lectures

4/28 Lecture: 'The Invention of Chaos in Hesiod & Ovid'

Brian Gordon — Sat, 08 Mar 2025 18:07:36 +0000

4/28 Lecture: 'The Invention of Chaos in Hesiod & Ovid' Brian Gordon Sat, 03/08/2025 - 11:07

Presented by Glenn Most
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa
University of Chicago, Committee on Social Thought

Monday, April 28th at 5:00 P.M. | Humanities 250

WHAT IS THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF OUR CONCEPT OF CHAOS?

The term 'chaos' appears for the first time in world literature in a remarkable passage in Hesiod's Theogony, but almost certainly it does not have the meaning there that it has in modern languages; and this modern meaning cannot be found attested in any ancient Greek or Latin text before it appears in Ovid's Metamorphoses.

The lecture examines the figure of Chaos at the beginning of the cosmogony in the Theogony and considers the meaning that Hesiod may have plausibly been thought likely to have assigned to it there, and the various interpretations, explicit and implicit, found in the ancient and medieval exegetical traditions to this passage and in other comparable Greek cosmogonies. It then examines the passage in the Metamorphoses that may plausibly be claimed to be the source of the modern understanding of the concept and asks how Ovid might have come up with this usage.

Sponsored by the Center for Humanities & the Arts and the Department of Classics

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Monday, April 28th at 5PM | Eaton Humanities 250

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McClanahan Lecture: 'King of the World, King of Assyria!'

Brian Gordon — Sun, 02 Mar 2025 22:00:09 +0000

McClanahan Lecture: 'King of the World, King of Assyria!' Brian Gordon Sun, 03/02/2025 - 15:00

A Mary E.V. McClanahan Lecture

Presented by Professor Beth Dusinberre, Classics Department

Wednesday, April 2nd at 7PM
Eaton Humanities 250

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Wednesday, April 2nd at 7PM | Eaton Humanities 250

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AIA Lecture: 'Normalizing Loot: A Case Study of a Plundered Imperial Shrine'

Brian Gordon — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 20:09:56 +0000

AIA Lecture: 'Normalizing Loot: A Case Study of a Plundered Imperial Shrine' Brian Gordon Fri, 02/28/2025 - 13:09

Presented by Dr. Elizabeth Marlowe (Professor of Art History, Colgate University)

Wednesday, March 12th at 7PM, Eaton Humanities 1B80 and via Zoom

This talk will discuss a corpus of dozens of life-size bronze statues of Roman emperors and empresses that were looted in the 1960s at Bubon, an unexcavated site in southern Turkey, and ended up in collections across the U.S. What was lost in the process? Why–and how–are some museums resisting efforts to return these statues to Turkey today?

Wednesday, March 12th at 7PM in HUMN 1B80 and via Zoom

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Lecture: 'Pompeii as a Platform: The Present and Near-Term Future of Reusable Data from a Roman City'

Brian Gordon — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 16:24:33 +0000

Lecture: 'Pompeii as a Platform: The Present and Near-Term Future of Reusable Data from a Roman City' Brian Gordon Thu, 02/27/2025 - 09:24

Presented by Dr. Sebastian Heath (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University)

Wednesday, March 5th at 7PM | Eaton Humanities 135

ABSTRACT: This talk reports on the work of the Pompeii Artistic Landscape Project (PALP), which was a Getty Foundation funded collaboration between the speaker and Prof. Eric Poehler of UMASS Amherst, and on the current Pompeii Linked Open Data (P-LOD) initiative, a more open-ended effort under the same direction. PALP produced a website that supports sitewide investigation and P-LOD is now focused on the long-term availability of reusable data, on developing new computational approaches to exploring that data, and on delivering new forms of public interaction with its resources. The talk will follow this same arc.

The PALP website demonstrates that applying the principles of Linked Open Data (LOD) to Pompeii enables both sitewide and detailed exploration of the contents of Pompeian wall-painting. Our goal is to make issues of association and distribution easily browsable by all. Myth, natural history, daily life and other topics can now all be explored. PALP is, however, just a website. P-LOD is engaged in delivering reusable data with a particular focus on using it in modern, low-cost computational environments that many people can access. This will be demonstrated, with an emphasis on the ability to conceive and implement new research agendas. It is also the case that change is in the air. Generative AI is an opportunity to explore new forms of interaction with large datasets.

This talk takes the point-of-view that it is archaeologists (or classicists or historians) who should be exploring these tools to see what contribution - if any - they can make. Such early - though results oriented - explorations will be shown in the context of the massive dataset that PALP and P-LOD have compiled for Pompeii.

PALP: https://palp.art
P-LOD: https://p-lod.org

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Wednesday, March 5th in Eaton Humanities 135

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Fresco from the House of Julia Felix, Pompeii depicting scenes from the Forum market

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AIA Lecture: A Late Bronze Age “Naval Station” at Kalamianos (Saronic Gulf), Greece?

Brian Gordon — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 20:39:25 +0000

AIA Lecture: A Late Bronze Age “Naval Station” at Kalamianos (Saronic Gulf), Greece? Brian Gordon Wed, 01/22/2025 - 13:39

Wednesday, January 29th, 2025 at 7PM

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AIA Lecture: 'Stress, Sex, and Death: Health and Survival in the Context of Medieval Famine and Plague'

Brian Gordon — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 19:10:05 +0000

AIA Lecture: 'Stress, Sex, and Death: Health and Survival in the Context of Medieval Famine and Plague' Brian Gordon Mon, 01/20/2025 - 12:10

Wednesday, February 19 at 7PM in Eaton Humanities 250

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Mary E.V. McClanahan 2025 Essay Prize

Brian Gordon — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 21:46:03 +0000

Mary E.V. McClanahan 2025 Essay Prize Brian Gordon Tue, 01/07/2025 - 14:46

Sine Spoliis: The Commemoration of the Third Macedonian War through the Porticus Octavia
presented by Julius Arnold

Friday, January 17th, 2025 at 4:30 P.M.
Eaton Humanities 250

Abstract: The lost Porticus Octavia, constructed after the Third Macedonian War, remains an enigmatic monument of the Middle Roman Republic. Built to commemorate Gnaeus Octavius’ capturing of the last Macedonian king Perseus, the building has received scant attention in surviving ancient literature and modern scholarship. In this talk, I argue that the monument likely served as a display space for spoils of war taken by Lucius Aemilius Paullus, who had defeated Perseus in battle. I shed light on how Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gnaeus Octavius collaborated to control the public memory of their military successes, situating the Porticus Octavia within the broader context of the commemoration of victories over Hellenistic kingdoms and the display of war spoils in the city of Rome.

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Ancient map of Rome showing the Porticus Octaviae, confused with the Porticus Octavia by some ancient authors. The Stanford Digital Forma Urbis Romae: fr. 3 lu.

Congratulations to Julius Arnold! Winner of the 2025 Mary E.V. McClanahan Essay Prize

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“The Triumph of Aemilius Paulus” (1789) by Carle Vernet. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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AIA Lecture: Feasts Fit for Pharaohs: Food and Drink in Ancient Egypt

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 16:59:20 +0000

AIA Lecture: Feasts Fit for Pharaohs: Food and Drink in Ancient Egypt Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 10/30/2024 - 10:59

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Wednesday, November 20, 2024 at 7PM - CU Visual Arts Complex, Room 1B20

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Lecture: Divine Witnessing and Dramatic Performance in Ancient Greece

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 19:24:28 +0000

Lecture: Divine Witnessing and Dramatic Performance in Ancient Greece Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/14/2024 - 13:24

Divine Witnessing and Dramatic Performance in Ancient Greece

Thursday, November 7th@ 5:00PM
Eaton Humanities 250
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ABSTRACT

Theaters are ubiquitous pieces of monumental architecture in the ancient Greek landscape. They dominate landscapes, take advantage of sweeping vistas, and leave a tangible impression of ancient performance venues through their easily apprehended forms. Despite their ancient (and modern) popularity, however, they have frequently been left out of critical accounts concerning the articulation of sacred space. When they do appear in such studies, it is generally a cursory treatment or simple acknowledgement that some sort of performance took place in or adjacent to a sanctuary. On the other hand, accounts of ancient festivals involving dramatic performance, such as the Great Dionysia, or studies of Mediterranean-wide theoria networks, often leave the physical venue of performance in the background, as a static entity in which the dynamic ritual occurred. In both cases, the theater itself becomes a mere backdrop or footnote, unchanging, achronological, and uncomplicated.

It is perhaps the relatively simple architectural form of the theater, with its tripartite division of theatron (or cavea), orchestra, and skene, that belies its ritual and performative complexity. But within this straightforward schematic is a more dynamic space than generally acknowledged. Through an investigation of viewsheds and movement patterns, this paper demonstrates how theaters functioned as active participants in the ritual-architectural events that dominated the religious life of ancient Greece, thereby shaping the nature of dramatic performance and generating the expectation of divine witnessing on the part of the audience. Viewed in this light, theaters become complex and critical spaces of ritual, reflection, and transformation, for both their actor and spectator participants. Ultimately, such an approach, by centering theatral space within religious performance and knitting together threads of architectural and textual analysis, facilitates a more nuanced and deeply contextualized account of dramatic performance in ancient Greece.

Jess Paga, PhD | Associate Professor | William & Mary

Professor Paga specializes in Greek archaeology and history, particularly of the Archaic and Classical periods. Her research is primarily focused on Greek architecture, political history, and epigraphy. Professor Paga is also an active field archaeologist, and has excavated at various sites in Greece, including the Athenian Agora, Cyprus, Corinth, Argilos, and Samothrace, as well as Italy, at Segesta, Sicily.

Thursday, November 7, 2024 at 5PM - Eaton Humanities 250

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AIA Lecture: Experiencing Epiphany in the Ancient Greek Sanctuary

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 19:12:15 +0000

AIA Lecture: Experiencing Epiphany in the Ancient Greek Sanctuary Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/07/2024 - 13:12

Experiencing Epiphany in the Ancient Greek Sanctuary

Wednesday, November 6, 2024 @ 7PM
Eaton Humanities 250 & Zoom
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ABSTRACT

Sensory studies of embodiment have gained traction in recent years as unparalleled tools for examining the vicissitudes of ancient lived experience. When used in conjunction with cognitive studies, it becomes possible to tease out the links between (over)stimulation, deprivation, and religious transformation. Kinesthetics, in particular, can facilitate a nuanced embodied account of approach, (in)accessibility, and viewshed orchestration, by prioritizing the role of the body in movement within the landscapes and edifices of the built environment. The intersection of space, place, and body within the religious setting of the sanctuary thus becomes a nexus of gradually unfolding experience, understanding, and transformation.

Through a series of three case studies drawn from the 5th-3rd c. BCE, this paper focuses on how divine epiphany, made manifest through the multisensory experiences within the Greek sanctuary, served as the key to the transformative effect of ritual, a crucial component to understanding ancient religion. Eleusis, the site of the renowned Mysteries, serves as an example of how the combination of sensory overstimulation and deprivation can prime the body of the worshipper to receive the divine knowledge at the root of the ritual. Delphi, the oracular heart of Greece, showcases how physical exertion in service to the gods constituted its own form of worship and prepared both worshippers and priestly attendants to communicate with the god. And Samothrace, home of the Sanctuary of the Great Gods, ties together the strains of sensory stimulation and physical expenditure of energy into a synesthetic encapsulation of ritual transformation within a charged sacred landscape.

Ultimately, this paper reveals the role of multisensory experience in the religious transformation that lies at the heart of Greek ritual practice by foregrounding kinesthetics as the link between the human participant and sacred built environment.

Jess Paga, PhD | Associate Professor | William & Mary

Wednesday, November 6, 2024 at 7PM - Eaton Humanities 250

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