Talk:Alison Frantz

List of publications

I've made a few small edits to the list of publications, sufficiently explained by the edit summaries, I think. Here are few additional comments:

• The listing for Frantz 1944 does not make it very clear that this is a review of Morgan's Corinth volume on the Byzantine pottery. It's confusing (or at least it was to me) that the "title" of this review is itself a complete bibliographical citation of Morgan's book, right down to the number of pages and figures and the price of the original edition. The style recommended by most style guides (at least on this side of the Atlantic) is to write "Review of" before the name of the publication being reviewed, without quotation marks, but that seems to be a non-starter with the WP template, which puts everything in the title field in quotes. Is there some way to suppress the quotes in a given citation? If not, I don't know what the solution is, and perhaps there isn't one. But the citation as it stands is bound to confuse some readers.
  • You're probably right: at least, I don't know of a good fix. To me, having all that bibliographic detail in the title is a good clue that the article is a review: honestly, I'm not sure it's all that important that we make clear the nature of each individual article or book. If nothing else, readers will twig quickly enough if they follow the link. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 23:34, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

• Frantz 1988 is listed in the sole author section, but that's not strictly accurate. The appendix on the post-Herulian wall was written by Travlos, and the chapter on the so-called Palace of the Giants was drafted by Travlos and revised by Homer Thompson. Not enough to list them as co-authors, I think (and everyone always cites this as Frantz alone, unless they are citing the chapter on the Palace of the Giants specifically). But perhaps worth a note ("with contributions by ..."), which is how the title page handles it.
  • EFN added to that effect. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 23:34, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

• It still seems odd to me to single out one or two of the Agora picture books for listing here, since most of them (at least the ones published before the 1980s) were illustrated almost entirely with Frantz's photographs. (The later ones, and the revised editions of the earlier ones, increasingly use images by other photographers, esp. Mauzy.) You could just as easily cite Harrison's Ancient Portraits from the Athenian Agora, or Perlzweig's (aka Binder's) Lamps from the Athenian Agora, or even Meritt's Inscriptions from the Athenian Agora, all of which are good examples of her work with different kinds of artifacts. But perhaps a better approach would be to add a line, either in the text or the list of publications, stating that her excavation photos were used in a large number of Agora picture books, and provide a link to the list at the ASCSA web site, where they can all be downloaded for free? And the same could be done for the final excavation reports, since many of early volumes in the Athenian Agora series are also illustrated by Frantz (e.g., Harrison's two sculpture volumes, all three lamp volumes, and a bunch of others), likewise listed at the ASCSA web site. I'll leave it to you to decide how best to handle it.
  • Honestly, I've listed everything I could get my hands on: I think there's something about the sheer scale of Frantz's scholarly work and influence that's worth getting across here. As below, if I've found somebody mentioning Frantz's name in connection with a book, it's here (I don't actually have access to any of these on paper, so this is all by the medium of Google searching). Following that strategy, I'll sniff out the details for those and get them into the list too. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 23:34, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

• Not sure why some of her Hesperia articles are linked to JSTOR and others to the open-access ASCSA site. Doesn't really matter, I guess, but the links should probably be standardized before you nominate this for GA (which I assume you are going to do sooner rather than later).
  • Purely a matter of what I could get my hands on: I haven't systematically checked the ASCSA site, but I've linked it when it came up after Googling the article title. If it didn't, I've used JSTOR, as long as I could find it there. May try to hunt down some more: sometimes, the bot does it. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 23:34, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Cheers, Choliamb (talk) 22:58, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, Choliamb. Replies above. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 23:34, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Date of the church of the Holy Apostles

The footnote about the church currently reads Frantz 1971, p. 1; Mauzy 2006, p. 115. Frantz dated the church as probably tenth-century; for more recent assessments of an eleventh-century date, see Rees 2000, p. 153, and Kaldellis 2009, p. 114.. This, while not strictly inaccurate, is a little misleading, I think, since it implies that there is a significant difference between Frantz's date and the date given in other sources, and that Frantz's date has been superseded by a date based on more recent research. Neither of those things is true. The dating to the early years of the 11th century is not recent; it has been the consensus since the 1930s, and Frantz herself accepted it both in her 1954 Byzantion article about the church (add to the list of publications?) and in her 1961 picture book on the Agora in the Middle Ages. In the course of preparing the full publication of the building, she came to believe that a slightly earlier date in the final decades of the 10th century better fit the evidence. All of this (the earlier consensus, the evidence supporting a general date in the late 10th-early 11th century, and her own preference for a date in the earlier part of that range) is set out in the "Date" chapter of Agora XX, pp. 24–26. I don't know that anyone has directly engaged with her arguments since then; certainly neither Rees nor Kaldellis does, they simply repeat the traditional date, without any explanation or evaluation of the evidence, and without any indication that they are even aware of Frantz's argument. I myself have no idea whether a date near the end of the 10th century is better than one near the beginning of the 11th century; this is far outside my competence. But it would be more respectful of Frantz if the note did not imply that more recent research has led to a conclusion different from hers (in this case, her own discussion is actually the "more recent assessment"). And it would also be nice to indicate that the difference is one of two or three decades, not a century, as the current note implies. I see that in the most recent editions of the Agora guidebook (the 4th ed. in 1990 and the 5th in 2010, both edited by Camp), the date of construction is no longer given as "early 11th century", but as "around 1100 A.D." Perhaps that is the best way to express it, and just omit the discussion of the date from the note in this article altogether? Choliamb (talk) 01:08, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Charalambos Bouras, Byzantine Athens, 10th–12th centuries (Routledge 2017), pp. 131–134, appears to be the only discussion of the architecture of the church in any detail since the appearance of Agora XX (as opposed to passing mentions like those in Rees and Kaldellis). His comment on the date (p. 134): "The church of the Holy Apostles was constructed after that of the Panagia at Hosios Loukas, but in close association with it. A date in the last quarter of the tenth century was proposed, and has not, to date, been contested." The footnote points to Agora XX, pp. 25–26. Choliamb (talk) 12:44, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

No quarrel with any of that. Have gone with "around 1100": can see an argument for going with Bouras and saying "last quarter of the C10th", but he's not exactly coming out swinging, or, strictly speaking, even advocating for that date - only saying that someone has done so and nobody has yet to argue with them! UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 13:08, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. I'm not saying that Frantz is correct, only that her view has not (yet) been superseded by more recent research, which is what the original note seemed to imply. Ca. 1100 is a good compromise.

I'll be sticking my nose back out of this article now, so let me just repeat that I think it's really excellent work, and produced with amazing speed. You have a gift for these archaeological bibliographies, and Frantz certainly deserves the attention. I'm pretty familiar with her published work, but a lot of the personal information was new to me, and I really enjoyed reading it. (One parting shot: I suspect that Natalia miscopied the Princeton letter about Meteora, and that Frantz wrote "the most amazing place I have ever seen", not "the most amazing place I have even seen". You can't correct it, of course, because that's what your source says, but on the principle that one should not include information that is almost certainly wrong, maybe it would be best to choose a different passage to illustrate her enthusiasm?) Anyway, great job. Cheers, Choliamb (talk) 13:46, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Choliamb (talk) 13:46, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to boldly claim MOS:TYPOFIX on that one: If there is a significant error in the original, follow it with [sic] (producing [sic] ) to show that the error was not made by Wikipedia. However, insignificant spelling and typographic errors should simply be silently corrected (for example, correct basicly to basically) -- to me, the correction is so obvious that it falls into the second of those. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 15:30, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Alison Frantz/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Z1720 (talk · contribs) 16:05, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Starting review. Comments will be posted momentarily. Z1720 (talk) 16:05, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (inline citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have non-free use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Comments below:

• At five paragraphs, the lede is too long. Please summarise it to 3 to 4 paragraphs. I'll take a closer look at the lede once this is addressed.
  • I've made a few edits for brevity: we're now at 444 words by a rough count on Microsoft Word. Per MOS:LEAD (all emphasis mine):
    • As a general rule of thumb, a lead section should contain no more than four well-composed paragraphs
    • The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article
    • As a general guideline—but not absolute rule—the lead should usually be no longer than four paragraphs
    • Most featured articles have a lead length of about ... 250 to 400 words.

In other words: MOS:LEAD, which is the relevant guideline for GA standards, explicitly doesn't put a hard limit on lead length, but rather advises taking any suggestion of lead length only as a general rule of thumb. The overarching principle is to create a condensed summary of the article whereby no key point is left out, but neither is anything explained more verbosely than necessary. Even by the terms of those guidelines, we're 11% off the recommendations for an FA, which I think would be within tolerances even if we were taking that as our standard. I think on balance the lead is what the MoS asks for: however, if you do think a particular detail is excessive or could be explained more precisely, please do point it out. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 21:00, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

The longer the lede is, the less likely a reader is going to read it. Here is some information in the lede that might be removed:

• "Frantz was born in Minnesota, lived briefly in Scotland following the early death of her father, and lived for most of her life in Princeton, New Jersey." -> "Born in Minnesota, Frantz lived for most of her life in Princeton, New Jersey." The article has two sentences on her living in Scotland, so I do not think this information is important in the lede.
• "assisting Lucy Talcott with the records of the project," Why is it important for the reader to know who she assisted?
• "where she worked as an assistant to Carl Blegen, another archaeologist turned agent, " Why is it important, in this article, to mention this person and who they were in the lede?
• I think the second and third paragraphs can be merged together after the cuts, and possibly the third and fourth paragraphs.

I look forward to these thoughts. Z1720 (talk) 01:47, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

All reasonable, though equally I think all have tradeoffs:

• The early death of Frantz's father is a major event in her life: I think this is a good way to get it in. Her time in Scotland is also significant as the time that she first picks up photography: this is set out in the article. This is probably the smallest tradeoff of them all, but I must admit that saving 11 words also seems like a fairly small benefit.

• Since this information is important for the lede because this is where she began photography, the fact that this is where her photography began should also be in the lede. Z1720 (talk) 14:19, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

• Talcott is a major figure in Frantz's life: sources regularly refer to her as Frantz's lifelong companion, and you'll notice she pops up a lot in this article.

• If Talcott is a major figure in Frantz's life and should be mentioned in the lede, then this fact should be included in the lede. Z1720 (talk) 14:19, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

• Again, so is Blegen, especially for her OSS work: in many ways, he's the (only) thread between her many different espionage, diplomatic and cultural roles. Generally, we should introduce people that the reader is unlikely to know by name, and I think it's both interesting and significant that this relationship was between two archaeologists, rather than Frantz working for a career spy, as might reasonably be assumed if unclarified.

• If this is important in her biography, then why he is important should be mentioned in the lede. Z1720 (talk) 14:19, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

• They could, but equally, long paragraphs are less readable, certainly if no major cuts are made. I'm reluctant to create long chunks of text to satisfy a guideline that explicitly says it isn't to be followed religiously. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 07:30, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

• I realise that there are a lot of important details in her life that can be included in the lede, but longer ledes are less likely to be read; if they are not read, then readers will learn nothing about this person. The lede is important to introduce the most important aspects of Frantz's life, and anything that does not fulfil that purpose should be removed. This might mean that you will have to increase your criteria of what is most important. I agree that 4 large paragraphs is also not ideal, but in my opinion some information needs to be cut. I have given some suggestions, and I can give more, but ultimately it will be your decision on what to remove from the lede. Z1720 (talk) 14:19, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  I'm not sure I follow this line of suggestion, I'm afraid: you've suggested lots of things to add here. I can see the intention behind trying to get the lead as short as it can be, but I don't understand the arbitrary insistence on getting down to four paragraphs, which isn't supported by the MoS or the GA criteria. I find it particularly hard to believe that many more readers will read the article if the line break between the last two paragraphs is removed. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 15:15, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  @UndercoverClassicist: The lede needs to be shorter. Five paragraphs are a symptom of the problem, as right now combining paragraphs would only make them too long. What I'm trying to ask is: does the information need to be in the lede to understand this person's biography? If so, the lede needs to explain the importance. In my opinion, her contributions need to be in the lede because they are directly related to her work and notability. I don't think various people who worked with her need to be in the lede because, while their contributions to her work are important, their connections to her biography are not as important as her contributions. I suggest that you go through the lede with higher criteria of what to include, remove information that is not as important, and if needed, explain the significance of why these people or Scotland are mentioned. If you want, I can also give additional examples of what could be removed. Once these cuts are made, hopefully the lede can be reformatted into 4 paragraphs, but that's a later goal. Z1720 (talk) 16:25, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  I've done a bit more here: we're now at under 400 words, which is within the range suggested by MOS:LEAD for an FA. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 17:52, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

• "Frantz started her career in the Athenian Agora excavations, conducted by the ASCSA, in January 1934,[19] assisting Lucy Talcott, the excavation's recording secretary, in the Record Department." Too many commas are negatively affecting the flow of this sentence. I suggest a rewrite.
  • Fair cop: split halfway. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 21:00, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
• Source check: Version reviewed. No concerns with earwig.

• Refs checked with no issues: 19, 40, 59, 65, 70, 71

• Ref 5: "For the name of Frantz's mother, see Vogeikoff-Brogan 2019." If it is not important in the article to mention the mother's name, then do not put a note like this in the references. This is telling the reader to do extra research, which is unnecessary.
  • Not sure I understand this one: her mother's name (Mary Kate Frantz) is mentioned in the article, in the sentence cited to reference 5. The note is simply to indicate that there are two sources supporting that sentence: one supports that name, the rest supports everything else. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 21:00, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I misinterpreted what this note was doing: I don't think notes in references, suggesting where to verify information, is necessary. I have not seen that in articles before, and usually this type of information is given in a note, not in an inline citation. Nevertheless, its inclusion will not affect its GA status. Z1720 (talk) 01:47, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

• Image review: no concerns, copyright licences are fine.

Those are my comments. Please ping when the above are addressed. Z1720 (talk) 18:29, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

• @Z1720: As requested: replies above. Thanks for your time and comments so far. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 21:00, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

• @UndercoverClassicist: Responses, particularly to the lede. Z1720 (talk) 01:47, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

• @UndercoverClassicist: Notes about lede. Please ping me when ready. Z1720 (talk) 14:19, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Z1720: As requested. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 17:52, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

The lede has been improved, and I think it meets the GAN criteria. With a little more work on perfecting the prose, and some more trimming of the lede, I think this can be nominated to FAC. For now, this is a pass for GAN. Congradulations. Z1720 (talk) 17:59, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Bruxton talk 19:52, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that Alison Frantz's photographs played a crucial role in the decipherment of Linear B? Source: * McCredie, James R. (June 2000). "Alison Frantz" (PDF). Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 144 (2): 215. JSTOR 1515634. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-11-02. Retrieved 15 October 2013.
  • ALT1: ... that the archaeologist Alison Frantz brought the Fulbright Program to Greece? Source: * McCredie, James R. (June 2000). "Alison Frantz" (PDF). Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 144 (2): 215-216. JSTOR 1515634. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-11-02. Retrieved 15 October 2013.
  • ALT2: ... that the archaeologist Alison Frantz worked in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II? Source: * Meritt, Benjamin D. (1943). "Report of the Chairman of the Committee on Publications". American School of Classical Studies at Athens: Sixty-Second Annual Report, 1942–1943 (PDF). p. 33. Retrieved 2024-01-21 – via American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/BrewGroup

Improved to Good Article status by UndercoverClassicist (talk). Self-nominated at 19:57, 7 March 2024 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Alison Frantz; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

Interesting substantial article, on fine sources, offline sources accepted AGF, no copyvio obvious. All hooks work for me, but I'd prefer the original as the most unusual. How about using the image which clearly adds a time frame? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:00, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Image isn't PD: it's only on the article under FUR, so I don't think it can be on the main page. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 07:04, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

List of publications again

I'm returning to this topic because the article has now been nominated for FA, and I think it's time to replace the rather haphazard list of publications to which Frantz contributed as a photographer with something that is both more systematic and more representative of her extensive body of work for the excavations in the Athenian Agora. As I mentioned in my comments on the FAC page, Frantz provided the illustrations for almost all of the first dozen volumes of the final excavation reports published in the 1950s and 60s, including hundreds of photographs of sculpture, lamps, pottery, and other kinds of artifacts; none of these currently appear in the article. She did the same for the first dozen Agora Picture Books, also published in the 1950s and 60s, which covered a similarly wide range of topics; only a few of these are listed, including one that probably should not be (see below). She also, of course, produced many, perhaps most, of the hundreds of uncredited photographs in preliminary excavation reports and other articles about the results of the excavations published in Hesperia from the 1940s to the early 1960s, but since these would be impossible to identify and impractical to cite even if they could be identified, I won't say any more about them. The following lists are restricted to book-length publications (or booklet-length, in the case of the picture books).

The two main series are The Athenian Agora, large hardbound volumes intended for scholarly use and presenting the final results of the excavations, and the Agora Picture Books, a group of small, inexpensive booklets aimed at general audiences and tourists to the site, and consisting chiefly of photographs of objects found in the Agora excavations, accompanied by a limited amount of explanatory text (relatively little in the earlier books, considerably more in the later ones). Both series are available online at the ASCSA publications web site, and the Agora volumes are also available via JSTOR. (Note that the dates given for some of the picture books on the ASCSA web site are misleading, because they refer to later reprints. The dates listed below are the dates of original publication.)

The Athenian Agora

Frantz is credited as the sole or primary photographer in all but three of the first dozen volumes in the Athenian Agora series, published between 1953 and 1970. The exceptions are Agora II (Coins: From the Roman through the Venetian Period) and Agora III (Literary and Epigraphical Testimonia), both of which are unillustrated, and Agora IX (The Islamic Coins), which has six photographic plates but no credit that I can see. The remaining volumes, all with photographs by Frantz, are

• E. B. Harrison, Portrait Sculpture (Agora I, 1953)
• R. H. Howland, Greek Lamps and Their Survivals (Agora IV, 1958)
• H. S. Robinson, Pottery of the Roman Period: Chronology (Agora V, 1959)
• C. Grandjouan, Terracottas and Plastic Lamps of the Roman Period (Agora VI, 1961)
• J. Perlzweig, Lamps of the Roman Period (Agora VII, 1961)
• E. T. H. Brann, Late Geometric and Protoattic Pottery (Agora VIII, 1962)
• M. Lang and M. Crosby, Weights, Measures and Tokens (Agora X, 1964)
• E. B. Harrison, Archaic and Archaistic Sculpture (Agora XI, 1965)
• B. A. Sparkes and L. Talcott, Black and Plain Pottery of the 6th, 5th and 4th Centuries B.C. (Agora XII, 1970)

Although Frantz stepped down as the excavation photographer in the 1960s, her photos continued to appear in volumes published after 1970, but they were increasingly mixed with those of later staff photographers, and for that reason I have omitted them from this list. Two other Agora volumes (XX and XXIV, on the church of the Holy Apostles and on Late Antiquity), already appear in the article, in the sections devoted to works authored or co-authored by Frantz.

Agora Picture Books

Frantz is explicitly credited with all or almost all of the photographs in the first eleven Agora Picture Books, published in the 1950s and 1960s:

• B. A. Sparkes & L. Talcott, Pots and Pans in the Athenian Agora (APB 1, 1959)
• H. A. Thompson, The Stoa of Attalos (APB 2, 1959; rev. 1992)
• D. B. Thompson, Miniature Sculpture in the Athenian Agora (APB 3, 1959)
• M. Lang, The Athenian Citizen (APB 4, 1960) [but see note below]
• E. B. Harrison, Ancient Portraits from the Athenian Agora (APB 5, 1960)
• V. R. Grace, Amphoras and the Ancient Wine Trade (APB 6, 1961, rev. 1979)
• A. Frantz, The Middle Ages in the Athenian Agora (APB 7, 1961) (already listed in the "As author" section)
• D. B. Thompson and R. E. Griswold, Garden Lore of Ancient Athens (ABP 8, 1963)
• J. Perlzweig, Lamps from the Athenian Agora (APB 9, 1963)
• B. D. Meritt, Inscriptions from the Athenian Agora (APB 10, 1966)
• M. Lang, Waterworks in the Athenian Agora (APB 11, 1968)

Some of these picture books contain a few photos of comparanda from other sites and museum collections, which were provided by their institutions and taken by other photographers. But the photos of Agora material, which represent the bulk of the illustrations in each book, were almost all Frantz's work. As with the Athenian Agora volumes, Frantz's photos continued to appear in picture books published in the 1970s and later, after she left the Agora, but increasingly mixed with those of other staff photographers. Individual photos are almost never credited, and I think it's best to omit everything after no. 11, which is the last one in which she is explicitly stated to have provided most of the illsutrations. This excludes, sadly, Birds in the Athenian Agora by Lamberton and Rotroff (APB 22), published in 1987, which currently appears in the article. Although the wonderful photograph of the owl on the back cover is explicitly attributed to Frantz, none of the other photos are, and while she was presumably responsible for some of them, it's impossible to determine from the publication itself how many and which ones. By this time she had been away from the excavations for two decades, and some of the photos must have been taken by her successors, since they are of objects that were discovered only after she had left. So this one, I'm sorry to say, should be removed from the list.

The Athenian Citizen was originally listed in the article as well, but I removed it last year because in the most recent revised edition of 2004 (the only version available), most of Frantz's original black-and-white photos have been replaced by more recent color photos (see my edit summary here). I now think that this was a mistake, and that Lang's original edition of 1960, which was illustrated by Frantz, should be cited here (but not linked to the online version of the revised edition). Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the old edition is not available online.

Whether it's best to cite these works individually or as a group, I'll let others to decide, but a featured article about Frantz should certainly note their existence in one way or another, and provide links to the online versions at the ASCSA. — Choliamb (talk) 20:28, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the Herculean effort on these -- they are now added. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 19:39, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Fellow of the ASCSA in 1929-1930?

In the "Early life and education" section I have changed In 1929, Frantz was appointed as one of the first fellows of the ASCSA. She spent the 1929–1930 academic year working as a librarian at the ASCSA to Frantz spent the 1929-1930 academic year working as a librarian at the ASCSA. Although the existing text describing her as "one of the first fellows of the ASCSA" comes directly from Papalexandrou and Mauzy 2003, that statement is clearly inaccurate in at least one respect, and it may be entirely false.

There are two questions here:

(1) Is it accurate to describe someone awarded a fellowship by the ASCSA in 1929-1930 as "one of the first fellows" of the School? I don't see how it can be. The American School was founded in 1881 and began awarding fellowships in 1895, originally two per year, one known as the Fellow of the School and another known as the Fellow of the Institute (because it was funded by the Archaeological Institute of America). See the lists of fellows in Appendix VI of Lord's History of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens: 1882-1942 (Cambridge, MA 1942), pp. 362-366. Other fellowships were added over the next few decades: Fellows in Architecture (first in 1903), Special Fellows in Archaeology (first in 1910), Fellows in Greek Language, Literature, History (first in 1925), and later still, after Frantz's stint in 1929-1930, the named fellowships that still exist today: the Seymour (1933) and the White, the Capps, and the Wheeler (all 1940). According to Lord and to the annual report of the School for 1929-1930 (see below), Frantz held none of these fellowships, but even if she had, in 1929 she could hardly be counted "one of the first fellows" of an institution that had been appointing fellows on a regular basis for over three decades before she arrived. I don't know what Papalexandrou and Mauzy were thinking here: perhaps they were just careless, or perhaps they had some kind of special circumstances in mind. But as a general statement, this is obviously incorrect.

(2) Was Frantz "appointed a fellow" of the ASCSA at all in 1929-1930? She was certainly present and working in the School's library, but she does not appear to have held any of the regular fellowships awarded for that year. The Annual Reports of the ASCSA are available online; the fellows for 1929-1930 are listed on p. 29 of the 1929-1930 report, and the process of their selection is described in the report of the previous year, 1928-1929, on pp. 17-19. Frantz's name is not mentioned in either place. She is also absent from the lists of fellows in Lord's history of the school. (She does, however, appear in Lord's "Directory of Fellows and Students", p. 377, a list that appears to include everyone who was ever a member of the School in some capacity other than professor or regular staff member, but does not distinguish between fellows and other students.) Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan, as archivist of the School, is better positioned to know what Frantz's status was than either of the sources that claim she was a fellow, and in her blog post about Frantz's library work (cited in the article as Vogeikoff-Brogan 2019) she does not use that word. The passages cited by V-B from Frantz's own letters suggest that she was treated more as an employee and member of the library staff, who received a salary, not a fellowship stipend. It's possible that around the ASCSA at the time the term "fellow" was used informally for people like Frantz, who were associated in some way with the intellectual work of the School but were not part of the permanent staff or the regular academic program. But if that was the case, it doesn't appear to be recorded anywhere, and without some explanation it seems to me misleading to refer to her that way in the WP article, since most readers will naturally assume that "fellow" means someone who held one of the School's fellowships, and this is the way the word is used in the publications of the ASCSA itself. The easy solution is simply to omit this part of the description altogether, at least until some evidence can be produced that the ASCSA in 1929 considered her to be a fellow rather than (or in addition to) a PhD student temporarily employed in the library.

— Choliamb (talk) 21:59, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

Looks sensible. Suggest that P+M intended "female fellows", and as you say "fellows" to have a somewhat more catholic definition. But on both counts the solution now adopted here is better for WP. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 22:12, 23 July 2025 (UTC) UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 22:12, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

Not my intention to argue, but it's worth noting that even if you're correct and P & M meant "female fellows", they were still mistaken. Between 1898 and 1903 there was a special ASCSA fellowship for women, the Agnes Hoppin Memorial Fellowship, and women held their own in competition with men for the regular fellowships as well: female candidates were appointed Fellows of the School in 1897, 1909, 1920, 1924, 1927, and 1928, and Fellows of the Institute in 1898, 1915, 1920, 1923, 1924, 1926, and 1928. The ASCSA was pretty progressive in this respect. By 1929 it already had a 30-year history of awarding women one or both of its two major fellowships, and had been doing so almost every year for the past ten years. So it would be equally inaccurate to describe Frantz as "one of the first female fellows". P & M are just wrong. Choliamb (talk) 23:46, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

How strange (on the authors' part, not the ASCSA's!). Definitely well changed. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 08:26, 24 July 2025 (UTC) UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 08:26, 24 July 2025 (UTC)