Boston Area Classics Calendar

October 2023

Mon., Oct. 16, 4 – 5 p.m.

UMASS BOSTON Remote via Zoom

"Using Targeted Looping to Progress Through Bloom’s Taxonomy"

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UMass Boston SLA and Classics Seminar

blogs.umb.edu…

Christopher.Cochran@umb.edu

Johannes Haubold (Princeton University)

Tue., Oct. 17, 3 – 4:30 p.m.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Sever Hall 102, Cambridge, MA 02138

"Words Matter: Cosmogony and Divine Speech in Babylon, Israel and Greece"

Johannes Haubold is Professor of Classics at Princeton University, with a focus on the literatures and cultures of ancient Greece and Mesopotamia, and on interactions between them. His publications include Greece and Mesopotamia: Dialogues in Literature (Cambridge 2013) and Keeping Watch in Babylon: The Astronomical Diaries in Context (Leiden 2019), ed. with John Steele and Kathryn Stevens. He is currently working on two main projects: Logion, an NLP tool that aids the restoration and elucidation of premodern Greek texts (www.logionproject.princeton.edu); and the Library of Babylonian Literature, a new series that aims to make the major works of Akkadian literature accessible to a wide audience of scholars and general readers.

Ancient Studies at Harvard Visitors Series

Johannes Haubold (Princeton University)

Erika Valdivieso (Yale University)

Fri., Oct. 20, 12 – 1:15 p.m.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Barker 133, Cambridge, MA 02138

"Searching for Dido"
Erika Valdivieso is an assistant professor of Classics at Yale University, where she is a faculty member of the Program in Early Modern Studies. Her current project, provisionally titled "Empire's Companion: Virgilian Epics from the Americas," draws attention to the relationship between education, literature, and imperial imagination in four Latin epics from Iberoamerica. She is interested in the history of the book in Spanish and Portuguese America and has published on the dissemination and transmission of classical texts in early modernity.

Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar: Civilizations of Ancient Greece and Rome

Erika Valdivieso (Yale University)

Katherine Lu Hsu (College of the Holy Cross)

Mon., Oct. 30, 4:45 – 6:15 p.m.

BOSTON UNIVERSITY, College of Arts & Sciences, Room B36, 725 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA 02215

"Meet Me Outside: Mythological Courage and Cowardice Beyond the Hero"

Description: This talk will examine the representation of courage and cowardice beyond the paradigmatic hero in early Greek myth. We will look at examples of courage on the battlefield among foreigners and women and consider why non-elites seem to be excluded from the kleos economy. This study reveals some of the “hard lines” that limit the mythological imagination, suggesting an enduring anxiety about internal stasis.

Sponsors: BU Department of Classical Studies & The Boston University Center for the Humanities

Boston University: New Approaches to Classics

www.bu.edu…

classics@bu.edu

Katherine Lu Hsu (College of the Holy Cross)

November 2023

Alexander Riehle (Harvard University)

Fri., Nov. 3, 12 – 1:15 p.m.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY, TBD, Cambridge, MA 02138

Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar: Civilizations of Ancient Greece and Rome

Niek Janssen (Amherst College)

Wed., Nov. 15, 4:45 – 6:15 p.m.

BOSTON UNIVERSITY, College of Arts & Sciences, Room B18, 725 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA 02215

"Making Fit: Parody and Decorum in Greco-Roman Literature"

Description: The concepts of decorum and to prepon pervade Greco-Roman ethical and aesthetic thought. Yet ancient theorists from Plato to Dionysius, Cicero, Horace, and Quintilian struggle to articulate what "appropriateness" is and how it is grounded. By confronting these theorists with parodic and comedic texts, which stand in a double, transgressive-yet-conservative relationship to decorum, I argue that this inarticulability is a feature, not a bug, of the concept. Texts like Hegemon's Parodies, Plautus' Asinaria, and the Pseudo-Virgilian Culex reveal the instability of decorum as a basis for normative thought--as a principle for aesthetic judgment and social inclusion/exclusion.

Sponsors: BU Department of Classical Studies & The Boston University Center for the Humanities

Boston University: New Approaches to Classics

www.bu.edu…

classics@bu.edu

Niek Janssen (Amherst College)

December 2023

Activating Kore 670: Women's Voices and Greek Tragedy

Sat., Dec. 2

MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON, Early Greek Art Gallery, 465 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115

In celebration of Kore 670, a stunning archaic Greek statue now on view in Gallery 213, see live performances by Emerson College students and area high school students adapting excerpts from ancient Greek tragedies. From Elektra and Antigone to Cassandra and Iphigenia, women featured prominently in ancient Greek theater, yet their roles were performed by men. In three 20-minute performances, students studying theater actively disrupt that traditional practice, revealing how gender bias—both in the ancient world and now—is hardly a new concept.

Saturday, December 2
11:00–11:20 a.m.
1:00–1:20 p.m.
2:00–2:20 p.m.

www.mfa.org…

Danny Cashman | dcashman@mfa.org

Activating Kore 670: Women's Voices and Greek Tragedy