Friday April 18th at 11am
Teresa Morgan (Oxford University)
will give a talk entitled "Belief in Graeco-Roman religion"
in the 5th Floor Conference Room of the Italian Academy.
This paper is part of a current Oxford project, led by Teresa Morgan and Barbara Kowalzig, on faith and cognitive religiosity in Greek and Roman religions. It will focus on ideas about the gods and divine-human relations in popular morality, especially proverbs and fables.
Professor Morgan will briefly discuss what ‘faith’ might mean in Graeco-Roman religions, and in particular the range of divine-human relationships encompassed by it. She will then explore the religious world of proverbs and fables and the divine-human relationships they sketch. She will investigate the nature of the contract between the gods and humans, how it is initiated or changed, what people imagine the gods think about they way they worship them, and how they imagine the gods respond when mistakes are made in belief or cult. She will argue that fables and proverbs have a distinctive and significant contribution to make to the study of ancient cognitive religiosity.
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Monday March 10th at 5pm
Dirk Obbink (Oxford University)
will give a talk entitled:
"Vanishing Conjecture: Lost Books & their Recovery from Aristotle to Eco"
in the 5th Floor Conference Room of the Italian Academy.
Abstract:
In the reception of literature from Graeco-Roman antiquity to the
present, the failure of whole works to survive, or survival in fragmentary form,
is far more the rule than the other way round. Even whole genres could perish.
Readers from antiquity through the Renaissance were more sensitive to risks and
lapses in transmission than we are: the digital revolution is one modern
expression of such anxiety. Realization of the preponderance of partial
transmission puts the fragmentary work in a new light. The relation of the part
to the whole, the literary microcosm, and the representative nature of the text
preserved as an extract or quotation become central to the process of
interpretation. This is illustrated with a test-set of new texts, both published
and unpublished, entering the corpus of ancient literature for the first time,
including a new poem of Archilochus, a new Ass-novel, and a lost letter of Epicurus.
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At New York University
Monday March 10th at 6pm
Prof. Colin Renfrew, Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn,
will deliver the Inaugural Lecture in The Charles and Ritchie Scribner Distinguished Lectures in the History of Art, Department of Art History, New York University.
"The Destruction of the Past: Time to Say No"
Hemmerdinger Hall, 100 Washington Square East, followed by a reception.
Co-sponsored by the Department of Art History, the Department of Classics, the
Department of Anthropology, the Center for Ancient Studies, and the Fine Arts
Society.
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Monday March 3rd at 6:30pm
Hannah Cotton (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
will give a talk entitled:
"The Birth of Jesus and the Documents from the Judean Desert"
in the Private Dining Room at Jewish Theological Seminary (people will be directed by the guard on duty.)
Sponsored by JTS's Ancient Judaism Program and the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean.
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Friday February 8th at 11 am
Nikolas Bakirtzis (Lecturer and Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University)
will give a talk entitled: "Worldly Message, Sacred Meaning; The Fabric of Fortification Facades in Byzantium"
in the 5th Floor Conference Room of the Italian Academy
Abstract:
Fortifications defined the Byzantine city and shaped its cultural identity. In addition to their crucial defensive role, fortified enclosures dominated every aspect of life. In this way, their façades became an important component of Byzantine visual culture, reflecting both political and religious ideology. Citizens, outsiders, leaders, and anarchists transformed walls, towers, and gateways into symbolic and practical billboards by inscribing or inserting inscriptions, monograms, crosses, spolia, and other decorative details. This talk will address aspects of this tradition in an attempt to 'read' the fabric of fortification façades in Byzantium.
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Thursday January 31st at 5.30 pm
Andrew Meadows ( Margaret Thompson Curator of Greek Coins: The American Numismatic Society)
will give a talk entitled: "Coinage in the Hellenistic City", exploring the nature and function of civic coinage by comparing the history and monetary output of two neighboring cities in Caria in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC.
in the 5th Floor Conference Room of the Italian Academy
Friday January 25th at 11 am
Susan Mattern-Parkes ( University of Georgia)
will give a talk entitled "Galen's Patients"
in the 5th Floor Conference Room of the Italian Academy
