E conventu ad campum: Living Latin from Convention to Campus

Matthew M. McGowan (Fordham University)

This paper will address how best to integrate what one learns at the world’s growing number of spoken Latin conventions into the teaching of Latin on American college campuses. There are, as I see it, two non-exclusive options here. The first introduces living Latin directly into the curriculum; the second offers extra-curricular activities at which students can use Latin actively. This paper will focus on the second option, in particular on two activities that are a regular feature of spoken Latin conventions and contribute greatly to students’ comprehension of and enthusiasm for the Latin language: 1) mensa latina, where students come together once a week to speak (and hear) Latin on the model of modern languages; 2) Latin theater group, where students perform a classical or original play in Latin (perhaps with some English for the benefit of a campus-wide audience).

A weekly mensa latina gives students the chance to see, hear, and use Latin as a living language. In my three years running such a table at a small liberal arts college in the midwest, I have found that it helps to have a specific activity each week, usually a reading or special topic for discussion. In my second year at the college, I used the core of the mensa latina to form a larger Latin theater group, and the students and I have thus far written two original plays whose story-lines and central themes have grown naturally out of the character of the institution. For each play we set Latin lyrics to tunes of well-known Broadway musicals (Sound of Music, West Side Story), borrowed costumes from the theater department, and performed before a campus-wide audience on a day (Classics Day!) established at the beginning of the academic year to increase our department’s visibility on campus.

To be sure, extra-curricular activities of this kind require time and energy that are often in short supply after meeting the demands of the semester. Thus in this paper, after sharing what I have done to increase the presence of spoken Latin on campus, I would like to suggest two ways in which speaking Latin with students – intra vel extra curriculum – can be combined with bona fide scholarship. First, share your research: if you work on the texts of Horace, Pliny, or Jerome, find a way to discuss them with your students in Latin. Second, explore the vast and often uncharted world of Neo-Latin (ca. 1300-1800). This is the final frontier in Latin scholarship, and to conclude I will share some of my own research on Poliziano and Jesuit Latin theater and offer some suggestions for further study.