Susan Cole to Head UB Classics Department

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Susan G. Cole, Ph.D., of Buffalo, associate professor of classics at the University at Buffalo, has been named chair of the Department of Classics in the UB College of Arts and Sciences.

Cole is recognized in the field of classical Greek studies for her many publications on the sacred and the feminine in ancient Greece, the literacy of Greek women, Greek sanctions against sexual assault, archaeology and religion, the changing world of classical studies, superstitions about the female body in Greece and Greek civic and religious ritual.

In the academic year 1996-97, she had the unusual distinction of being named a fellow of both the National Humanities Center (NHC) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and spent her sabbatical year conducting research at NHC.

Cole is the author of "Theoi Megaloi: The Cult of the Great Gods at Samothrace" (E.J. Brill, 1984) and is completing a book titled "Dionysiac Inscriptions of Asia Minor," a collection of inscriptions, with commentaries, relating to the cult of Dionysus in Asia Minor.

She also recently published several major journal articles: "Oath Ritual and the Male Community at Athens," "Civic Cult and Civic Identity, "Boundary Lands of Artemis" and "Domesticating Artemis," as well as an article on the gods Persephone and Demeter for the "Encyclopedia of Women and World Religion." She also is at work on a book manuscript, "Bodies of Water and the Plain of Hunger," and will be a major contributor to a new book coming out from Penguin on world religion.

Cole joined the UB faculty in 1992 after serving for 10 years on the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

She is a graduate of the University of Minnesota, from which she holds a doctorate in Greek and Latin.

She has been the recipient of a number of notable fellowships and grants, including those from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the University of Illinois Institute for the Humanities and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.