Q & A: William Johnson

In the interview that follows, William A. Johnson, acting head of the classics department expresses his pleasure at serving as interim head of one of the university’s most outstanding units. Here he discusses the Classics Semple Fund, which he says, “adds a deep richness to the scholarly and scholastic life of the Classics community.”

Q:

How did the Semple Fund originate?

A:

The fund originated with an amazing husband and wife team, William T. Semple and Louise Taft Semple, who were passionately dedicated to the classics and set as a life's goal the ambitious project of making UC Classics the finest department in the country. William Semple was a professor in the department and head from about 1920. Under his direction the department embraced the holistic view of ancient studies that continues to be our hallmark, combining under one roof the study of the language and literature, history, and archaeology of the Greeks and Romans. The combination of the Semples' personal energies and money brought Carl Blegen here to direct now famous excavations at Troy and Pylos (the Palace of Nestor) and caused the department to build up local resources such as the palaeography collection and the rest of the distinguished classics library. In 1944, Louise Taft Semple executed a will leaving a substantial part of her fortune to the classics department. On her death in 1961, this became the "Semple Fund," which is now the basis of the extraordinary resources and community of classicists at UC.

Q:

The department is internationally known for its excavations in the Mediterranean. Is the Fund related to these?

A:

We are in a real sense the department Carl Blegen built, but the Semple Fund has allowed us to maintain several ongoing excavations in the Mediterranean (currently or recently at Troy, Apollonia, Pylos, Midea, Bamboula-- modern-day Turkey, Albania, Greece, and Cyprus).

Q:

What about your department’s library?

A:

The Fund is the direct reason that our Classics Burnam Library is the best classics collection in North America and perhaps in the world: Because of its support, we are able to buy comprehensively in our subject areas every book published in our field.

Q:

You host an unusual number of visiting scholars and lecturers every year. Is the Semple Fund responsible?

A:

Good things come in clusters, and the excellence of the library has led directly to the Tytus Visiting Scholars program. Our library is so good that scholars from all over the world want to come here to work. The Semple Fund allows us to have about a dozen Tytus Scholars in residence every year, from home and abroad (recently Italy, England, France, Australia, Israel, Greece). The Fund also allows a stream of visiting lecturers. Recently, we've hosted about 40 a year. This creates tremendous vitality and community visibility. Everyone who is anyone gets to know UC classics over time.

Q:

How about technology? Does the Fund support IT applications?

A:

Classics and archaeology have long been leaders in IT applications. Our sophisticated IT support, critical to faculty, students, and visitors alike, is also largely made possible by the Semple Fund.

Q:

Does it support only faculty members, or do students also receive benefits?

A:

Yes, they certainly do. We fund work-study students in the classics library and elsewhere. We offer 12 full tuition scholarships for undergraduates and over 30 full stipend fellowships for graduate students. The fund also is a critical resource for allowing students and faculty to do exciting things: traveling abroad to excavations, giving papers in conferences, putting together panels at conferences (in the last week alone, two of our graduate students have had entire panel sessions approved for the national conference for our discipline). We are, in short, very proud of our committed use of these funds for direct support of student excellence in McMicken College.