2023

Kirk Ambrose: 122nd Distinguished Research Lecture

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 20:22:10 +0000

Kirk Ambrose: 122nd Distinguished Research Lecture Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/02/2024 - 13:22

Kirk Ambrose

In fall 2023, Professor Kirk Ambrose was selected as a 2023-4 Distinguished Research Lecturer. This prestigious award, one of the highest honors bestowed on the CU ��«��Ƶ faculty, recognizes colleagues with a distinguished body of academic and/or creative achievement and prominence, as well as contributions to CU's educational and service missions.

Kirk delivered his Distinguished Research Lecture, "The Authentic and the Counterfeit in Medieval Art," on Tuesday, Nov. 28, 4:00-5:00, to a packed house in Chancellor’s Hall and Auditorium (CASE building).

To view the recording of Kirk’s stimulating lecture, click here.

The abstract of his talk is below:

Authenticating relics was a foundational activity during the Middle Ages in Europe, for it was widely understood that these earthly remains of saints offered a vehicle for the divine to work miracles, from healing the sick to punishing—and even killing—enemies of the Church. Because possessing a venerable saint’s bodily remains could bolster the prestige and financial fortunes of institutions, the temptation to invent fake claims could be great. Indeed, the years between 1000 and 1150 have been dubbed the “golden age of medieval forgery.” To explore how institutions bolstered their claims to possess authentic relics in this period rife with fakes, Professor Ambrose's lecture will focus on the case of the monastery of Sainte-Foy, Conques, in France. He will examine how this community used the visual arts to advance their claims, as well as to condemn those who engaged in counterfeiting practices.

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McClanahan Lecture: Defining Beer in the Ancient World

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 20:38:27 +0000

McClanahan Lecture: Defining Beer in the Ancient World Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/26/2023 - 14:38

Defining Beer in the Ancient World
By Travis Rupp

Wednesday, November 29, 7:00pm
Eaton Humanities #250 & Zoom
Free and open to the public
Download the poster

ABSTRACT

This lecture will be a deep dive into the academic debate over what constitutes beer throughout history and how it was initially “invented” in the ancient world. Travis will discuss his most recent involvement in United States federal law where the definition of beer is being hotly debated and contested by macro breweries. As an expert witness in a recently decided federal case, Travis was called upon to discuss the origins and definitions of beer throughout antiquity and why the definition of beer is what it is today. Having been relieved of his legal duties (for now), he can share that message publicly. This presentation will demonstrate how beer is a timeless artifact that ties the present to the distant past.

Travis Rupp

is a full-time lecturer in Classics, Art History, History, Anthropology, and Mechanical Engineering at the ��«��Ƶ, where he has taught for 13 years. Since 2010 he has taught Egyptian, Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman. His scholarly expertise focus on ancient food and alcohol production, ancient sport and spectacle, and Pompeii and the cities of Vesuvius. He worked at Avery Brewing Company for nine years as the Wood Cellar and Research and Development Manager. Rupp holds the title of Beer Archaeologist and founded Avery’s Ales of Antiquity Series, which ran from 2016-2020. He serves on the National Advisory board for the Chicago Brewseum and owns The Beer Archaeologist - a company dedicated to research and experimental archaeology of historic beer. As a result of his career and passions, Rupp is researching and writing about the beginnings of beer in the Roman military, brewing in the early monastic tradition, and beer production in Revolutionary America. His first book will be about the changing definition of beer throughout history. Recently Rupp’s travels and research abroad have focused on monastic brewing in Italy from 400-900 CE, brewing in Roman Britain during the 2nd century CE, beer production at Mt. Vernon and Monticello, and the survival of the Belgian brewing tradition during WWI.

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Pentheus’ Myth Beyond Euripides

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 19:44:50 +0000

Pentheus’ Myth Beyond Euripides Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/26/2023 - 13:44

Pentheus’ Myth Beyond Euripides

Tuesday, November 14, 5:30 p.m.
Eaton Humanities Building, #190

Speaker: Dr. Bartłomiej Bednarek
Humboldt Fellow, Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich
Assistant Professor, University of Warsaw

Euripides’ Bacchae is the only well-preserved, relatively early text that presents, at substantial length, a disturbing but fascinating image of Dionysus, which suggested to several modern-era intellectuals (e.g., Nietzsche, Benedict, Dodds, Otto, Girard, Kott) that inquiry into the true nature of this divinity may shed light on some particularly important aspects of ancient civilization. Due to the state of preservation of the dossier of texts relevant to the study of Dionysus, quite inevitably we tend to extrapolate Euripides’ vision onto the whole of Greco-Roman culture, very often at the cost of downplaying the role of some other, oftentimes less-intriguing texts. This paper analyzes material to discuss the relative importance of Bacchae in different places and times. Before Euripides, Pentheus’ myth was one of the most widely known stories about Dionysus.

This is a free public lecture, sponsored by the Department of Classics. Everyone is welcome.
classics.colorado.edu | 303-492-6257

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AIA lecture: Environmental Change in Ancient Anatolia

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 18:41:06 +0000

AIA lecture: Environmental Change in Ancient Anatolia Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/26/2023 - 12:41

Environmental Change in Ancient Anatolia

Professor John M. Marston

Wednesday, November 8th at 7:00pm
Eaton Humanities #250 & Zoom (REGISTER HERE)
Free and open to the public

ABSTRACT

Identifying how societies make decisions about agricultural practices is important for understanding why some agricultural systems flourish over hundreds or thousands of years while others lead to environmental degradation and societal collapse. Archaeological data offer a unique long-term perspective on the sustainability of agriculture and how societies adapt to complex, intertwined changes in environment and economy on both local and regional scales.

In this lecture, Dr. John M. Marston (Boston University) presents recent work from the ancient urban center of Gordion in central Anatolia (modern Turkey), where complex agricultural strategies were employed to adapt to coincident environmental and social change on both local and regional scales. By situating Gordion within its regional agricultural setting over time, Marston concludes that an understanding of local political economy is necessary to reconstruct agricultural decision making and helps to understand patterns of anthropogenic environmental change.

Dr. John M. Marston

(PhD UCLA) is a professor of archaeology and anthropology at Boston University. As an environmental archaeologist, he studies the long-term sustainability of agriculture and land use, with a focus on ancient societies of the Mediterranean and western and central Asia. His research focuses on how people make decisions about land use within changing economic, social, and environmental settings, and how those decisions affect the environment at local and regional scales. A specialist in paleoethnobotany, the study of archaeological plant remains, Marston’s contributions to the field include novel ways of linking ecological theory with archaeological methods to reconstruct agricultural and land-use strategies from plant and animal remains. His current research projects include multi-proxy reconstruction of agriculture in Bronze and Iron Age urban centers of Turkey and Hellenistic, Roman, and Early Islamic sites in Israel.

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Patronage and Clientelism in Archaic & Early Classical Greece: A Hypothesis

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 20:22:54 +0000

Patronage and Clientelism in Archaic & Early Classical Greece: A Hypothesis Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/07/2023 - 14:22

Patronage and Clientelism in Archaic & Early Classical Greece: A Hypothesis

Monday, October 16, 5:00 p.m.
Eaton Humanities Building, #125

Speaker: Marek Weçowski, University of Warsaw
Sponsored by CU ��«��Ƶ's Center for Humanities and the Arts (CHA), the Bruce D. Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization, and the Department of Classics

Free and open to the public

As John K. Davies observed in 2005, ‘the informal networks of influence’ and ‘social control,’ in other words, Greek and especially Athenian ‘patronage’ (broadly conceived), ‘has only recently begun to attract the attention it deserves.’ To this date, ‘interpersonal relations between unequal parties’ and, in particular, political ‘clientelism’ in archaic & classical Greece seems a deeply understudied issue. The locus classicus in this respect is the much-discussed passage of Theopompus (FGrHist 115 F 89), the anecdote referred to also in Plutarch's Life of Cimon (10.1-2; cf. AP 27.3), about Cimon's magnanimity towards his (most probably) fellow-demotai and Athenian citizens at large. In this paper, I will argue that several strangely neglected episodes of the Persian Wars and its aftermath, such as Herodotus 8.17, may serve as a good starting point for reassessing our scattered pieces of historical evidence regarding archaic and classical Greek history - on the basis of sources ranging from Hesiod to Athenaeus.

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Call for Papers: Plague and Pandemic in the Ancient World

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 16:22:24 +0000

Call for Papers: Plague and Pandemic in the Ancient World Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 06/08/2023 - 10:22

Call for Papers
The 2024 ��«��Ƶ Classics Graduate Colloquium conference:
Plague and Pandemic in the Ancient World
Friday, 19^th – Saturday 20^th January, 2024
Keynote Address by HunterGardner (University of South Carolina)

Through the very trauma they inflict, plagues and pandemics stir conflict and controversy and exercise an enduring intellectual and emotional appeal. The intersecting religious, material, medical, historical, artistic, and literary responses they engendered in antiquity tell a complex story of confrontation with an experience dwarfing individuals and collectives alike. These ancient responses elicit questions for us as modern readers and experiencers of pandemic, and they offer us the opportunity to interact with earlier moments in the evolution of plague discourse. What were the politics of plague at different moments and in different geographical and cultural arenas in antiquity? What opportunities for transgression did plague create, and (how) did societies move to control them? What power dynamics and hierarchies were strengthened or undermined by the intrusion of plague? What did ancient attempts to combat plague, to respond to its intervention, to document it, or to trace its physical, emotional, social, or material consequences look like? Did plague create new taboos or destroy old ones, and what kinds of fear or cultural imperatives did plague engender? How was plague represented in the ancient imaginary? How do our own notions about plague and plague discourse affect our study of these topics in the ancient world?

The ��«��Ƶ Classics Graduate Colloquium invites papers from current graduate students addressing plague and pandemic as played out across the ancient Mediterranean world and beyond. We welcome papers viewing the topic through the lens of anthropology, art history, archaeology, ethnography, literature, philosophy, and religion, among others. Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words via email to pandemicconference24@gmail.com by August 30, 2023; subject line “��«��Ƶ Classics Graduate Colloquium 2024 Submission.” Abstracts should include a title for the paper and be anonymous PDF files. Please include your name, institution, and the title of your abstract in the body of your email. Presentations should be no longer than 20 minutes.

Possible topics are not limited to but may include:

the social consequences of plague and pandemic as experienced in antiquity and beyond
effects of pandemics on ancient belief systems or more broadly the relationship between religion and disease in the ancient world
ancient material responses to disease and its effects, including votives, inscriptions, prosthetics -
ancient artistic or literary responses to plague and pandemic and their later reception
the ways plague since antiquity has prompted reflection on human ingenuity and its hard limits
ancient dietary, surgical, or pharmacological responses to plague
figures in the history of medicine and their intellectual or physical encounters with plague

Please direct any questions to pandemicconference24@gmail.com.

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McClanahan Lecture: Phocion the Good and Philippe Pétain, Marshal of France: Parallel Lives?

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 05:44:15 +0000

McClanahan Lecture: Phocion the Good and Philippe Pétain, Marshal of France: Parallel Lives? Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 04/09/2023 - 23:44

Phocion the Good and Philippe Pétain, Marshal of France: Parallel Lives?

Professor Peter Hunt

Thursday, April 20, 7:00 p.m.
Hale Science Building Room 230 & Zoom (REGISTER HERE)
Free and open to the public
Download the poster

ABSTRACT

This lecture imagines how the Greek biographer Plutarch might write a Parallel Lives of an ancient and a modern stateman: Phocion the Good was a fourth-century Athenian statesman, who capped his long career under the democracy with a leading position in an oligarchy imposed by the Macedonians; Philippe Pétain, the hero of Verdun in the first World War, collaborated with the Nazis after the defeat of France in the Second World War. Both Phocion and Pétain ended their political lives on trial and then condemned by their own people. This thought experiment can help us better understand the structure, methods, and ethical goals of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives.

P eter Hunt (Ph.D. Stanford 1994) a classical Greek historian, studies warfare and society, slavery, historiography and oratory. He is the author of three books: Slaves, Warfare and Ideology in the Greek Historians (Cambridge 1998), War, Peace, and Alliance in Demosthenes' Athens (Cambridge 2010), and Ancient Greek and Roman Slavery (Wiley Blackwell 2018). Among other current projects, he is beginning work on a commentary on Plutarch’s Phocion.

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McClanahan Lecture: Uncovering the City of the Baboon: New excavations at Hermopolis Magna, Egypt

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Mar 2023 19:47:34 +0000

McClanahan Lecture: Uncovering the City of the Baboon: New excavations at Hermopolis Magna, Egypt Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/07/2023 - 12:47

Uncovering the City of the Baboon: New excavations at Hermopolis Magna, Egypt

Professor Yvona Trnka-Amrhein

Thursday, March 16, 7:00 p.m.
Hale Science Building Room 230 & Zoom (REGISTER HERE)
Free and open to the public
Download the poster

ABSTRACT

In January 2023, CU’s Classics Department and the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities began a new excavation and conservation project at the Greco-Roman city of Hermopolis Magna in Egypt. This talk gives an overview of the history of Hermopolis (Pharaonic Khemenu), previous archaeological work at the site, and a preview of what the new excavations have discovered, focusing on the city’s magnificent 5th century CE Christian Basilica which was built from the pieces of several Ptolemaic buildings and other earlier structures. The work at the Basilica site has revealed important evidence for understanding the forms of early Ptolemaic architecture and the history of worship at Hermopolis. These discoveries are only the beginning of what the city has to offer historians of ancient Egypt.

Yvona Trnka-Amrhein (Ph.D. Harvard 2013) studies Greek literature of the Hellenistic and Imperial periods, especially the novel, biography, and history. She is particularly interested in interactions between Greek, Latin, and Egyptian literature and culture as well as the effect of empire on literature. Trained as a literary papyrologist, Dr. Trnka-Amrhein has edited several Oxyrhynchus papyri and her work is often directed to interpreting fragmentary texts on papyrus. Her current book project, Portraits of Pharaoh: the Sesostris Tradition in Ancient Literature and Culture, follows the multifaceted traditions surrounding the iconic pharaoh Sesostris through time, genres, and cultures. Future projects include a study of multi-cultural hymns in the Hellenistic world and an investigation of links between the novel, mime, and satire.

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Swords, Sorcery, and Silliness: A Defense of the Mythical and Fantastic - Lecture

Anonymous — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 21:03:31 +0000

Swords, Sorcery, and Silliness: A Defense of the Mythical and Fantastic - Lecture Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/23/2023 - 14:03

Speaker: Jacqueline Fellows

6:00 pm Thursday, March 9
Eaton Humanities, HUMN135
Free and open to the public!

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AIA lecture: Imagining a Greek Home for an Egyptian Goddess: Time, Landscape, and Architecture in Greek Sanctuaries to Isis

Anonymous — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 17:42:15 +0000

AIA lecture: Imagining a Greek Home for an Egyptian Goddess: Time, Landscape, and Architecture in Greek Sanctuaries to Isis Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/12/2023 - 10:42

Imagining a Greek Home for an Egyptian Goddess: Time, Landscape, and Architecture in Greek Sanctuaries to Isis

Professor Lindsay Mazurek

Wednesday, January 25 at 7:00pm
Hale Sciences 270 or via Zoom
Free and Open to Public
REGISTER HERE

ABSTRACT

When Isis first arrived on Greek shores in the 3rd century BCE, her new followers had to build sanctuaries appropriate to an Egyptian goddess. In the process of imagining a place for their Greek Isis to dwell, devotees came up with a wide range of eclectic solutions that intertwined local needs, imperialist fantasy, and fantastical chronology. These sanctuaries do not draw from contemporaneous Egyptian art and architecture, but rather from Greek stereotypes about Egypt and the Nile River. Isis’ Greek temples, I argue, allowed Greek devotees to imagine Egypt in a way that responded to their own experiences as provincial subjects of the Roman Empire.

I begin with a brief overview of Isis’ and Sarapis cults’ arrival in Greece in the early Hellenistic period. Then, I turn to literary evidence, in which Greco-Roman authors from Herodotus to Pliny the Younger characterize Egypt as a timeless and strange place and highlight its unique flora and fauna. I next trace the popularity of these ideas in wall paintings and mosaics, where depictions of the Nile convey ideas of otherness and imperial control. I conclude by discussing the sanctuaries of the Egyptian gods at Marathon and Gortyna. The sanctuary at Marathon combines imaginative architecture that resembles Pharaonic Egyptian temples, archaizing sculpture that evoked a timeless Greco-Egyptian past, and a riverine setting that recalled the Nile Delta. At Gortyna, the sanctuary includes both an underground water crypt that echoed the Nilometers used to measure the river’s annual flood and cattle statuettes that personified the river’s waters. Taken together, this evidence suggests that Greek devotees used sanctuary spaces to explore Greek conceptions of Egypt as an imagined, far-off, and ancient place that they could control in much the same way that Rome controlled and imagined Greece.

Dr. Lindsey Mazurek

(PhD Duke University) is an Assistant Professor of Classical Studies at Indiana University. Her research explores questions of ethnicity, religion, landscape, and change in the Roman provinces, particularly how the inhabitants of Rome’s provinces reconfigured their own ideas of themselves and their world in response to Roman rule. Her new book, Isis in a Global Empire: Greek Identity Through Egyptian Religion in Roman Greece (Cambridge University Press 2022) looks at the worship of Egyptian deities like Isis, Sarapis, and Anubis in Greece during the Roman period and examines how local devotees reconfigured traditional ideas about Greekness in response to their religious practices.

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2023

Kirk Ambrose: 122nd Distinguished Research Lecture

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McClanahan Lecture: Defining Beer in the Ancient World

Defining Beer in the Ancient WorldBy Travis Rupp

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Pentheus’ Myth Beyond Euripides

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AIA lecture: Environmental Change in Ancient Anatolia

Environmental Change in Ancient Anatolia

Professor John M. Marston

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Patronage and Clientelism in Archaic & Early Classical Greece: A Hypothesis

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Call for Papers: Plague and Pandemic in the Ancient World

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McClanahan Lecture: Phocion the Good and Philippe Pétain, Marshal of France: Parallel Lives?

Phocion the Good and Philippe Pétain, Marshal of France: Parallel Lives?

Professor Peter Hunt

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McClanahan Lecture: Uncovering the City of the Baboon: New excavations at Hermopolis Magna, Egypt

Uncovering the City of the Baboon: New excavations at Hermopolis Magna, Egypt

Professor Yvona Trnka-Amrhein

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Swords, Sorcery, and Silliness: A Defense of the Mythical and Fantastic - Lecture

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AIA lecture: Imagining a Greek Home for an Egyptian Goddess: Time, Landscape, and Architecture in Greek Sanctuaries to Isis

Imagining a Greek Home for an Egyptian Goddess: Time, Landscape, and Architecture in Greek Sanctuaries to Isis

Professor Lindsay Mazurek

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Defining Beer in the Ancient World
By Travis Rupp