Latin Textbooks for Today's College Students

Ronnie Ancona, discussion leader

The purpose of this facilitated discussion is to address the issue of Latin textbooks for today's college students. The following questions will be addressed. Who are our Latin college students today?  Are they different from Latin college students of the past? In what ways? With what preparation do they arrive at the college level? What are their textbook needs at the beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels? What textbooks do they currently use?  How have newer approaches to teaching Latin affected the kinds of textbooks that are currently available? Do intermediate texts and advanced texts provide adequate annotation for today's college students? What kinds of texts are currently unavailable that college teachers would like to see made available? What reprints of old texts are needed at the current time?  What additional annotation, if any, should they provide for today's students? Are particular Latin authors, genres, topics especially in need of new or newly reprinted texts? What are the marketability issues involved in brand new or newly reprinted Latin textbooks for today's college students?

The panel will have one person acting as chair and chief facilitator for discussion. He/she will be joined by four others who, along with the chair, will make some brief remarks at the beginning designed to stimulate discussion. The facilitators include people with expertise in writing, consulting on the revision of, and editing/publishing Latin college textbooks.

The discussion portion of the panel will elicit from the audience current interests and concerns about Latin college textbooks for the purpose of exploring ways in which the classics profession and the classics publishing industry can better meet the Latin textbook needs of today's college students.