fall 2002).
She has now been studying Athenian law for more than 20 years. In 1997, her book, The Forensic Stage: Settling Disputes in Graeco-Roman New Comedy, appeared. TheresheI compares the legal scenarios of New Comedy to those in the Attic orators; She treats legal procedures both inside and outside the courtroom; she provided the first full-scale treatment (and a controversial one) of private arbitration in Athens since A. Steinwenter's 1925 monograph (Die Streitbeendigung durch Urteil, Schiedsspruch und Vergleich nach griechischem Rechte). She continues to be interested in the connections between law and drama and has written a number of essays over the last decade on the subject; she hopes to collect these (e.g., "The rigmarole of the parasite's contract for a prostitute in Asinaria: Legal documents in Plautus and his predecessors"; "When A Gesture Was Misinterpreted: DidÒnai tity‹on in Menander's Samia") together with some unpublished essays (e.g., "Reconstructing New Comedy Plots: K-A Adespota 1152") for a volume of essays on law and literature. Additionally, she is planning, with the encouragement of a good university press, to edit two volumes on the subject, one devoted to Athens and the other to Rome. Emiliano Buis, lecturer in Greek literature at the University of Buenos Aires and in Roman law at its law school, has agreed to be the co-editor of the volume on Athenian material.
In spending so much time studying Athenian law, she has become interested in many different and difficult problems (usually related to the fragmentary state of the sources). She has focused on two: the (in-?)authenticity of laws (some ascribed to Solon) that have been inserted into the manuscripts of Demosthenes and the role of the prosecutor in public procedures. She has published a number of essays on the first set of problems (e.g., "Finding the Kernel of Solonian Laws," "Parent abusers, military shirkers, and accused killers: The authenticity of Dem. 105B," "Dem. 21.10: The role of the prosecutor and Athenian legal procedure") and perhaps will publish more down the road. Right now she is finishing a long study of the Athenian prosecutor called "The economy of kindunoi: Prosecutor and legal procedure in classical Athens." She focuses on the way the voluntary or elected or allotted prosecutor functions in dokimasia, euthynai, probolai, eisangeliai, and apophasis, and she gives special attention to trials that are initiated by decrees; She has combined with the literary as much epigraphical evidence as possible. She believes she has demonstrated a greater flexibility than has hitherto been recognized in public procedure; in late 5th-century Athens procedure is still developing, and some of the major public trials (the trials for impiety in 415, the non-trial of the Generals after Arginousai in 406, the trials against the "democratic conspirators" in 404) seem to shape investigative procedure in subsequent decades.
In 1997, she began studying epigraphy in Athens. Naturally, she has gravitated toward "legal inscriptions," and she has incorporated such texts into current work (as she has just mentioned). She has now published a number of essays that rely heavily (or entirely) on autoptical study of epigraphical evidence (e.g.,''Magistrates with hegemonia in the courts of Athens," "IG II2 204: Boundary Setting and Legal Process in Classical Athens," "Lokale Gerichtsbarkeit in den attischen Demen"). She is grateful to various funding institutes (including Brown University's Humanities Research Fund and its Salomon Faculty Awards) that have permitted her to travel to Athens and elsewhere (e.g., Leiden) to pursue autoptical study of inscriptions and sueezes. Her next next large project will extend more widely, geographically and chronologically, into the ancient world. She plans a study of the habit of crowning in Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, and Rome. She has made some small forays there, and she will be presenting a paper on the topic again (at latest) in fall 2007. This is an ambitiously planned project (integrating literary, epigraphical, and archeological evidence). She prefers to allow the actual finished work to speak for itself rather than to make claims for it now before it is fully researched and written. Had she not had the opportunity to travel to Turkey during her leave in 2004-05, she would never have imagined a project of this scale.
Awards
Sept. 2004 – May 2005
Visiting Whitehead Professorship, American School of Classical Studies at Athens (funded by ASCSA and Arete Foundation)
July – Aug. 2004
Humboldt Stiftung, 'Resumed fellowship' (Munich)
July 2003 – June 2004
ACLS (Munich)
May 2001 – Aug. 2003
Salomon Faculty Award (Brown University)
May 1997 – Aug. 1998
Salomon Faculty Award (Brown University)
Jan. - Aug. 1989
Humboldt Fellowship (Technische Universität, Berlin)
1987-1988
Junior Fellow, Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, D.C.
Summer 1987
Fulbright Fellowship, to participate in the summer seminar of the American Academy in Rome
Affiliations
Sept. 2004 - May 2005
Visiting Whitehead Professor, American School of Classical Studies at Athens
July 1992-present
Associate professor, Classics, Brown University
July 1983 - June 1992
Assistant professor, Classics, Brown University
Summer 1992
Instructor, Aegean Institute in Galatas, Greece
Jan. 1980 - June 1983
Various visiting instructor positions in Classics and English Departments at Vassar College
July 2003 - Sept. 2004; Dec. 18-29, 2005
International guest, Leopold Wenger-Institut für antike Rechtsgeschichte und Papyrusforschung, Munich
June-August 2005; June 2004; August 2003; June-July 2002; Jan. 10-23, 2001; June-August 2000; Jan. 6-22, 2000; June-August 1999; October 1997-Dec. 1998
Senior associate fellow, American School of Classical Studies at Athens
May - Oct. 1997
Visiting scholar, University of Crete at Rethymno
1997-
Managing Committee, American School of Classical Studies at Athens
1983-
Member, American Philological Association
Funded Research
Sept. 2004 – May 2005
Visiting Whitehead Professorship, American School of Classical Studies at Athens (funded by ASCSA and Arete Foundation)
July – Aug. 2004
Humboldt Stiftung, 'Resumed fellowship' (Munich)
July 2003 – June 2004
ACLS (Munich)
May 2001 – Aug. 2003
Salomon Faculty Award (Brown University)
May 1997 – Aug. 1998
Salomon Faculty Award (Brown University)
Jan. - Aug. 1989
Humboldt Fellowship (Technische Universität, Berlin)
1987-1988
Junior Fellow, Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, D.C.
Summer 1987
Fulbright Fellowship, to participate in the summer seminar of the American Academy in Rome