Transactions of the American Philological Association

Author Guidelines

TAPA welcomes contributions from professional classicists on any topic directly related to the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. The language of publication is English. Submissions are referred anonymously.

Essays should set out to make an original, direct contribution to the understanding of antiquity. Since TAPA is received by all members of the Association, a prospective article must have the capacity to arouse curiosity and intellectual excitement among readers not expert in its area or well acquainted with its particular problem. Length should be proportionate to the needs of the argument. TAPA does not publish book reviews or brief notes on technical points (e.g., a single emendation). Guidelines on the format of submissions are available at the APA website (www.apaclassics.org) under "Publications".

Manuscripts should be addressed to:

Professor Paul Allen Miller
Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208

Please send four copies (of which one should be single-sided) and include an abstract of up to 100 words in length. Queries may be sent via electronic mail to tapa@sc.edu. All submissions are acknowledged.

A new TAPA editor faces a daunting task. In publishing issue 136.1, I acutely feel the twin challenges of living up to the high standards set by my predecessors and of continuing to make TAPA a journal that speaks directly to the interests of the evermore diverse body of scholars who call the American Philological Association home. Philology itself is not a static concept. As our understanding of the “word” and its relation to the person who speaks it, the people who receive it, and the languages and cultures that make it possible have changed so has our concept of what it means to carefully, lovingly study it. Yet, in spite of these necessary changes, the “word” itself remains. Spoken by Socrates and Cicero, Homer and Vergil, it speaks to us today, and the unchanging task of the philologist remains to listen attentively to it and to insure that it continues to speak anew to generations and to audiences that have yet to hear it. The articles in the present issue, in both their scholarly rigor and their thematic and methodological diversity, respond to the demands of that task with admirable aplomb.

The job of the editor of TAPA has always been to find and present the best that contemporary philology in all its variety has to offer while fostering an atmosphere of frank discussion and collegial support. With this in mind, a call for papers has been posted on the APA website for a series of clusters on literary and material culture to be published as part of issues 137.1, 137.2, 138.1, 138.2. The text of that call is reproduced at the end of this note. It is hoped that it will serve both as a stimulus to new research and will help TAPA, in the best spirit of its tradition, continue to grow in tandem with the profession.

In the production of this first issue, I owe a great debt of thanks to Cynthia Damon. Not only has she been a superb editor of the journal and shepherded it successfully to its present twice-yearly format, she has also been of invaluable assistance throughout the lengthy transition. Her considerable help has made a daunting task seem, at times, quite doable. Thanks are also owed to Marilyn Skinner, Chair of the Publications Committee and herself a distinguished past editor of TAPA. She and the other members of the committee have provided sound counsel and firm support throughout the transition. The more than one hundred colleagues who have already served as referees continue to convince me of the genuine intellectual rapport and true spirit of generosity that bind us together in this common enterprise. Finally, this issue could not have been produced without the material support and considerable encouragement of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina under first Dean John Skvoretz and then Dean Mary Ann Fitzpatrick. My editorial assistants for this first issue, Matthew Kenney, Yanina Arnold, and Brittany Powell, have been invaluable.

Call for Papers. Much of the exciting new work in Classics is now being done across or between disciplines. Classicists also make the claim that ours is the original interdisciplinary field. In fact, philology, the study of words and their meaning, has always entailed an examination of the various means by and contexts in which logoi or verba are produced. Philologists have long assumed that words never stand on their own, but always exist as part of a complex and multi-dimensional world. In this spirit, TAPA issues a call for submissions to be considered for four interdisciplinary clusters of papers to appear in issues 137.1, 137.2, 138,1 and 138.2 of the journal on topics related to literary and material culture in the ancient world. Each cluster will feature a group three to four papers devoted to the exploration of the intersection between these two orders of evidence for a given period: archaic and classical Greece; Hellenistic Greece; the Roman republic and principate; the Roman empire. Material culture is defined broadly as everything from economic, political, and social practices to the actual conditions for the production, distribution, and interpretation of texts (be they oral or written). Literary culture is defined as the poetics (or prosaics) of conventional genres, the works of specific authors, or individual texts. Papers submitted for the clusters should, in the best sense of traditional philology, offer original insights on the intersections between the literary and the material. Individual papers not related to the theme of the cluster are still welcome for each issue.

Timetable:
Papers for individual clusters should be submitted by the following dates:

• 137.1 Archaic and Classical Greece (January 1, 2006)
• 137.2 Hellenistic Greece (July 1, 2006)
• 138.1 Roman Republic and Principate (January 1, 2007)
• 138.2 Roman Empire (July 1, 2007)

All papers should adhere to TAPA's published submission guidelines.

Professor Paul Allen Miller