Title: Surface Tensions: Mutable Materials, Sympotic Sociability, and Bodily Surfaces in the Theognidea

Abstract: In this paper, I will explore the relationship between bodily surfaces and sympotic sociability focused on the corpus of the Theognidea. In particular, I explore the recurring issues of social mutability and adaptability in sympotic and polis communities staged as they are presented in the Theognidea. I argue that the body’s surface, especially the skin (χρώς, χροιή), brings together ethical problems of surfaces/presentation, concealing/deception, and mutability, most clearly articulated through surface-material associations with counterfeit metals (Thgn. 118-28, 447-52) and the adaptable body of the octopus (213-18, 1071-74; Plut. de amic. Multit. 96f). What I suggest this reading of surfaces provides is a way to conceive of a material alignment between the poetic program of the Theognideaand the sympotic world the collection constructs, pegged to the ethical dilemmas of trust and deceit, as well as praise and blame. This nexus of bodily and material surfaces demonstrates how archaic poetry can materially enmesh the body of the symposiast in the occasion the poetry creates as a way to both conceal and reveal these ethical challenges and realities simultaneously at the levels of poet, audience, and poetry.

The Earle Prize exam will be given Wednesday, April 17th, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. in 618 Hamilton Hall!

Columbia University’s Department of Political Science, Department of Classics, Department of Italian, and Columbia University Press present:

Book Talk “On Niccolò Machiavelli: The Bonds of Politics” with Gabriele Pedullà in conversation with Nadia Urbinati and Gareth Williams.

Link to the Event

Five hundred years after his death, Niccolò Machiavelli still draws an astonishing range of contradictory characterizations. Was he a friend of tyrants? An ardent republican loyal to Florence’s free institutions? The father of political realism? A revolutionary populist? A calculating rationalist? A Renaissance humanist? A prophet of Italian unification? A theorist of mixed government? A forerunner to authoritarianism? The master of the dark arts of intrigue?

This book provides a vivid and engaging introduction to Machiavelli’s life and works that sheds new light on his originality and relevance. Gabriele Pedullà—a leading Italian expert and acclaimed writer—offers fresh readings of the Florentine thinker’s most famous writings, The Prince and the Discourses on Livy, as well as lesser-known texts. A new and often surprising Machiavelli emerges—one closer to his time but also better suited to inform our own. Pedullà’s portrait of Machiavelli highlights his close attention to social and emotional bonds, staunch opposition to oligarchy, keen awareness of the economic side of power dynamics, and strong preference for history over philosophy as a guide for leaders.

This book recovers the excitement Machiavelli roused in his first readers for a twenty-first-century audience, capturing his capacity to provoke, both then and now, with unconventional ideas and startling insights.

This book is part of the Core Knowledge series, which takes its motivation from the goals, ideals, challenges, and pleasures of Columbia College's Core Curriculum.

Gabriele Pedullà is professor of Italian literature at the University of Roma Tre University. His English-language books include In Broad Daylight: Movies and Spectators After the Cinema (2012) and Machiavelli in Tumult: The Discourses on Livy and the Origins of Political Conflictualism (2018). His publications in Italian include award-winning fiction as well as an annotated edition of The Prince.

Nadia Urbinati is Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory at Columbia University. Her books include Democracy Disfigured (2014) and A Cosmopolitanism of Nations (2009).

Gareth Williams is an Anthon Professor of Latin Language and Literature at Columbia University. He has published extensively on Ovid, Roman philosophy, and classical reception.

Event contact information:
Meredith Howard
212-853-5329
mh2306@columbia.edu

Greetings Everyone 

Dr. Kostas Vlassopoulos will be visiting Columbia University to give a talk entitled 'What is slave agency and how did it affect the history of antiquity? at 4:10 pm in 618 Hamilton hall

Please share with your department, and we look forward to seeing you there!

The Romaine Prize exam will be given on Wednesday, April 24th, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. in 618 Hamilton Hall!

Title: Decolonizing Antígonas: Writing from Latin America

Abstract: “Our Greece is preferable to a Greece that is not ours,” wrote Cuban independence hero José Martí in his famous text Our America (1891). “Our Antígona is preferable to an Antigone that is not ours” could be the phrase that accounts for the intense creativity with which Latin Americans have imagined vernacular plays engaging the character of Antigone since the times of the 19th century wars of independence. In this talk, Fradinger suggests protocols to read the vast Antígona-corpus at the core of her book Antígonas: Writing from Latin America (OUP 2023), winner of the 2024 René Wellek Prize for outstanding monograph, awarded by the American Comparative Literature Association. Against the more common critical gesture of comparing/contrasting plays written in the South to ancient plays or modern European ones, the book offers a comparative approach that constructs a corpus and studies its internal dialogues. In this way, the author proposes to write from and with the South rather than about it. The corpus shows surprising patterns emerging throughout the region, unveiling an archive of political thought about political motherhood, womanhood, and the rise of diverse forms of post-independence necro-neocolonialism. The talk includes examples from Argentina, Haiti, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Uruguay, and Colombia.

If you would like to receive a Zoom link, please email Melody Wauke (maw2277@columbia.edu). The link will be sent the day before the event.

Joshua Billings (Princeton University, Classics)
Friday, April 5, 2024, 11:00 am ET 
509 Hamilton Hall, Department of Classics, 1130 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY, 10027

Joshua Billings (Princeton, Classics) will discuss The Philosophical Stage: Drama and Dialectic in Classical Athens (Princeton UP, 2023)

The Classical Studies Graduate Program is pleased to announce that Professor Joshua Billings (Princeton University), author of The Philosophical Stage: Drama and Dialectic in Classical Athens (Princeton UP, 2021), will be on campus to discuss his book on Friday, April 5, at 11am in Room 607 Hamilton Hall.

This in-person event has an author-meets-reader format. We are circulating in advance "Tragedy in the Philosophical Age of the Greeks" (Introduction) and "Intrigue and Ontology" (Chapter 2) [excluding subsection “Language and Necessity: Sophocles’ Philoctetes (I)”] to prepare for the conversation (please see the selections attached).

After an introduction by Professor Dhananjay Jagannathan (CU Department of Philosophy), Prof. Billings will discuss the book, engage in dialogue with Jake Haagenson (CLST), and answer questions from attendees in a seminar-style format.

A short reception will follow the event. We hope that you can join us!

The Justice-In-Education Initiative at Columbia University invites you to:

Music of the Oppressed: Tradition, Un-tradition, and the Unschooling of Music.
Helga Davis and Alkinoos Ioannidis in Conversation

Helga Davis and Alkinoos Ioannidis have independently of each other engaged with the question of music as political engagement from the vantage point of the creator and the performer, especially with what could be called, a la Paulo Freire, “music of the oppressed.” They have been articulating this question in the music that they create and perform, especially from within the context of what constitutes “tradition” in musical education and what the role of the Classics can be in the production of modern music. As teachers, they have taken these questions to their students actively facing the challenges of what it takes to un-school children in music and school them again in a music project that is emancipatory (or e-womancipatory, e-humancipatory) utilizing the long tradition of humanity (mythology, in the case of Helga Davis, or “traditional” music, as Alkinoos Ioannidis does). They are both engaged in reorienting music for children as a pedagogical project, teaching them what music can do for humanity.

Moderated by Stathis Gourgouris, this dialogue will cover what can be possible for music on the stitches, borders, and folds of its being.

This is a joint event with Leros Humanism Seminars (LHS/ΣΛ), a project of Columbia Global Centers, Athens. 

Read More Here

The Justice-In-Education Initiative at Columbia University invites you to:

Antigone Bound in a Mexico City women’s Prison

Speaker: Andrew Parker (Rutgers University)

In November 2018, Andrew Parker visited Santa Martha Acatitla, Mexico’s maximum security women’s prison as part of a collaboration between the Program in Comparative Literature, Rutgers University, and the Department of Estudios de Género (Gender Studies), UNAM (Mexico’s National Autonomous University). The collaboration was funded by the now-completed Mellon project “Critical Theory and the Global South” (Judith Butler and Penelope Deutscher PIs). The highlight of the visit to Santa Martha Acatitla was the screening for the delegation of a short video based on Sophocles’ Antigone created by the women themselves to protest their imprisonment. In addition to the video, the women have been collaborating with the UNAM Department of Women’s and Gender Studies in several murals documented in Deshacer la carcel (Unmaking the Prison). The event will center around the video as part of a discussion about “arts education” in Mexican and US prisons and on Antigone as a topos that indexes confinement and incarceration cross-culturally.

Read More Here

Richard Neer (U Classical Dialogue: Chicago, Art History) and Leslie Kurke (Berkeley, Dept. of Greek & Roman Studies)
Friday, February 23, 2024 11:00 am ET 
509 Hamilton Hall, Department of Classics, 1130 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY, 10027

(co-sponsored with Classics): Richard Neer (U Chicago, Art History) and Leslie Kurke (Berkeley, Dept. of Greek & Roman Studies) will discuss Pindar, Song, and Space: Towards a Lyric Archaeology (Johns Hopkins, 2019).

This in-person event has an author-meets-readers format. We are circulating in advance "The Propinquity of Things (Introduction), an excerpt from "Two Spatial Technologies: The Map and the Chorus" (Chapter 1), and "Epigraphy, Architecture, Song: Olympian 6 and Other Gifts" (Chapter 7) to prepare for the conversation (please see them attached).

After an introduction by Professor Ioannis Mylonopoulos (CU Department of Art History and Archaeology), Profs. Neer and Kurke will discuss the book, engage in dialogue with Margaret Corn (CLST) and Brett Stine (Department of Classics), and answer questions from attendees in a seminar-style format.

A short reception will follow the event. We hope that you can join us!

Prof. Kristi Upson-Saia (Occidental College) will give her talk entitled "Dental Distress in the Ancient Mediterranean.".

Title: Dental Distress in the Ancient Mediterranean

Abstract: Although we have seen an uptick in scholarship on ancient health and healing in recent years, scholars have devoted little attention to dental ailments and tooth pain. That said, in this talk, Dr. Upson-Saia will argue that dental ailments were among the most distressing health concerns faced by the vast majority of people in the ancient Mediterranean. To make this case, she will survey bioarcheological studies to discern the prevalence and kinds of dental pathologies people experienced. She will then survey ancient medical sources to further expand our understanding of the health risks posed by dental ailments, as well as to get a sense of the health risks involved in ancient dental treatments. And, finally, she will discuss a curious medical debate about the degree to which physicians should alleviate their patients’ pain when treating dental ailments. Taking a cue from Roy Porter’s call for more scholarship that takes the perspective of sick and suffering people—what Porter calls “medicine from below”—this talk will be keenly attuned to everyday people’s experiences of dental distress in the ancient Mediterranean.

The Justice-In-Education Initiative at Columbia University invites you to:

Art as a Practice of Freedom

Mia Ruyter and Kristina Binova in Conversation with Shedrick Blackwell and Amaury Bonilla

“As artists, educators, activists, and scholars, we ask ourselves, what is the best way to share quality arts programming with system-impacted community members? How can we participate in the struggle for prison abolition? This workshop involves art creation, reflection, and a discussion on practice. Although our work is fun and joyful and results in positive human connections, first and foremost, our priority is creating a space to deliver programming that heals, educates, and liberates. The friendship, joy, and community that sometimes happen during our programs are part of creating a liberatory space because education and healing are necessary to free them and all of us from the systems in society that lead to the dystopia of mass incarceration.”

Read More Here

For more information, please contact Shante Tucker, Administrative Assistant, at st3516@columbia.edu.

Thursday, 18th January 2024, 7:30 p.m.

     Prof. Elizabeth Carney (Clemson University)

“The End of a Dynasty: Commemoration and Appropriation of the Aeacid Past”

Location: Columbia University Faculty House

Prof. Carney has kindly shared the abstract of the talk with us:

"Aeacid monarchy in Molossia/Epirus ended in an explosion of violence about 232 BCE, yet some Aeacids continued to celebrate their predecessors and, indirectly, themselves, even more than two centuries later. At Delphi and possibly at Olympia, Nereis, the last survivor of the immediate ruling family, with her husband, Gelon II, soon after the abolition of monarchy in Epirus, dedicated multiple statues of some of the last ruling Aeacids to Apollo.  The burials of at least three other members of the Aeacid clan, resident in Macedonia, clustered around the burial or tomb of Olympias in the region of Pydna, the site of her death. The name “Neoptolemus,” that of the son of Achilles and supposed founder of Molossian monarchy (and of several Epirote kings), appears in all three inscriptions, as does pride in Aeacid identity. Two of these inscriptions celebrate Olympias, but none mentions monarchy, either Epirote or Macedonian. This paper will examine the nature and apparent motivation of these post-monarchy memorials."

We are excited to invite you to the fourth and final talk of the Fall 2023 semester! 

Pauline LeVen (Yale University) will give her talk entitled "A World in Eight Tones: Seikilos’ Musical Cosmography." Dr. LeVen's talk will take place on Friday, December 8th, at 4:10 PM EST in Hamilton 603 and on Zoom. 

If you would like to receive a Zoom link, please email Melody Wauke (maw2277@columbia.edu). The link will be sent the day before the event.

Our speaker has kindly agreed to pre-circulate an abstract, pasted below

Title: A World in Eight Tones: Seikilos’ Musical Cosmography

Abstract: This paper focuses on the Seikilos epitaph, described as the "oldest surviving complete musical composition including musical notation from anywhere in the world.” It considers the epitaph as a form of cosmography and examines three questions: 1) how does the Seikilos song, in its use of musical and semantic material, create a world with a sense of order and boundaries, and provide a quasi-sensory experience of what it evokes?; 2) how does the materiality of the composition affect its interpretation, the kind of world(s) it constructs, and the response it seeks to elicit?; 3) how does the life of the object itself, through time and space, create alternate cosmographies and forms of thinking about the world as a whole, and the kind of world(s) that the song imagines for itself? 

For more information, please contact Shante Tucker, Administrative Assistant, at: st3516@columbia.edu.

Dear all,

Due to unforeseen circumstances, we regret to inform you that the in-person component of the event has been canceled. However, we are pleased to announce that the event will now be conducted virtually via Zoom. For logistical reasons, this virtual session is exclusively available to individuals affiliated with Columbia University. To access the Zoom link for the event, we kindly ask you to register using the following link: https://forms.gle/1Mz4dUNJZZtQA1kh6

The Zoom link will be circulated on the morning of the event.

We appreciate your understanding and cooperation in this matter.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to us at gl2623@columbia.edu.

Kind regards,

Giovanni Lovisetto

The Center for the Ancient Mediterranean (CAM) at Columbia University is thrilled to invite you to the following lecture:

Sulochana R. Asirvatham (Montclair State University)

“The Paradox of Humane Imperialism: Revisiting Plutarch’s On the Fortune or Virtue of Alexander the Great”

Friday, November 17, 2023, 11:00 am ET

5th Floor Seminar Room, Italian Academy for Advanced Study, 1161 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY, 10027

A short reception will follow the lecture. All are welcome to attend.

This is a hybrid event; registration is required for both in-person and virtual attendance: https://forms.gle/1z4rpikCusj7A69t6

You can find an abstract of the talk on our website, together with further information on this event and on the Fall 2023 CAM series.

For any questions, feel free to get in touch with me at gl2623@columbia.edu.

Kind regards,

Giovanni Lovisetto

Title: "Healing Choruses and Therapeutic Landscapes of Roman Greece"

Abstract: In this talk, Dr. Golab introduces the corpus of epigraphic choral lyric and explores the dynamics between literary inscriptions and performance. She establishes that there was a ‘paianic revival’ in the Roman Empire—a poetic trend most vividly present in the epigraphic medium. The reasons for the revival were manifold, but in this talk, Dr. Golab focuses on the intersections of ancient ideas about song, epigraphy, and healthy environment. She demonstrates that the inscribed paians were a part of a more widespread effort to create therapeutic landscapes in Roman Greece.

Hanna Golab (Columbia University) will give her talk entitled "Healing Choruses and Therapeutic Landscapes of Roman Greece." Dr. Golab's talk will take place on Friday, November 10th, at 4:10 PM EST in Hamilton 603 and on Zoom. 

If you would like to receive a Zoom link, please email Melody Wauke (maw2277@columbia.edu). The link will be sent the day before the event.

Our speaker has kindly agreed to pre-circulate an abstract, pasted below. A poster for the event is also attached to the bottom of this email.

Denise Demetriou (USCD, Department of History)
Friday, November 10, 2023, 11:00 am ET 
509 Hamilton Hall, Department of Classics, 1130 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY, 10027 

Denise Demetriou (USCD, Department of History) will discuss her book Phoenicians among Others: Why Migrants Mattered in the Ancient Mediterranean (Oxford UP, 2023)