Verity Platt, Caleb Simone, and Nancy Worman, organizers

This Roundtable aims to advance some of the work of the 2013 conference hosted at Barnard, which focused on politics and aesthetics in ancient Greek literature and culture. This time around we are seeking to expand the scope to include perspectives on sensory aspects of art and performance and the cultural practices that inform them, as well as their reception, and to highlight work that focuses on affect, materialities, orientations, and post-human engagements with embodiment and the environment. A further expansion looks to work on the theory and philosophy of media, particularly the relationship between processes of transmission, aesthetics, and the senses. Another considers the subjective dimension of aesthetics but goes beyond questions of personal perspective, taste, or style to ponder (with Aristotle) the soul as a sensorium, which also invites questions about the relation between aesthetics and psychology and perception and epistemology.

Aesthetics Roundtable II: Subjectivities, Senses, Surrounds

November 9-10, 2018– Barnard College, Columbia University

Verity Platt, Caleb Simone, and Nancy Worman, organizers

Sulzberger Parlor (3rd Floor), Barnard Hall

SCHEDULE

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9

9:30 AM: BREAKFAST (Sulzberger Parlor)

10:00 AM: WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION (Nancy, Verity, Caleb)

10:30 AM: MORNING SESSION

Seeing and Hearing in Tragedy

Chair: Helene Foley (Barnard College)

Paper: Naomi Weiss (Harvard University), "This is That: Seeing Theater in Fifth-Century

Athens"

Respondent: Anna Conser (Columbia University)

Paper: Ella Haselswerdt (Cornell University), "Sound and the Sublime in Oedipus at

Colonus: The Limits of Representation"

Respondent: Bridget Murnaghan (University of Pennsylvania)

Paper: Maria Combatti (Columbia University), "Landscape and Affects in Euripides'

Hippolytus"

Respondent: Alex Purves (UCLA)

1:00 PM: LUNCH (James Room)

2:00 PM: AFTERNOON SESSION

Tragic Embodiments

Chair: Elizabeth Scharffenberger (Columbia University)

Paper: Caitlin Morgan (Columbia University), "Medea and the Post-Human”

Respondent: Athena Kirk (Cornell University)

Paper: Cristina Perez (Columbia University), "Hermione's Womb in Euripides'

Andromache"

Respondent: Katherine Hsu (Brooklyn College)

Paper: Nancy Worman (Barnard College), "Clytemnestra's Bodies"

Respondent: Mary Danisi (Cornell University)

5:00 PM: RECEPTION (Sulzberger Parlor)

Caleb Simone: aulos demonstration and Heracles discussion

7:00 PM: DINNER DIANA CENTER (Millicent Carey MacIntosh Student Dining Room)

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10

8:30 AM: BREAKFAST (Sulzberger Parlor)

9:00 AM: MORNING SESSION

Perceiving, Reflecting, Hearing

Chair: Josh Billings (Princeton University)

Paper: John Izzo (Columbia University), "Dreams, Ghosts, and Perception in

Sophocles’ Electra"

Respondent: Victoria Wohl (University of Toronto)

Paper: Ava Shirazi (Princeton University), " Sensing the Soul: The Liver, the Mirror, and

the Psyche in Plato’s Timaeus"

Respondent: Marcus Folch (Columbia University)

Paper: Ani Chen (Cornell University), "Sound Judgment: Sweetness and the Power of

Hearing in Aristotle's Political Thought"

Respondent: Iakovos Vasiliou (The Graduate Center, CUNY)

11:30 AM: COFFEE BREAK (Sulzberger Parlor)

11:45PM: MIDDAY SESSION

Temporalities and Voices

Chair: Pauline LeVen (Yale University)

Paper: Melissa Mueller (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), "Sappho 44:

Andromache’s 'No Future' Wedding Song and the Veil of Aphrodite"

Respondent: Charles Pletcher (Columbia University)

Paper: Sarah Nooter (University of Chicago), "The Temporalities of Touch in

Sappho, Sexton, and Olds"

Respondent: Tim Power (Rutgers University)

Paper: Emma Ianni (Columbia University), "Speaking from Without: Antigone’s Voice in

Sophocles, Woolf, and Carson"

Respondent: Helen Morales (University of Southern California)

2:00 PM: LUNCH (James Room)

3:00 PM: AFTERNOON SESSION

Mixed Medias

Chair: Nikolas Kakkoufa (Columbia University)

Paper: Caleb Simone (Columbia University), "'Unheard Melodies Are Sweeter:' Virtual

Sound and the Phenomenology of the Greek Vase"

Respondent: Milette Gaifman (Yale University)

Paper: Cat Lambert (Columbia University), "Superficial Classics: Cavafy and the

Philology of the [Book] Worm"

Respondent: Phiroze Vasunia (University College London)

Paper: Verity Platt (Cornell University) and Pantelis Michelakis (University of Bristol),

“Aesthetics and Media Theory: Some Provocations"

Respondent: Shane Butler (Johns Hopkins University)