Classics Creativity Award

Professor Louis Eleazer Lord (1875–1957) taught at Oberlin College in the Department of Classics from 1908 to 1945, when he moved to Scripps College (1945 to 1949). He served as the president of the Bureau of University Travel in Boston, Massachusetts, retiring in 1956. Greece awarded him numerous honors: Chevalier of the Order of the Redeemer, an Officer of the Order of George I, and a member of the Royal Order of the Phoenix. Italy named him a Knight Commander of the Crown.

Professor Lord, a native of Ravenna, Ohio, earned BA and MA degrees at Oberlin in 1897, an MA at Harvard in 1900, and a PhD in Classics at Yale in 1908. Professor Lord was the author of numerous books, including Aristophanes: His Plays and His Influence (1925); The Odes of Anacreon (1928); Thucydides and the World War (1945, Martin Classical Lectures vol. 12); and A History of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (1947).

Professor Lord was instrumental in the establishment of the Martin Classical Lectures, which honor Charles Beebe Martin; Lord solicited many small gifts in order to fund the endowment of the lectureship, and oversaw the lectureship’s administration in its formative years. Professor Lord’s interests also included pedagogy, and he led an important study of college courses that included Classical subjects, but were not meant for classics majors. Professor Lord served as the annual professor of Latin at the American Academy in Rome in 1923–24 and annual professor of Greek at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens from 1928 to 1929. He was the president of the Archaeological Institute of America from 1932 to 1937, and as the chairman of the managing committee of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens from 1939 to 1950.

Professor Lord’s expertise extended beyond collegiate teaching. He was the director of the People’s Banking Company, headquartered in Oberlin, from 1927 to 1950. He served as the associate director of personnel for the American Red Cross during World War I (1918–19), and, in 1942, as a special consultant to the U.S. Office of Price Administration during World War II. From 1920 to 1930, Professor Lord served as the director of the Bureau of University Travel, a company that oversaw educational tours for numerous universities. Lord was the president of the Bureau of University Travel from 1949 to 1956, a period that witnessed a tenfold increase in the number of subscribers, which returned the Bureau to its earlier position of prominence.