Faculty Recognized for Outstanding Teaching and Research
The Society for Classical Studies, the primary learned society in North America for the study of Greco-Roman antiquity, has awarded Associate Professor With Term in Humanities Gordon Kelly a 2016 Teaching Excellence Award for the teaching of classics at the college level. Kelly, who is chair of the classics program, is one of just three recipients this year to be granted this extremely competitive award honoring professors in the United States and Canada who have set themselves apart in the quality and innovation of their teaching.
“It’s been a real treat to teach Greek and Roman civilization to students as interested and engaged as those we have at Lewis & Clark,” says Kelly.
At Lewis & Clark, Kelly’s teaching has spanned Latin and Greek language and literature, Roman and Greek history, classical mythology, Roman law, and Roman women. In 2006, Kelly’s A History of Exile in the Roman Republic was published by Cambridge University Press. The book was deemed “an invaluable resource for researchers” by the New England Classical Journal.
Kelly has also been involved with Lewis & Clark’s nationally recognized overseas study programs. In 2014, he led a student archaeological expedition to Rome, where he and his students worked to unearth an ancient Roman villa, conducting original research as part of a Mellon Foundation faculty-student research grant.
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Associate Professor of Art History Dawn Odell has been awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for her work titled “Chinese Art in Early Modern Europe and America.” The NEH program—which supports individuals pursuing advanced research that is of value to humanities scholars, general audiences, or both—is highly competitive. The funding rate for the last five annual competitions has averaged just 7 percent, and Odell received the only fellowship in Oregon this year.
Odell’s book-length manuscript explores the personal history of Andreas Everardus van Braam (1739–1801), a Dutch East India Company employee and the first American to visit the Chinese court, through the lens of his acquisition and display of Chinese art. As Odell writes, “It explains how van Braam’s life, unusual and peripatetic as it was, stands as a model for European/American engagement with Chinese art in a period during which the newly formed United States was attempting to expand its political influence in Asia.” She adds that it’s “a model that helps us to understand present-day conversations about racialized identities, global art markets, trade imbalance, and diplomacy.”
This is not Odell’s first honor: a Fulbright Scholar and a Fulbright Alumni Ambassador, Odell earned the undergraduate college’s Teacher of the Year award in 2011.
