Barbara Flaschenriem
I N M E M O R I A M
At its meeting on June 12, 2019, the Board of Trustees of Grand Valley State University approved the appointment of Barbara Flaschenriem, Ph.D., as Posthumous Associate Professor Emerita of Classics.
Barbara Flaschenriem, Associate Professor of Classics, passed away on August 15, 2013, following a long illness. A dear friend, colleague, and teacher, she joined the faculty of Grand Valley State University in 1998. Initially appointed in the Department of English, she became a founding member of the Department of Classics in 2000.
Professor Flaschenriem held the Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California at Berkeley. Prior to joining Grand Valley, she held faculty appointments at Seton Hall University and Yale University.
Her teaching and scholarship were informed by aspects of feminist theory focusing upon representations of women in Roman literature and society. Her writing was marked by great subtlety and intellectual grace. Colleagues and students cherished her unassuming but wry demeanor and her intense passion in the classroom.
Prof. Flaschenriem was at work on a monumental study of the Roman poet Propertius that was left uncompleted at her death. Happily, the two lengthy chapters that she had completed are now published in a book in her honor, Golden Cynthia: Essays on Propertius (Univ. Michigan Press, October 2022).
According to the publisher’s website, the book “begins with two distinguished essays by the late Barbara Flaschenriem, whose work on Propertius remains influential. The other contributions, offered in honor of her, are by Diane Rayor, Andrew Feldherr, Ellen Greene, Lowell Bowditch, Alison Keith, and volume editor Sharon L. James.”
“This is a collection that, while being wholly current, captures the distinctive feel of a generation of North American work on Augustan erotic elegy in which the honoree herself participated with distinction. The contributors, all broadly contemporary with one another, contribute essays that simultaneously show their own strengths and capture a sense of the milieu in which Barbara Flaschenriem’s work was designed to be read.” —Stephen Hinds, University of Washington
“It has been an honor and a privilege to put together this volume in honor of Barbara Flaschenriem…[I]t allowed me to help my old friend’s elegant chapters on Propertius see print, so that they can benefit Propertian scholars, and to bring together Latin poetry specialists who have known her for a long time, so that we could pay tribute to her work and to her memory.”
—Sharon L. James, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
From the Preface: “Flaschenriem…requested that her estate help establish a scholarship to benefit Classics students with financial need. With the generous contributions of her sister, Carol Phillips, the Barbara Flaschenriem Endowed Classics Scholarship was established, and first awarded in 2014…Barbara’s work abides in the Scholarship that bears her name, her students, the department she helped build, her donated classics collection, and her writing. She deeply touched those who knew her as a fiercely loyal friend, colleague, or classmate, some of whom constructed Golden Cynthia in her honor.”
—Diane Rayor, Grand Valley State University
Read the review by Jeri DeBrohun (Brown University) on the Bryn Mawr Classical Review website
An Endowed Scholarship Fund has been established in memory of Prof. Flaschenriem.
Click here for additional details.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Rescuing Cynthia: Dream and Commemoration in Propertius 2.26, Classical Philology 105: 189-201 [link]
Speaking of Women: "Female Voice" in Propertius, Helios 25: 49-64
Loss, Desire, and Writing in Propertius 1.19 and 2.15, Classical Antiquity 16: 259-77 [link]
Sulpicia and the Rhetoric of Disclosure, Classical Philology 94: 36-54 [link]