The CAMPVS began in 2004 as CAMPVS MAWRTIVS, a joint venture by a small group of male graduate students at Bryn Mawr College intent on little more than amusing themselves. Eric and Dennis remain, while Coke has moved on. We’ve rolled Sarah’s blog into this one as well and welcomed her to the fold.
The blog’s original subtitle, “Male Graduate Students: un-serious in terms of studies since 1931,” was inspired by a piece titled “Fun With a Capital PhD” published in the Bi-College News (the joint student paper of Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges). The piece included a statement “questioning the seriousness of the male grad students in terms of studies,” the implication being that we chose Bryn Mawr College to scope out the undergraduates. (Bryn Mawr College admitted its first male graduate student in 1931.)
‘The Campus Mawrtius’ was just a pun on the Campus Martius (a spelling which will forever look wrong to me now). Fortuitously, however, Latin CAMPVS also conveys a few notions that fit nicely with my ideas for this site, and we can enumerate them right from the Oxford Latin Dictionary: a place of assembly, sport, and exercise (2b&c, 3), and a writer’s subject matter (5b)—in our case classics and related disciplines.
That’s what the CAMPVS is today: a place for us to work out ideas, have some fun, stay connected, and write about subjects within our chosen field.
We hope you enjoy our contribution and consider joining the conversation.