[Guest post: Haley Tilt ’16]
Bailey Boatsman and I, Haley Tilt, represented Reed on April 25 at NUCAW, the undergraduate conference hosted by Willamette University in Salem. Bailey gave a talk on a painting she made, detailing the way Augustus manipulated pre-established beliefs and myths about augury in order to bolster his own divinely-wrought legitimacy. The painting was a hit, and it quickly gathered a small crowd of admirers during the breaks. I presented a talk on Lucretian puns, arguing that Lucretius uses wordplay in order to temper his potentially alienating Epicureanism. The talk went smoothly (minus a little hiccup in the handout process), and I got some really interesting questions at the end, some of which I hope to be ready to answer if I ever give the talk again (I will be adding Varro to my reading list, for one).
