Please join the Classics Department at our annual Haines-Morris Lecture in Classics, given this year by Deborah Beck (UT Austin) on "The Shepherd and His Flock: The Story of a Simile Motif." Professor Beck's research focusus on how to tell a good story that connects emotionally with its audience(s), especially in a literary genre with the scope and grandeur of epic poetry. She has published extensively on Homeric epic, and her forthcoming book (Cambridge) explores the theme of her lecture, namely how similes about shepherds and domestic animals in Homer, Apollonius, and Vergil allow us to see both the power of the simile world to shape epic narrative and the distinctive features created by the simile world of an individual poem. This fascinating talk will be of wide interest to anyone who appreciates classical literature or literature in general.