Hello everyone,

We are excited to invite you to the fourth and last talk of the Fall 2024 Semester!

Luke Lea (Columbia University) will give his talk entitled Good “Because of Itself” in Republic II. The talk will occur on Friday, December 6th, at 4:10 p.m. EDT in Hamilton 603 and on Zoom. A reception will follow. 

If you would like to receive a Zoom link, please email Holly Axford (ha2694@columbia.edu). The Zoom link will be circulated the day before the talk. 

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

We hope to see you all there!

All the best,

Holly Axford, Gia Chen, Paraskevi Martzavou, Umberto Verdura, and Gareth Williams

Columbia Classics Lectures Series Co-Organizers

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Title: Good “Because of Itself” in Republic II.

Abstract: Early in Republic II, Socrates accepts a challenge from Glaucon. The Challenge is to show that the just life is better than the unjust life, but Glaucon will not accept any old argument that this is so. Socrates must praise justice as something valuable “because of itself” and without any reference to the value it has “because of what comes to be from it”. In agreeing to praise justice in this way, Socrates may seem to pledge that his defense of the just life will bracket any valuable consequences being just may bring the just person. Yet later formulations of what appears to be the same Challenge expect that Socrates will rest his case for the value of justice on some things that most modern readers would consider among its consequences. And indeed the argument he develops in Books II-IX relies on things that should seem to count for modern readers among justice’s consequences: the happiness and pleasure justice brings about for its possessor, the work justice does in the just person’s soul, the outcome resulting from this work, etc. In resting his defense of the value of the just life on these consequences of justice, does Socrates violate the terms of The Challenge? I argue that he does not. The Challenge, rightly understood, tasks Socrates not with praising justice as intrinsically good (which would require bracketing all its consequences) but as good by nature. Something can be good by nature in virtue of certain consequences it produces.

** Please Bring a dictionary and laptop **

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

Event link: https://sofheyman.org/events/celebrating-recent-work-by-john-ma

Join us for our New Books Series event honoring Polis: A New History of the Ancient Greek City-State from the Early Iron Age to the End of Antiquity by John Ma. In this landmark book, John Ma provides a new history of the polis, charting its spread and development into a common denominator for hundreds of communities from the Black Sea to North Africa and from the Near East to Italy.

Professor Ma will be joined by panelists Richard Billows, Ellen Morris, Dan-el Padilla Peralta, and Seth Schwartz.

Tuesday, December 3, 2024, 6:15 pm EST | In person at the Heyman Center and online via Zoom

Registration required 

CU/BC ID holders must also register in advance

On Friday, November 22nd. Professor Jeffrey Ulrich (Rutgers University) will be presenting in person his new book The Shadow of an Ass. Philosophical Choice and Aesthetic Experience in Apuleius' Metamorphoses (University of Michigan Press), and he will also talk about the process of transforming a Ph.D. dissertation into a book

Shane Butler (Johns Hopkins University) will give his talk entitled Cicero’s Regret: Classics and the Atmospheric Turn. The talk will occur on Friday, November  15th, at 4:10 p.m. EDT in Hamilton 603 and on Zoom. A reception will follow. 

If you would like to receive a Zoom link, please email Holly Axford (ha2694@columbia.edu). The Zoom link will be circulated the day before the talk.

Title: Cicero’s Regret: Classics and the Atmospheric Turn

Abstract: The Late Antique poet Ausonius tells us, in passing, that the noun paenitentia (regret) is found nowhere in Cicero. The claim is true, and this paper uses it as the starting point for an exploration of the Latin language of affect, with particular attention to impersonal verbs, both of affect and of weather. This will lead us to interlocutors in a wide range of fields: philosophy of mind, affect theory, phenomenology, “atmospherology,” and historical linguistics, among others. It will also shed light on some of Cicero’s most intimate and anguished letters. This paper thereby offers an initial attempt to consider what the “atmospheric turn” can do for Classics, and vice versa.

The Classical Studies Graduate Program is pleased to announce that Professor Simcha Gross (University of Pennsylvania), author of Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2024), will be on campus to discuss his book on Friday, November 8, at 11am in Room 607 Hamilton Hall.

This in-person event has an author-meets-readers format. We are circulating in advance the Introduction and Chapter 5 (pages 1-32 and 197-238). Also included is Chapter 1, for those interested in learning more about the interventions discussed in the Introduction. Please see the selections attached.

After an introduction by Professor Seth Schwartz (CU Departments of Classics and History), Professor Gross will discuss the book, engage in dialogue with Ayelet Wenger (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!

**Please note that if you are not a CUID cardholder, you must register for access to campus using this form by 4pm on Thursday, November 7**

Title: Vulnerable Bodies: Roman Medical Research and the Enslaved.

Abstract: Roman doctors periodically required bodies, both living and dead, for medical demonstration and research. There were many vulnerable bodies in Roman society--animals, the enslaved, the impoverished, the outcast, and the conquered--and this talk will explore which bodies doctors seem to have favored for which purposes. As it turns out, their use of the enslaved appears to have been surprisingly curtailed. The talk will therefore also address Galen's perspectives on slavery and the enslaved and explore the potential boundaries to the exploitation of this particularly vulnerable population.

Are you interested in Religious Studies at Columbia?

Drop in for an informal information session! Food and Drink will be provided.

Attention undergraduates in Classics, Ancient Studies, and Hellenic Studies!

Attend our Open House on Friday, October 18th, from 11:45 to 1:45, and meet fellow students, the Director of Undergraduate Studies, and other department faculty and staff. Learn about the majors, minors, and Spring courses. 

Coffee and a light brunch will be served. 

On Friday, October 11th, from 4:10–5 pm in 716 Philosophy Hall, the Classical Studies Graduate Program is hosting an information session for undergraduates interested in learning more about the BA/MA option through the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

The Classical Studies program offers a unique interdepartmental and interdisciplinary training in the study of the ancient world, drawing on faculty from the departments of Art History & Archaeology, Classics, History, and Philosophy. If you are a prospective applicant in your junior year or in the first semester of your senior year, we invite you to learn more about the requirements ahead of the application deadline on November 13th. We also welcome students who are considering applying in upcoming semesters.

Title: Social Networks of Debt, 51-50 BCE

Abstract:

Focusing on the 50s BCE, and especially the Ciceronian corpus of letters from his Cilician governorship, this paper tries to strike a balance between economic and socio-political interpretations of debt on the eve of Civil War. The first half of the paper gives a state of the conversation over the last 50 years with a special eye to improvements in models for both thinking about debt on a global scale and how new data has changed our understanding of the Roman monetary supply. The second half of the paper addresses the reading of anecdotal literary sources and the difficulties of interpretation, trying to answer the question: are socio-political factors driving the economic factor or vice versa?

** Please Bring a dictionary and laptop **

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

Ancient Greek & Latin Placement Exam, August 28, 2024, 11 a.m.–2 p.m. in 616 Hamilton Hall

This is a sight exam; no dictionaries or grammatical aids may be used. 

Please contact Professor Kakkoufa with any questions nikolas.kakkoufa@columbia.edu

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

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