The Departments of Classics at Amherst College and UMass Amherst, supported by the Lamont Fund, are hosting a conference on “Virgilian Space and Places” Friday, October 15 (3:30-6:30 p.m.) and all day Saturday, October 16 (9:00 a.m.-4:30 p.m.). The speakers are Alessandro Barchiesi (NYU/Siena), Brian Breed (UMass), Cynthia Damon (Penn), Elena Giusti (Warwick), Alison Keith (Toronto), Micah Myers (Kenyon), Aaron Seider (Holy Cross), Sarah Spence (Georgia), Richard Thomas (Harvard), Graham Zanker (Canterbury/Adelaide), and Tom Zanker (Amherst). All sessions will allow for both in-person and virtual attendance.

The event is free and open to the public but registration is required both for in-person attendance (on a space-available basis and as campus Covid-19 protocols allow) and to receive a link to participate remotely via Zoom. Early registration is encouraged (by October 1 if ordering lunch on Saturday).

"Unlettered in Paradise: Non-Readers in Early Christian Reading Culture
Sponsored by the BU Center for the Humanities

"Fascist Receptions of Antiquity in Metal Music"

Since its genesis a half-century ago, heavy metal music and the counterculture that formed around it has generally defined itself through transgressive sounds, words, and images as expressions of rebellion against modern and contemporary systems of order, conformity, and control. Often complementary to metal’s core antagonisms to modernity are romanticizing appeals to a premodern past, including ancient Greece and Rome. A small but influential minority of European metal artists push transgression to extremes by flirting with or fully embracing fascist imagery and ideology, and in the process replicating and perpetuating fascist and white supremacist manipulations of a classical antiquity they dream of resurrecting through apocalyptic war and genocide. Fascistic metal artists, many of whom are connected to extremist and terrorist groups and individuals, charismatically offer to thousands of tolerant and susceptible consumers harmful distortions of the classical past. In this talk I not only critique these artists' appropriations of classical history and culture in light of the far-right’s general reception thereof, but I also highlight positive solutions from within the global metal scene to challenge these hateful usurpations of the ancient world.