Emily Vermeule

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Emily Vermeule
ThesisBacchylides and Lyric Style (1956)
Doctoral advisorRichmond Lattimore
Academic work
DisciplineClassics
InstitutionsHarvard University
Doctoral studentsCynthia W. Shelmerdine[1]

Emily Dickinson Townsend Vermeule (August 11, 1928 – February 6, 2001) was an American

archaeologist. She was a professor of classical philology and archaeology at Harvard University.[2]

Early life and education

Emily Dickinson Townsend was born on August 11, 1928, in New York City to Clinton Blake Townsend and Eleanor Mary Meneely.[2][3] She was named for her grandmother, a relative of the poet Emily Dickinson.[2]

She attended the

Ph.D. in Greek from Bryn Mawr in 1956.[2] Her doctoral dissertation, supervised by Richmond Lattimore, was entitled "Bacchylides and Lyric Style."[3][4]

Career

Vermeule attended the

Fulbright Scholar in 1950–1951, where she took part in the excavation of a Mycenaean tomb.[5] Three years later, in 1953–1954, she studied at St Anne's College, Oxford as a Catherwood Fellow.[4] She was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1964–1965.[5]

She taught at Bryn Mawr and Wellesley College from 1956 to 1958, became an assistant professor of classics in 1958, and was hired as an associate professor, at Boston University in 1961.[5] In 1965 she returned to Wellesley, holding the position of professor of Art and Greek until 1970.[2][5] She was the James Loeb Visiting Professor of Classical Philology at Harvard University in 1969.[4] In 1970, she was appointed the Samuel Zemurray, Jr. and Doris Zemurray Stone-Radcliffe Professor at Harvard University, where she taught in both the Department of Classics and the Department of the History of Art and Architecture.[2] She retired from teaching in 1994.

In 1995, Vermeule served as the president of the American Philological Association (now Society for Classical Studies).[6] She delivered a presidential lecture at the 1995 annual meeting in San Diego entitled "Archaeology and Philology: The Dirt and the Word."[7]

Vermeule excavated at many sites in Greece, Turkey, Cyprus and Libya, including

Gordion in the early 1950s, and Kephallenia, Messenia, Coastal East Libya, Halicarnassus, and Thera-Santorini in the 1960s.[8] She was director of the excavations at Toumba tou Skourou, Cyprus, from 1971 to 1974.[9]

Excavation at Toumba tou Skourou

Considered her most significant excavation, Vermeule was the director of an excavation project co-sponsored by the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus, Harvard University, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Toumba tou Skourou, near Morphou, Cyprus, was a Late Bronze Age town that Vermeule uncovered which represented three different cultures coming together: Palestinian, Egyptian, and Minoan.

Due to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, Vermeule was forced to abruptly end her excavation and leave the island. This expedition led to her publishing two books about the excavation and the artifacts found, Toumba tou Skourou: The Mound of Darkness (1974) and Toumba tou Skourou: A Bronze Age Potter's Quarter on Morphou Bay in Cyprus (1990).

Awards and honors

Vermeule was awarded the Radcliffe Graduate Society Gold Medal in 1968. In 1980, she received the American Philological Association's Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit for her book Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry.

In 1982 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Vermeule for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. Her lecture was entitled "Greeks and Barbarians: The Classical Experience in the Larger World,"[10] and dealt with the relationship between the Greeks and their "less civilized" neighbours.[11]

Vermeule received several honorary degrees from institutions throughout the United States. In 1968,

Trinity College, Hartford
, L.H.D.

Vermeule was an elected member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.[12][13]

A festschrift in her honor was published in 1998: The Ages of Homer: A Tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule.[14]

Personal life and legacy

Fish (1959)

I am fish: I swim in your kindness. Fat,
silvery, veined with tears
strange to your outer waters, yet
I am home from my fears.

The New Yorker, February 21, 1959 (1st stanza)

She married the archaeologist Cornelius Clarkson Vermeule III in 1957.[3] Together they had two children: Blakey Vermeule, a professor of English literature at Stanford University, and Adrian Vermeule, a professor at Harvard Law School.[8]

Vermeule was an avid supporter of the Boston Red Sox, and frequently compared the efforts of the Red Sox to the mythical Greek heroes from her studies as evidenced in three newspaper articles she published: "It Is Not a Myth—They're Immortal: Gallant Red Sox Did Not Really Fail" (Boston Globe, October 5, 1978); "Odysseus at Fenway" (New York Times, September 26, 1982); and "Why Boston Still Hates the Yankees" (Boston Globe, June 14, 1990).

She died of heart disease-related issues in

Poetry Magazine.[1][15]

Selected publications

References

  1. ^ a b "Emily Vermeule, 72, was world-renowned classicist". The Harvard Gazette. 2001-02-15. Archived from the original on 2005-09-20. Retrieved 2023-10-22.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  2. ^
    ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 2017-12-17.
  3. ^ .
  4. ^ .
  5. ^ a b c d e f "Emily Dickinson Townsend Vermeule". Harvard Gazette. 2004-06-03. Retrieved 2017-12-17.
  6. ^ "Past Presidents". Society for Classical Studies. 2010-05-21. Retrieved 2018-10-22.
  7. ^ Vermeule, Emily. "Archaeology and Philology: The Dirt and the Word" (PDF).
  8. ^ a b Faculty of Arts and Sciences (18 May 2004). "EMILY VERMEULE" (PDF).
  9. ^ "Department of Antiquities - The Looting of Cultural heritage in Occupied Cyprus". www.mcw.gov.cy. Retrieved 2018-10-22.
  10. ^ Jefferson Lecturers Archived 2011-10-20 at the Wayback Machine at NEH Website (retrieved January 22, 2009).
  11. ^ David M. Rosenfeld, Classics Professor Vermeule To Deliver Jefferson Lecture Archived 2006-09-17 at the Wayback Machine, Harvard Crimson, February 22, 1982.
  12. ^ "Emily Dickinson Townsend Vermeule". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2022-08-18.
  13. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2022-08-18.
  14. ^ Jane B. Carter, Sarah P. Morris, eds., The Ages of Homer: A Tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998)
  15. ^ See e.g. Vermeule, Emily (1959-02-21). "Fish". The New Yorker. p. 113. Retrieved 2023-10-22.{{cite magazine}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)

External links