Lectures in Latin

Ignacio Armella Chávez (Accademia Vivarium novum): Born in Mexico City in 1986, he obtained a degree in classical philology from the Universidad nacional autónoma de México (UNAM) in 2009, with a thesis on The death of Socrates according to Plato. Afterward he obtained his master’s degree in Classics at the Pontificium institutum altioris Latinitatis in Rome with the thesis written in Latin Quid Nicolaus Cusanus et Marsilius Ficinus de concordia senserint. Since 2010, he has taught History of ancient philosophy and Advanced Latin composition at the Accademia Vivarium novum, an institution internationally renowned for its innovative methods for the teaching of classical languages and its endeavor of renewal of classical education. As vice-president of the same institution, he contributes assiduously to its academic, cultural and publishing activities, and has participated in several international conferences and courses, both as an organizer and as a speaker, in countries like Belgium, Colombia, China, France, Georgia, Greece, India, Italy, Nepal, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Taiwan. He is an ordinary member of the Academia Latinitati fovendae, and a founding member of the Centro studi sull’uomo, la natura e l’unità del pensiero, an organization founded to fill the gap that divides humanistic and scientific education. Among his publications, there is a number of articles and contributions in different languages (including Latin), as well as the following books: Coincidentia oppositorum (2013), Quod eritque fuitque: giochi di specchi fra l’accaduto e l’avvenire (2022); Memoriae sacrum : in memoriam Iohannis Pugliese Carratelli (editor, 2023).

Dr David Butterfield is Provost and Professor of Latin at Ralston College, Savannah, GA. His primary areas of research are Latin literature, textual criticism, and the history of scholarship. He has published books on Lucretius, Varro, A.E. Housman and The Spectator. He is Editor-in-chief of the Classics website Antigone, Literary Editor of The Critic, and is finishing a new Oxford Classical Text of Lucretius.

After a decade of service to Benedict XVI and Francis as a papal Latinist, Daniel Gallagher was named the Ralph and Jeanne Kanders Professor of the Practice in Latin at Cornell University. He holds degrees from the University of Michigan, the Catholic University of America, and the Pontifical Gregorian University, and has published extensively in medieval philosophy, especially in the areas of metaphysics and aesthetics. He is passionate about handing on the Latin language based on the principles and method of his long-time mentor, Fr. Reginald Foster. Professor Gallagher currently lives with his family in Savannah, where he teaches literature and philosophy at Ralston College.

Carl Hamilton received his MA from the University of Virginia and BA from Dickinson College, both in Classics, and is a frequent participant of Latin colloquia and courses. He hopes that the increased use of Latin as a living language will foster an appreciation of authors and works from all periods of Latinity. 

Will has a wide array of interests, but a deliberately narrow regimen of teaching, namely all Latin, all the time (except for the occasional Greek class). After earning a B. A. in Classics from the University of Virginia (2009), with a semester at the Centro along the way (Fall 2007), Will earned two M. A.'s at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (2015), then began to teach Latin in Peabody, MA. While he enjoyed his colleagues and students, Will felt that he was a mediocre teacher at best, and began a journey to improve his craft by examining the tradition of Latin learning and teaching over the past 2000 years, as well as research on how second languages are acquired. Both of these currents beckoned him to the shore of speaking lots of Latin in the classroom and helping students read Latin literature fluidly and feel its force in their bones. He is continually striving to progress in his teaching, and is always excited to read, elucidate, and discuss Latin literature in Latin with others. He has been teaching at the Veritas School in Richmond for the past 9 years, and is currently interested in the science of memory, the history of notebooks, mixing cocktails, and accumulating houseplants.

Milena Minkova is Professor of Classics at the University of Kentucky. She has published on Latin literature in its continuity, 12th century Renaissance, Latin Composition, Latin Pedagogy, and Active Latin. Together with Terence Tunberg, Minkova has co-authored the introductory Latin series “Latin for the New Millennium.” Both Minkova and Tunberg moderate the Institute for Latin Studies, a Graduate Certificate Curriculum associated with the M.A. Program in Classics at the University of Kentucky, in which Latin is taught in its continuity from ancient until modern times and in the target language (since 2020 the Certificate has been offered online as well). Minkova’s critical anthology of Neo Latin Florilegium recentioris Latinitatis came out from Leuven University Press in 2018. Minkova’s new volume, co-authored with Terence Tunberg, Recentiores, non deteriores is about to be published by Peeters Publishers—it deals with Neo-Latin prose style and ways in which it can impact our approach to Latin today.

Dr. Patrick M. Owens teaches in the Department of Classics at Colgate University and has partnered with the Paideia Institute for the Humanities since its inception. He also serves as the president of the American Association for Neo-Latin Studies, and editor of the Neo-Latin Lexicon. Patrick and his co-author Paul Gwynne recently published a volume titled Lorenzo Gambara's Caprarola and On Poetic Composition, from Brill (2025), which focuses on the works of Renaissance poet Lorenzo Gambara and Jesuit humanist Antonio Possevino.  When Patrick is not on the Colgate campus, he is most often in Kansas City, where he has taught literature in the Kansas State Maximum Security Penitentiary. He holds a Bachelors from Fordham University, a Masters from the University of Kentucky, and a PhD from the Pontificium Institutum Altioris Latinitatis (Rome).

Terence Tunberg completed his doctoral studies in the Department of Classics and the Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies at the University of Toronto in 1986. He began to devote himself to spoken Latin as a graduate student and has since then regularly taken part in seminars for spoken Latin in Europe and North America. In 1998 he was elected fellow of the Academia Latinitati Fovendae, the Rome-based international organization for maintaining the use of Latin. He has moderated the Conventiculum Aestivum, an annual immersion seminar in spoken Latin, for nearly three decades. Together with Milena Minkova he teaches in the Institutum Studiis Latinis Provehendis at the University of Kentucky, a two-year post-graduate curriculum in which Latin literature and Latin composition are taught entirely in Latin. This curriculum has been
available online since 2020. Terence has published extensively on prose style in classical and Neo-Latin, and has won international prizes for Latin composition. Together with Milena Minkova he has written several works, including a manual of Latin prose composition, and, most recently Recentiores, non deteriores, which is about to be published by Peeters Publishers of Leuven, Belgium. Recentiores, non deteriores deals with Neo-Latin prose language and style, and indicates how the word-choice, rhetorical strategies and sentence structures employed by some outstanding early-modern Latin authors can be highly useful for people interested in writing and speaking Latin today.