Vanessa B. Gorman

Aaron Douglas Professor for Teaching Excellence Profile Image
Aaron Douglas Professor for Teaching Excellence History vgorman1@unl.edu 402-472-2414 619 Oldfather Hall
JOINED THE DEPARTMENT

1994

Originally from a small town in upstate New York, I trained as a general Classicist with a strong emphasis in history and philology at the University of Pennsylvania under A. John Graham and Martin Ostwald. Though I have published in the past concerning Latin epic (Vergil, Lucan, the Ciris), my main grounding is in Archaic and Classical Greek history and philology. I have written a monograph tracing the archaic and classical development of the city of Miletos in Asia Minor. Since then, I have been collaborating with my husband, Robert Gorman of the UNL Classics Department, on Corrupting Luxury in Ancient Greek Literature, a detailed study of the corrupting influence of luxury as characterized in Greek historiographical traditions throughout Classical Antiquity (c. 700 BCE - c. 200 CE). We conclude that decadent luxury leading to destruction is not a Greek concept at all, but a Roman one, and that the Hellenistic historical fragments need to be completely reedited along new historiographical methods that we have developed (I like to call it “computer-aided philology”).  I am currently working on a collaborative digital historiographical project, as part of the Perseids Project and the Digital Athenaeus Project, teaching computers to distinguish Greek authors based on the macroanalysis of syntax in order to identify the authorship of disputed fragments and the accuracy of later quotations.

TEACHING

HIST/WMNS 125 Powerful Queens and Warrior Women in the PreModern World
HIST/CLAS/WMNS 183 Heroes, Wives, and Slaves (Freshman Gateway)
HIST/CLAS 209 Ancient Greece
HIST/CLAS 210 Ancient Rome
CLAS 281/ENGL 240A World of Classical Greece
HIST/CLAS 301 Athens on Trial
HIST/CLAS 311 The Trojan War
HIST/CLAS 412/812 Democracy and Tyranny in Classical Athens
HIST/CLAS 417/817 The Roman Revolution (133 BCE-14 CE)
HIST 450/CLAS 401 Capstone
HIST 990 Seminar in Special Problems of Teaching History
GREK 151 Reading Ancient Greek in the Digital Age
GREK 301 Second Year Prose
CLAS 401 Capstone

DIGITAL PROJECTS
Greek Dependency Trees

Visual Database of Greek Dependency Trees through Perseids

Github repository: .xml files of Greek Dependency Trees

SELECTED HONORS AND AWARDS
  • 2022 Nebraska system-wide Outstanding Teaching and Instructional Creativity Award (OTICA)
  • 2021 Department of History Outstanding Teaching Award
  • 2019 Named as a Mortar Board “Person Who Inspires”
  • Certificate of Recognition for Contributions to Students from the UNL Parents Association and the UNL Teaching Council (1996, 1997, 2002, 2008, 2012, 2015)
  • Outstanding Publication Award from the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, 2004, for best first book published since 2000 in any area of classics by any member of CAMWS, an organization which covers 31 US states and 3 Canadian provinces. Awarded to Miletos, the Ornament of Ionia.
  • 2011 Hazel R. McClymont Distinguished Teaching Fellow Award, College of Arts and Sciences.
  • 2000 Distinguished Teaching Award, College of Arts and Sciences, UNL.
GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS

  • “Reimagining Pedagogy for Student Success in Beginning History Classes.” Center for Transformative Teaching Strategic Department Funding Grant, 2022, $60,000. Awarded March 2022. To develop a series of collaborative 1xx gateway courses.
  • “Reading Ancient Greek in the Digital Age.” Center for Transformative Teaching, UNL, Pedagogical Interventions Grant, 2020, $1000.
  • Perseids Text Reuse Hackathon, March 23-27, 2015, Tufts University, Boston, MA
  • Perseids Digital Treebanking Hackathon, June 2-6, 2014, Tufts University, Boston, MA
  • Raymond Schmidt Award for Research in Digital History, Dept. of History, UNL, 2014 and 2015
  • NEH Workshop on Publication for a Digital Age, March 28-29, 2014, Tufts University, Boston.
  • NEH Summer Seminar, “Working With Text in a Digital Age,” held by Greg Crane and Monica Berti at Tufts University, July 23-August 10, 2012 [Declined]
  • Co-applicant, Layman Award, 2006, “The Historiography of Luxury and Decadence in the Greek and Roman World”
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology Summer Institute in Materials Science and Material Culture, June 2005
  • Nebraska Research Council, Faculty Summer Research Fellowship for 1995 for travel to Turkey and Germany
BOOKS
  • Corrupting Luxury in Ancient Greek Literature. Co-authored with Robert J. Gorman. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014.
  • Miletos, the Ornament of Ionia: A History of the City to 400 BCE. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.
  • Oikistes: Studies in Constitutions, Colonies, and Military Power in the Ancient World. Offered in Honor of A. J. Graham. Co-edited with Eric Robinson of Harvard University. Leiden: Brill, 2002.
ARTICLES
CONFERENCE PAPERS
  • Leader, Workshop Session: “Teaching Accelerated Greek and Latin in the Digital Age in High School or College” at the annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, 26 March 2022, Winston-Salem, NC (virtual).
  • “Did Xenophon Write the Epilogue of the Cyropaedia? Using Stylometry to Determine Authorship.” The annual meeting of the Association of Ancient Historians, Iowa City, IA, April 23-25, 2020.
  • “A Wealth of Variables: Using Syntactic Stylometry to Distinguish Signature Constructions in Herodotus and Thucydides.” Annual Meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, April 3-6, 2019, Lincoln, NE.
  • Panel co-organizer, “Digital Discoveries and Collaborative Tool Development in the Classics.” Annual Meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, April 3-6, 2019, Lincoln, NE.
  • “Deriving Digital Thumbprints through Syntactic Analyses: New Paths for Greek Historiography.” Poster presentation at the 2016 Society for Classical Studies (formerly the American Philological Association) Annual Meeting, San Francisco, Jan. 2016.
  • “Greek Historiography Through Dependency Syntax Treebanking.” Co-authored with Robert Gorman. Digital Classicist New England Lecture Series. Tufts University. Boston, MA. March 25, 2015.
  • “Eden is the Paradise of Truphe.” Paper delivered at the 2014 annual meeting of the American Philological Association, January 2014, Chicago, IL.
  • “Athenaean Quote and Misquote.” Paper delivered at the 2012 American Philological Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia PA, Jan. 5-8, 2012.
  • “Athenaeus and Hellenistic Moralizing Historiography.” Co-authored with R. Gorman. 2011 annual meeting of the Association of Ancient Historians. Erie, PA. May 2011.
  • “The Meaning of Τρύφη in Classical Greek Literature.” Delivered at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association, Philadelphia PA, Jan. 11, 2009.
  • “ ‘Shipwrecking on Luxury’ in Athenaeus.” Delivered at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association, San Diego, CA, Jan. 8, 2007.
  • “The ‘Tyrants Around Thoas and Damasenor’ and the Civil Stasis at Miletos in the Archaic Period.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Ancient Historians. Champaign-Urbana, IL, April 30 - May 2, 1998.
  • “Libera fortunae mors est: Heroes and Battle Scenes in the Pharsalia.” Paper presented at the 128th Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association. New York, December 30, 1996.
  • “Oligarchy and Democracy in Classical Miletos.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Ancient Historians. Atlanta, GA in April 1996.
  • "Poetic Technique in the Appendix Vergiliana.” Paper presented at the Spring 1995 meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South. Omaha, NE, April 1995.
  • “Aristotle, Hippodamos, and the Origin of City Planning.” Paper presented at the 124th Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association. New Orleans, December 1992.
INVITED LECTURES
  • “Stylometry and the Epilogue of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia.” Invited presentation to the SynoikisisDC Consortium of Digital Classics Programs (Leipzig and London), 19 November 2020 (via computer).
  • “Constructing Treebanks.” Invited presentation to the SynoikisisDC Consortium of Digital Classics Programs (Leipzig and London), 20 February 2020 (via computer).
  • “Using Dependency Trees to Examine Issues of Authorship in Ancient Greek Prose.” Presentation to the Digital Readings Seminar, University of Leipzig, 1 February 2019 (via computer).
  • “Classification of Greek Texts using Dependency Trees.” Perseids User Summit, August 21, 2018, with Robert J. Gorman (via computer).
  • “Approaching Questions of Text Reuse in Ancient Greek History Using Computational Syntactic Stylometry.” Leipzig eHumanities Seminar, November 1, 2016, with Robert Gorman (via computer).
  • Keynote Address for the Indiana Classical Conference, Purdue University, April 2016.
  • “Once, long ago, the Milesians were mighty men.” Invited lecture at Iowa State University, October 25, 2001.
  • “Lucan’s Epic Aristeia: The Literature of Protest Under the Emperor Nero.” Paper presented in the Social and Cultural Studies Before 1500 Series, University of Kansas, 26 January 1999.
  • “The Change in Eponym at Miletos in the 6th century BCE.” Paper presented at the 129th Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association. Chicago, December 28, 1997.
  • “Once, long ago, the Milesians were mighty men.” Charles Edson Lecture in Ancient History, University of Wisconsin at Madison. February 10, 1997.
CURRICULUM VITAE
EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

Ph.D. in Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, 1993

EXPERTISE

Primary Fields: Greek History and Historiography; Greek Pedagogy; Philology and Dependency Syntax; Digital Humanities
Secondary Fields: Republican and Augustan Roman History; Roman Historiography
Reading Knowledge of Ancient Greek, Latin, German, Italian, French