Issue 9.1 marks a new stage of SLA’s mission to expand the study of Late Antiquity to new communities of scholars. In 2023–24, we inaugurated the Access Mentorship Program (AMP) with the aim of diversifying the field of late ancient studies. Each year, SLA solicits applications and invites a small cohort of high school or undergraduate students from underrepresented backgrounds to participate in a year-long research experience. Each mentee is paired with a seasoned scholar whose teaching and research complements their area of interest. Mentor and mentee then work together throughout the academic year on the mentee’s chosen research project. The final presentation of the research can take any number of forms: a long-form academic essay, a shorter analysis of a specific text or object, an online exhibition, a blogpost, a website, or even a podcast. SLA subsequently presents the research in the pages of the journal or on an appropriate platform, thereby providing the mentee with hands-on experience in academic publishing.
It is our hope and intention that the mentorship program will generate not only additional lines on CVs (though given the highly competitive nature of undergraduate and graduate admissions, this is fine too!) but also expanded opportunities to access resources and networks that have traditionally been available to a relatively limited cross-section of the student population. More ambitiously, we believe that the relationships forged through AMP can help to create a more diverse body of students of Late Antiquity at the graduate level, with the ultimate goal of diversifying the pipeline of scholars, and scholarship. We see this program as an extension of SLA’s mission, taking advantage of our digital platform and promoting new forms of research by emerging scholars across the world. The program is entirely free of charge and conducted virtually over Zoom.
In the current issue, we are pleased to present the very first project to emerge from AMP: a study of Apuleius’s The Golden Ass by Cecilia Reitter. Reitter is presently a first-year student at Columbia University, where she is majoring in Classics. She participated in AMP as a high school senior in Columbus, Ohio. For her project, she worked with two mentors: Ellen Finkelpearl, professor emerita of Classics at Scripps College, and Catherine Conybeare, professor of Classics at Bryn Mawr College. Her essay, “Bildungsroman in Antiquity? Reexamining Apuleius’s The Golden Ass,” reflects Reitter’s close reading of the narrative as a story about the moral education of the novel’s main character, Lucius. Aware that interpretations around character development have fallen out of favor (“From what I understand, professional scholars can be uncomfortable talking about character development, since it sounds like a high schooler’s approach to literature”), she nevertheless makes a strong case for this kind of reading precisely because of her own position as a high schooler. By drawing on Jack Winkler’s argument for the hermeneutic open-endedness of The Golden Ass, Reitter contends that, from her interpretative vantage point, Lucius does indeed change over the course of the novel. He slowly transforms, she suggests, not merely from man to ass and back to man but from a “a complex but overall pleasure-seeking and morally unserious character” to a more sympathetic agent of self-restraint and spiritual focus. We are especially impressed with her engagement with the original Latin text and her handling of what is by all accounts an extensive body of scholarship.
University of California Press