Boston Area Classics Calendar
October 2023
Katherine Lu Hsu (College of the Holy
Cross)<https://classics.fas.harvard.edu/boston-area-classics-calendar?tr…
Mon., Oct. 30, 4:45 �C 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<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.bu.edu…
www.bu.edu��<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.bu…
classics@bu.edu<mailto:classics@bu.edu>
[Katherine Lu Hsu (College of the Holy Cross)]
Gallery Talk: Gods at the Table (Chinese)
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Tue., Oct. 31, 12:30 �C 1 p.m.
HARVARD ART MUSEUMS, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
This event requires registration; see further details below.
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An ancient Greek symposium was, essentially, a ritualized drinking party. What did the
ancient Greeks drink, what kind of vessels did they drink out of, and which deities did
they worship at these parties? This talk, offered in Chinese, delves into the practice and
reception of the ancient Greek symposium by taking a closer look at a variety of vessels
in the ancient art galleries.
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Led by:
Vivian Jin, Ph.D. candidate, Department of the Classics, Harvard University; and graduate
student intern, Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art, Harvard Art Museums
Gallery talks are limited to 18 people and registration is required. You can register by
clicking on the event on this
form<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__secure.touchne…pUcPVOuFIi_xgBEQWeg&e=>,
beginning at 10am the day of the talk.
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Please meet in the Calderwood Courtyard, in front of the digital screens between the shop
and the admissions desk.
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The Harvard Art Museums are now offering free
admission<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__harvardar…
every day, Tuesday through Sunday. Please see the museum visit
page<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__harvardartmuse…
to learn about our general policies for visiting the museums.
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The Harvard Art Museums are committed to accessibility for all visitors. For anyone
requiring accessibility accommodations for our programs, please contact us at
am_register@harvard.edu<mailto:am_register@harvard.edu> at least 48 hours in
advance.
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am_register@harvard.edu<mailto:am_register@harvard.edu> �c�҂�ϵ���x�x��
Image:
Eye cup: Athena, Greek, Archaic period, c. 530 BCE. Terracotta. Harvard Art Museums/Arthur
M. Sackler Museum, Bequest of David M. Robinson, 1960.323. �۾��y�ӱ���
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harvardartmuseums.org��<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https…
[Gallery Talk: Gods at the Table (Chinese) ���Č��[������ľ���]
Screening of Michael Cacoyannis' film "The Trojan
Women"<https://classics.fas.harvard.edu/boston-area-classics-calend…
Tue., Oct. 31, 6 �C 8 p.m.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Room 133, Barker Center, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA 02138
Featuring introductory remarks by Professor Panagiotis Roilos: "On Trauma in Ancient
Greek Tragedy"
Harvard Greek Film Society
dourou@fas.harvard.edu<mailto:dourou@fas.harvard.edu>
[Screening of Michael Cacoyannis' film "The Trojan Women"]
November 2023
Felipe Soza (Williams
College)<https://classics.fas.harvard.edu/boston-area-classics-calendar?…
Thu., Nov. 2, 3 �C 4 p.m.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, RCCHU Conference Room, 26 Trowbridge St., Cambridge, MA, and over
Zoom
"Terror of history? The Administration of Time in Independent Delos"
During the early Hellenistic period (323�C167 BC), the very small island of Delos rose to
prominence as an independent polis and political center of the southern Aegean. Several
hundred decrees on stone testify to Delos�� wealth, its connections with the wider world,
and the presence of all the important actors of the period in Delian life. Yet, the
decrees issued by the civic bodies of Delos during the period of independence consistently
avoided the inclusion of dating formulae. This regular, extended and presumably deliberate
practice is a feature of a scale found nowhere else in the Greek world. I wish to suggest
that the absence of official temporal markers from Delian civic decrees responds to the
Delian need of constructing their own political context in times when things changed
constantly, rapidly and drastically. The Delians sought to cut ties from their Athenian
past, protect their actions from the vicissitudes of time, and construct their own
self-governing context in a world in which a historically significant, but freshly
independent and conspicuously small polity had a fragile position in international
affairs.
Sponsors: Real Colegio Complutense at Harvard University; Williams College; Harvard
University; University of Sevilla
rcc.harvard.edu��<https://rcc.harvard.edu/event/terror-history-administr…
Organizer: Unai Iriarte Asarta
(uiriarte@fas.harvard.edu<mailto:uiriarte@fas.harvard.edu>)
Alexander Riehle (Harvard
University)<https://classics.fas.harvard.edu/boston-area-classics-calend…
Fri., Nov. 3, 12 �C 1:15 p.m.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Room 133, Barker Center, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA 02138
"Towards a History of Women's Writing in Byzantium"
Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar: Civilizations of Ancient Greece and
Rome<https://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/civilizations-ancient-gr…
[Alexander Riehle (Harvard University)]
Eric Driscoll (Massachusetts Institute of
Technology)<https://classics.fas.harvard.edu/boston-area-classics-calend…
Tue., Nov. 7, 5 p.m.
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, Building 14, Room 14E-304, 160 Memorial Drive,
Cambridge, MA 02139
"Hellenism, Archaeology, Apocalypse"
This talk offers a reading of Kostas Vrettakos��s 1980 documentary short, The Layer of
Destruction, in the context of the modern Greek archaeological and folkloric imaginaries.
In the 1970s, Greece constructed a dam across the Mornos river, near the southern end of
the Pindus Mountains, to create a reservoir that would supply Athens with drinking water.
Today, below the waters of this artificial lake lie the remains of an ancient city,
Kallipolis or Kallion. In Layer of Destruction, Vrettakos creates a lyrical memorial for
Kallion by depicting his visits to the excavations conducted in the late 1970s as the
reservoir��s rising waters threatened and eventually covered the site. In the Greek
national narrative, archaeological excavation is conceived as an additive process that
recovers what Yannis Hamilakis calls ��fragments of national memory�� and thereby
restitutes missing fragments of a collective history. But in Vrettakos��s film,
archaeology emerges instead as a form of destruction, a force that��in the language of
Jacob Taubes��reinserts time into eternity and suggests that ��the order of the world is
gripped by death,�� that ��time�� moves toward an end.�� Recovering artefacts does not
fully recuperate memory or revivify lost time, but in fact accelerates their ultimate
loss. What does it mean to see national archaeology as destructive, self-contradictory,
and apocalyptic rather than triumphant and restorative?
Bio: Eric Driscoll is a Hellenist, classical archaeologist, and historian of the ancient
Mediterranean world. He studied Classics at the University of Chicago and holds a PhD in
Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology from the University of California, Berkeley.
Before moving to Cambridge in 2021 to teach at Harvard and now at MIT, where he is
Lecturer in Ancient and Medieval Studies, Eric lived in Greece for five years, including
two spent serving as the Assistant Director of the American School of Classical Studies at
Athens.
calendar.mit.edu��<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__…
[Eric Driscoll (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)]
II Edition of the RCCHU Ancient History International
Seminars<https://classics.fas.harvard.edu/boston-area-classics-calendar?…
Wed., Nov. 8, 4 �C 6 p.m.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, RCCHU Conference Room, 26 Trowbridge St., Cambridge, MA, and over
Zoom
PANEL III. Section 1. Ancient Rome
Sponsors: Real Colegio Complutense at Harvard University; University of Cordoba;
Complutense University of Madrid; Harvard University; University of Seville
rcc.harvard.edu��<https://rcc.harvard.edu/event/panel-iii-section-1-anci…
Organizer: Unai Iriarte Asarta
(uiriarte@fas.harvard.edu<mailto:uiriarte@fas.harvard.edu>)
Jorge Wong Medina (Harvard
University)<https://classics.fas.harvard.edu/boston-area-classics-calend…
Thu., Nov. 9, 5 p.m.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Room 237, Boylston Hall, Harvard Yard, Cambridge, MA 02138
"Contraction and Diectasis in Homeric Diction"
Sonia Sabnis (Reed
College)<https://classics.fas.harvard.edu/boston-area-classics-calendar?…
Fri., Nov. 10, 4:30 �C 6:30 p.m.
BOSTON UNIVERSITY, College of Arts & Sciences, 725 Commonwealth Ave, Room 224
"W.E.B. Du Bois and the Citationality of Ancient Greece & Rome"
Description: Du Bois�� interest in and use of sources from ancient Greece and Rome has
been a hot topic in recent years, evidenced by a special volume of the International
Journal of the Classical Tradition (2019) and a conference at Penn State (2021). In the
concluding essay of the former, Patrice Rankine noted ��the need to postpone the word
citation, given the difficulty of locating Du Bois�� exact sources of influence�� and the
accompanying turn to Gates��s theory of ��Signifyin(g).�� In this lecture, I use archival
resources to survey Du Bois�� citations of ancient Greece and Rome. While citations of
Greek and Roman sources are minimal features within Du Bois�� enormous oeuvre, they are
prominent in his understanding of history and humanism in education. At the same time, Du
Bois�� classical references suggest an ironic relationship to the citationality of Greece
and Rome in mainstream white media, one that is supported by more acerbic writings by Du
Bois�� NAACP colleague (and Yale classics major) William Pickens. Du Bois and Pickens��
particular brand of citation adds breadth to our understanding of exclusionary practices
of the past.
Sponsors: Boston University Department of Classical Studies, Core Curriculum, Department
of African American & Black Diaspora Studies, and the Boston University Center for
Humanities
Boston University: Black Classicism��Moving
Forward<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.bu.edu_…
www.bu.edu��<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.bu…
classics@bu.edu<mailto:classics@bu.edu>
[Sonia Sabnis (Reed College)]
Niek Janssen (Amherst
College)<https://classics.fas.harvard.edu/boston-area-classics-calendar?…
Wed., Nov. 15, 4:45 �C 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<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.bu.edu…
www.bu.edu��<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.bu…
classics@bu.edu<mailto:classics@bu.edu>
[Niek Janssen (Amherst College)]
December 2023
Activating Kore 670: Women's Voices and Greek
Tragedy<https://classics.fas.harvard.edu/boston-area-classics-calendar?t…
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�C11:20 a.m.
1:00�C1:20 p.m.
2:00�C2:20 p.m.
www.mfa.org��<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.m…
Danny Cashman | dcashman@mfa.org<mailto:dcashman@mfa.org>
[Activating Kore 670: Women's Voices and Greek Tragedy]
Benjamin Dunning (Harvard
University)<https://classics.fas.harvard.edu/boston-area-classics-calend…
Fri., Dec. 8, 12 �C 1:15 p.m.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, TBD, Cambridge, MA 02138
Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar: Civilizations of Ancient Greece and
Rome<https://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/civilizations-ancient-gr…
February 2024
Tom Sapsford (Boston
College)<https://classics.fas.harvard.edu/boston-area-classics-calendar?…
Fri., Feb. 23, 12 �C 1:15 p.m.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, TBD, Cambridge, MA 02138
Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar: Civilizations of Ancient Greece and
Rome<https://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/civilizations-ancient-gr…
April 2024
Sarah Olsen (Williams
College)<https://classics.fas.harvard.edu/boston-area-classics-calendar?…
Fri., Apr. 12, 12 �C 1:15 p.m.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, TBD, Cambridge, MA 02138
Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar: Civilizations of Ancient Greece and
Rome<https://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/civilizations-ancient-gr…
Association of Ancient Historians 2024 Annual
Meeting<https://classics.fas.harvard.edu/boston-area-classics-calendar?t…
Thu., Apr. 18 �C Mon., Apr. 22
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, TBD, Cambridge, MA 02138
associationofancienthistorians.org<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/…
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