RAFFAELLA CRIBIORE

CRIBIORE--Raffaella, died from drowning on July 13 at Finale Liguria in Italy. She was the most important contemporary scholar in the field of ancient education. Raffaella was born in Varese, Italy, on March 27, 1948, the daughter of Mario and Stefania Razzini. She received her Laurea from the Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, magna cum laude, in 1972 and received her M.Phil. (1990) and Ph.D. (1993) degrees from Columbia University. Her revised dissertation (Writing, Teachers, and Students in Graeco- Roman Egypt) was published three years. There followed over the next twenty years four more single-author books, beginning with Gymnastics of the Mind, the Goodwin Award winner for 2004, and continuing with three books on Libanius. There was also a joint volume collecting and studying Women's Letters from Ancient Egypt. Another book, Listening to the Philosophers: Notes on Notes, is in press at Cornell University Press, and a volume of school texts in Coptic on ostraca in the Columbia University collection, co-edited with Jennifer Cromwell. Raffaella served as curator of papyri at Columbia and in 2008 she moved to New York University as Professor of Classics. Raffaella is widely remembered for her joyous sociability and kindness; she was a superb cook. She is survived her son Federico, her daughter Martina and her beloved grandchildren, Martina's daughter Stefania and Federico's daughter Ottavia, as well as her brother Edoardo Razzini. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions to Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital, for breast and ovarian cancer research or to the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University, for the Raffaella Cribiore Fund for Archaeology.