Presidential Address: Plain Truths: Classics, Nebraska, and the Fiction of Willa Cather
In a letter of June 16, 1894 to her university friend Mariel Gere, Willa Cather notes in passing that she and her brother Roscoe ‘are reading Virgil at lightning speed’, an activity which will be familiar to any current Ph.D. student in Classics making her way through mandatory reading lists. Cather’s classical training as a child and later at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln is well known, as is the impact of this classical learning on her fiction. On the occasion of CAMWS gathering in Lincoln for its 115th annual meeting, this address looks anew at Willa Cather and the presence of Greek and Latin classics in her fiction, particularly My Ántonia.