Robert D. Lamberton,
leads the classics department in Arts & Sciences
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Robert D. Lamberton, leads the classics department in Arts & Sciences |
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A classic scholar
Robert D. Lamberton's clear and ambitious goals lead to constant improvements in the classics department By Neil Schoenherr Five out of eight ain't bad. Especially when you're talking about attendance at the prestigious Ivy League schools. "Yes, I guess I could be accused of collecting Ivy League addresses," says Robert D. Lamberton, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Classics in Arts & Sciences. "I used to make a joke of that, actually. I was an undergraduate at Harvard, I have a Ph.D. from Yale, and I have taught at Columbia, Princeton and Cornell. I'm only missing three."
"The students at Washington University have a very clear sense of why they are here and what they want to accomplish," says Lamberton, who is also professor of comparative literature in Arts & Sciences. "The seriousness of the undergraduate population is quite impressive. And the classics department is constantly renewing itself and getting better all the time." Lamberton came to the University in 1994 and is in his fourth semester as department chair. He is married to Susan Rotroff, Ph.D., the Jarvis Thurston and Mona Van Duyn Professor in the Humanities and Lamberton's colleague in the classics department. Lamberton says he truly enjoys being on the same campus as his wife. "It works out well for us, partly because that is how we met in 1975," he says. "We were hired from opposite ends of the world. Susan was in Athens, and I was in Newfoundland. We both took positions as assistant professors in the same department at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada. We formed an alliance at that point and stayed there until 1982. All of that time we were in the same department. "The big problem with spouses in the same department is that you take everything home with you," he adds, "so you talk about departmental things over dinner and breakfast. But we learned to deal with that long ago." Rotroff agrees. "I very much enjoy working in the same department with Bob, even though this situation does mean that there is a more-than-normal tendency to bring work home -- which is fine when we see eye to eye, but of course we sometimes disagree," she says. Lamberton was at Princeton University and Rotroff was at Hunter College when they realized they both would have the chance to work at Washington University. The opportunity became very attractive. "I had the guilt and luxury of being a 10-minute walk from work, and Susan was an hour on the train plus connections and subways to get across New York City," Lamberton said. "We felt it would get easier every year and she would feel less frustrated at the commute because she would be able to get work done, but in fact she liked it less and less and wanted to get rid of the commute. So when it was clear that there were jobs here for both of us, it was very, very attractive." Lamberton has helped bring increased national and international recognition to the department. "Bob is an outstanding classicist with an international reputation," says George M. Pepe, Ph.D., associate professor of classics. "His presence along with that of his wife, Susan Rotroff, has brought the classics department recognition and respect among classicists and academics.
Lamberton's commitment to his department is very strong. "This is a classics department that is growing and renewing itself and getting better all the time," he says. "We've had three new junior appointments in the last five years, and we are looking at the possibility of at least one senior appointment. That will probably mean that we will need to reassess the graduate offerings of the department. "We have quite a good master's program that I have tried to beef up over the past few years. We will most likely start offering Ph.D.'s again as well." Every other fall semester, Lamberton teaches a course called "The Greek Imagination," which is his own invention. It covers a vast amount of material in Greek civilization, but it is more philosophical than literary. "That is the course that I am most proud of," he says. He also teaches a course called "Women and Slaves in the Greco-Roman World," which explores the lives of slaves and woman in the male-dominated societies of the ancient Mediterranean. Under his direction, the classics department has continued to make great strides. "I've have seen a very substantial increase in numbers of majors and minors in classics since I've been here," he says. "I'd love to take credit for that, but I see it as going hand in hand with the changed patterns of recruitment and the general increases in the quality of the freshman classes. "There are more students who come from schools where Greek and Latin are offered. For a classics department, that's a good thing because those students are more likely to think the Greco-Roman world is interesting and want to take courses that build on what they have already studied." He adds, "I think the department is getting better all the time, and the general improvement of students, recruitment and class offerings in humanities all have to be factored in." Lamberton's main area of research and study is the Greek epic and its interpretation. "The Greek epic basically means Homer -- the Iliad and the Odyssey," Lamberton says. His strong interest in studying the ancient interpretations of Homer's works led him to a secondary specialization in the literature of the later Roman Empire, the period that produced much of the ancient interpretive writing on Homer.
Lamberton also has published many scholarly articles and papers and has received numerous honorary academic appointments and fellowships. His interest in antiquity and classic Western literatures started at a young age. "I went to a high school where all of us (students) were required to do two years of Latin," he says. "There were a few of us who wouldn't stop there and took courses that were not required. We even went to the Latin teacher and tried to talk him into teaching beginning Greek, but he refused to dust off his Greek, which he hadn't used for decades. So that didn't happen. "But in a sense, that was the beginning of it," he adds. "I was always, from high school on, a literature type. I am the sort of literature type who keeps asking where things come from, and if you keep asking those questions, you find yourself reading Greek and Roman literature, in the Western tradition anyway." Despite his hectic schedule now of administration, teaching and research, Lamberton still finds time for his passions, including scuba diving and bird-watching. "Amazingly enough, we started scuba diving when we moved here," he admits. "In the summer of 1996, Susan and I were invited to teach for a month in Christchurch, New Zealand. We did some traveling in Australia while we were there and of course visited the Great Barrier Reef. We thought it was truly amazing, so we got prescription masks, came back to St. Louis and got certified here." His other hobby is bird-watching, which he has done professionally at times during his career. "I've led about six tours in Greece and Turkey that are nature intensive, like 'Greece, Birds and History.' When I was in Canada, I dropped out for a year-and-a-half and did contract ornithology for Parks Canada. I was doing bird population studies in New-foundland." As far as the department is concerned, Lamberton thinks things are looking up. "When I think of my future here, I think entirely of the department and building it," he says. "The classics department just keeps getting better." |
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