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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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? 

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.

Title: "Representing Queenship in the Seleucid Empire"

Abstract: In the Hellenistic world, the material and corporeal presence of dynastic women was important to articulating dynastic power, legitimacy, and continuity. In this talk, I examine the multi-modal strategies through which the physical presence of royal women was evoked in the Seleucid empire. The Seleucid realm requires a nuanced understanding of representation, inaugurating a different approach to the category of “portraiture,” as well as queenly faces, in ancient contexts. In the third and second centuries, Seleucid royal women were honored and represented in a variety of spatial contexts, from Anatolia to Iran. Honorific statues, glyptic and numismatic images, and surviving records of performative activations of the queen’s corporeality comprise the extant corpus of evidence. The Seleucid court and its subjects were not limited to any single mode of representation and instead embraced different kinds of portrait cultures—from the durable to the ephemeral, the over-life-size to the miniature—to evoke dynastic femininity. Furthermore, the evidence for Seleucid women charts the distinct movements of images, cults, and memories, as well as the physical mobilities of dynastic women themselves, across geo-cultural regions throughout the Hellenistic world. Ultimately, Seleucid portrayals of their royal women encourage us to challenge our own expectations of and encounters with figural representations in visual culture.

Malina Buturović (Yale University) will be our first speaker, with a talk entitled "The Transmission of Fault: Heredity as Problem of Theodicy". Malina's talk will take place on Friday, September 15th, at 4:10 PM EST in Hamilton 603 and on Zoom. If you would like to receive a Zoom link, please email Marissa Swan (mkh2161@columbia.edu) or Melody Wauke (maw2277@columbia.edu). The link will be sent the day before the event.

Topic: Imperial Greek Literature

Location: Hamilton 603

Zoom Link

Topic: Queer Receptions

Location: Hamilton 603

Zoom Link

Topic: Asian American Receptions

Location: Hamilton 603

Zoom Link:  https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/j/96392444924?pwd=SmVPYmNKVXBJcVlNNm5kbGxVRFBYUT09

Topic: Ancient Magic and Identity Formation

Location: Hamilton 603

Zoom Link: https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/j/93908085867?pwd=Mk1HSmRlczI0RE83LzJZVnhUaGFIQT09

Topic: Propertius’ Monobiblos and the Mobility Turn

Location: Hamilton 603

Zoom link:  https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/j/91074277311?pwd=WGVKQ3Z5VnZ4VmRxajArZ3JrT0Zmdz09

Topic: Latin American Representation

Location: Hamilton 603

Zoom Link: : https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/j/97185194768?pwd=RkQzeUdNdkNUUHp0cXQ2eEpNYWVydz09

Topic: Virtue in Plato

Location: 603 Hamilton Hall

Zoom Link

Topic: Why Study Numismatics?

Location: TBD

Topic: South African Receptions

Location: TBD

Topic: Digitization and Storytelling for Ancient Spaces

Location: TBD

Topic: Reproductive Rights in the Ancient World

Location: TBD

Topic: "Watch Your Language: Unintelligible Sounds and Confusing Sights in Aeschylus' Agamemnon and Thucydides' Book 7".

Location: 603 Hamilton

Zoom Link: Coming Soon

Topic: "Auctor, Imitation, and Metaprose: Rhetorica ad Herennium 4.1-10

Location: 603 Hamilton

Zoom Link

Topic: History in/of Classics II

Location: 603 Hamilton

Zoom Link: Coming Soon