Each year, the Classics Department welcomes a number of international scholars to present lectures and host colloquia, contributing to the lively program of intellectual exchange. Feel fee to subscribe to our email list if you are interested in receiving announcements about our lectures and events.
Below is a list of the planned Classics lectures for the 2018-2019 academic year. Check back soon for more details on the lectures as plans are finalized. We hope you save the dates and are able to join us!
Spring 2019
Brown University Library Event
Tuesday, February 5, 2019, 12:00pm
Drama at Athens: Some Evidence from Inscriptions
Where: Digital Scholarship Library, Rockefeller Library
Description: Lecture by Stephen Tracy '63, Princeton University - School of Historical Studies
Thursday, February 7, 2019, 6:00pm
Emperor Valens' Adamantine Wall, Or: How to Cause a Migrant Crisis in the Later Roman World
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 108
Description: Lecture by Timothy Hart, University of Michigan
Monday, February 11, 2019, 5:30pm
Law & Empire in Republican Rome
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 108
Description: Lecture by Lisa Eberle, University of California, Berkeley
Tuesday, February 12, 2019, 12:00pm
Cultures & Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (CRAM)
Ritual Violence Prescribed
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 008
Description: Paper by Saul Olyan, Judaic Studies; Religious Studies
Modern Greek Studies Lecture
Tuesday, February 12, 2019, 5:30pm
Bankruptcy, Humiliation, & Great Power Politics in Fin de Siècle Greece
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 108
Description: Lecture by Georgios Giannakopoulos, Durham University and University of Peloponnese
Thursday, February 14, 2019, 6:00pm
Res Publica Res Populi
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 108
Description: Lecture by Amy Russell, University of Durham
Thursday, February 21, 2019, 6:00pm
Audience and Affect: Reinterpreting Tacitus' Accession of Tiberius
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 108
Description: Lecture by George Baroud, New York University
Tuesday, March 12, 2019, 12:00pm
Cultures & Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (CRAM)
Jewish Conversion, Women's Resistance, and the End of Empire in the "Doctrina Jacobi Nuper Baptizah"
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 008
Description: Paper by Andrew Jacobs, Religious Studies, Scripps College
Wednesday, March 20, 2019, 5:30pm
The Art of the Spider: Philo, Saraceno, & their Webs
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 108
Description: Lecture by Ellen Finkelpearl, Scripps College
April 1, 2019, 5:30pm
Charles Alexander Robinson, Jr. Memorial Lecture
Words that Speak to Memory: Orality in Roman Culture
Where: Stephen Roberts Hall, Room 101
Description: Lecture by Maurizio Bettini, University of Siena
Co-Sponsored Event: Egyptology & Assyriology
Saturday, April 6, 2019 - Sunday, April 7, 2019
The Allure of the Ancient: Early Modern Receptions of the Ancient Near East
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 108
Description: Speakers include - Lindsay Allen, Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, Elisa Boeri, Mark Darlow, Florian Ebeling, Margaret Geoga, Diane Greco Josefowicz, Andrea Middleton, Julia Prest, Felipe Rojas, Maryam Sanjabi, Michael Seymour, John Steele, Daniel Stolzenberg
Tuesday, April 9, 2019, 12:00pm
Cultures & Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (CRAM)
Sacred Topoi: Religious REstivals Between Plato and Late Antique Hagiography
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 008
Description: Paper by Byron MacDougall, Classics
Saturday, April 13, 2019, 9:30am - 12:30pm
Asian American Studies Writing Group: A Half-Day Workshop
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 108 (lunch included in RI Hall 008)
Description: Workshop lead by Classics grad students, Kelly Nguyen and Stephanie Wong
Poster created by Eliza Chen
Monday, April 15, 2019, 5:30pm
Grimshaw-Gudewicz Lecture
Translation as a Contact Zone: The Case of Translating Ovid's "Tristia" into Chinese
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 108 (Please RSVP)
Description: Lecture by Jinyu Liu, DePauw University
Co-Sponsored Event: Program in Early Cultures
Tuesday, April 16, 2019, 5:30pm
World Literature and Its Discontents: A View from East Mediterranean Antiquity
Where: List 110
Description: Lecture by Dan Selden, UC Santa Cruz. Co-sponsored by the Program in Early Cultures, Comparitive Literature, and the Department of Classics
Modern Greek Studies Event
Thu, April 18 - 19, 2019
(un)Common Ground: Authors, Texts, Translators
Description: A two-day, translation colloquium organized by the Program in Modern Greek Studies (posters created by Joanna Podias)
Co-Sponsored Event: JIAAW
Wednesday, April 24, 2019, 5:30pm
Hyperborea: Fragments of Greek Cosmography
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 108
Description: Lecture by Renaud Gagné, University of Cambridge
Tuesday, May 7, 2019, 12:00pm
Cultures & Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (CRAM)
Ingenious Art: Mimicry in Mesopotamian Language and Thought
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 008
Description: Paper by Shiyanthi Thavapalan, Egyptology & Assyriology
Past Lectures & Events (2018-2019)
Fall 2018
Thursday, September 13, 2018, 12:00pm
Cultures & Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (CRAM)
Urartian Inscriptions in Late Antique and Medieval Armenia
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 008
Description: Paper by Felipe Rojas, JIAAW
Thursday, September 27, 2018, 5:30pm
Women In and Out of Time: Atalanta & Sappho
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 108
Description: Lecture by Kirk Ormand, Oberlin College
Friday, October 5, 2018, 12:00pm
Classics Lunchtime Colloquium: Evander & the Invention of the History of Latium in Virgil's "Aeneid"
Where: Macfarlane House, Room 101
Description: Presentation by Sergio Casali, University of Rome Tor Vergata
Tuesday, October 9, 2018, 12:00pm
Cultures & Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (CRAM)
Conflict, Trauma, and the Formation of an Early Christian Identity
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 008
Description: Paper by Jonathan Conant, History
Thursday, October 18, 2018, 5:30pm
Civil War, Sovereignty, and the Poetic "State of Exception" in Lucan’s Bellum Civile
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 108
Description: Lecture by Thomas Biggs, University of Georgia
Modern Greek Studies Lecture
Monday, October 22, 2018, 5:30pm
Fifty Shades of Blame: On Early Phanariot Invective
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 108
Description: Lecture by Nikos Panou, Stony Brook University
Wednesday, October 24, 2018, 5:30pm
Michael C.J. Putnam Lecture
"The little of our earthly trust": Virgil's Aeneid and the Geography of Loss
Where: Friedman Hall, Room 208
Description: Lecture by Sarah Spence, Medieval Academy of America
Thursday, November 1, 2018, 5:30pm
"Race Mixing" & The Fall of Rome: The Role of Eugenics in Early Twentieth-Century Classical Scholarship
Where: Friedman Hall, Room 208
Description: Lecture by Denise Eileen McCoskey, Miami University
Thursday, November 8, 2018, 5:30pm
"This young man deserves special mention": John Wesley Gilbert at Brown University, 1886-1888
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 108
Description: Lecture by John Lee, University of California, Santa Barbara
Co-Sponsored with the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World
Monday, November 12, 2018, 5:30pm
Travelling with Portuguese Explorers: On a Critical Edition of Giovanni Pietro Maffei's "Historiarum Indicarum Libri XVI"
Where: Annmary Brown Library
Description: Lecture by Leni Ribeiro Leite, Universidade Federal do Espirito Santo
Co-Sponsored with the Program in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies
Tuesday, November 13, 2018, 12:00pm
Cultures & Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (CRAM)
From an Imperial Family to an Imperial College: Family Portraits on Roman Central Coinage, 138-284 CE.
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 008
Description: Paper by Sam Caldis, History/Classics
Modern Greek Studies Lecture
Wednesday, November 14, 2018, 5:30pm
Macdedonian Question: The Trap of History and the Recent Greece-FYROM Agreement
Where: Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street
Description: Lecture by Kostis Karpozilos, Director, Contemporary Social History Archives (ASKI), Athens
Thursday, November 15, 2018, 5:30pm
Aristotle on the Value of Comedy
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 108
Description: Lecture by Pierre Destrée, University of Louvain & Princeton, Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies
Friday, November 16, 2018, 12:00pm
Classics Lunchtime Colloquium: TITLE TBD
Where: Macfarlane House, Room 101
Description: Presentation by Leni Ribeiro Leite, Universidade Federal do Espirito Santo
Monday, December 3, 2018, 8:00pm
71st Annual Latin Carol Celebration
Where: First Baptist Church in America, 75 North Main Street, Providence, RI
Description: Every December, on the second Monday following Thanksgiving, the Department of Classics hosts its annual program of readings and songs in the spirit of the season, conducted entirely in Latin (with some readings in Greek and Sanskrit). English translations of the readings are provided for those whose spoken Latin may be a little rusty.
Tuesday, December 4, 2018, 12:00pm
Cultures & Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (CRAM)
Late Antique Collegia: Epigraphic Culture and Social History in Roman Salona
Where: Rhode Island Hall, Room 008
Description: Paper by Dora Ivanisevic, Classics/Religious Studies