2013
|
|
Tuesday, December 10, 2013 The Bakkhai
Chapel of the Holy Innocents A world premiere of Dylan Mattingly's musical setting of the ecstatic and terrifying choruses from Euripides' Bakkhai, in Ancient Greek, with narration by Thomas Bartscherer. Followed by a panel discussion about The Bakkhai and the music of Ancient Greece, by panelists Lauren Curtis (Bard), Helene Foley (Barnard College), and Daniel Mendelsohn (Bard). The event is free and open to the public. |
|
|
Tuesday, October 22, 2013 Telling Stories from Stones: Provincials of the Roman Empire in their Own Words
A lecture by Professor Andrew Johnston, Yale UniversityReem-Kayden Center His talk will investigate how we can study the Roman Empire through inscriptions, what these inscriptions tell us about the lives and identities of individuals, and how the stories of these individuals can ultimately help us develop new and more sophisticated models and understandings of the complexity of the Roman world and the processes of imperialism. |
|
Thursday, May 16, 2013 Classics Program Spring Fest
Blithewood Enjoy food and drink, hear about the projects and plans of graduating seniors, and give our departing Latinist Ben Stevens a hearty send-off! All are welcome, on the lawn overlooking the gardens at Blithewood (or in the Fishbowl in case of rain). |
|
|
Sunday, April 14, 2013 Panel Discussion: "Euripides' The Bakkhai: Play and Performance"
with Daniel Mendelsohn (Bard College), Helene Foley (Barnard), Rachel Kitzinger (Vassar), and Emily Wilson (University of Pennsylvania)Fisher Center A discussion by four experts of Euripides' tragedy The Bakkhai (The Bacchae), with special attention to the unique features of the current production at Bard's Fisher Center. Free and open to the public. |
|
|
|
Thursday, April 11, 2013 – Sunday, April 14, 2013 The Bakkhai (The Bacchae)
By EuripidesFisher Center, LUMA Theater Thursday, April 11 at 7 pm Friday, April 12 at 7 pm Saturday, April 13 at 7 pm Sunday, April 14 at 2 and 7 pm Tickets: $15; Free for the Bard students (reservations via the Box Office) April 13: A post-performance conversation with Ned Moore and Lileana Blain-Cruz, moderated by Thomas Bartscherer. Free and open to the public. April 14: A post-performance panel discussion (after the matinee) with four eminent classicists: Helene Foley (Barnard College), Rachel Kitzinger (Vassar), Daniel Mendelsohn (Bard College) and Emily Wilson (University of Pennsylvania). Free and open to the public. Directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz Translated by Ned Moore ’13 The god Dionysus returns to Thebes to prove his divinity and punish the city's unbelievers. This student production is presented in partnership with Bard's Classical Studies Program. |
|
Thursday, February 14, 2013 Candidate for the Position in Classics
Patrick GlauthierOlin 205 Lucan and the Limits of Didactic Poetry: The Case of the Libyan Snakes This talk will explore the representation of scientific knowledge and didactic poetry in book 9 of Lucan's Civil War. During an excruciating trek across the Libyan desert, Cato's Roman army arrives at a spring that teams with poisonous snakes. Here, Lucan adopts the role of a didactic poet and teaches the reader about the exotic African serpents, drawing heavily on a tradition of scientific poems on poisonous animals. The troops, however, fail to perceive the nature of the situation, and the snakes soon decimate Cato's army. Natural historical and medical knowledge fail to assist the snakes' victims as well, and the reader is left with the impression that both science and scientific poetry have no meaningful or practical role to play in Lucan's universe. In a world unhinged by civil war and on the verge of total breakdown, the elegant refinement and bookish learning of didactic poetry look like exercises of purely academic interest, entirely divorced from the world they purport to explain. 40 minute talk, followed by Q&A. |
|
|
Monday, February 11, 2013 Candidate for the Position in Classics
Carrie MowbrayOlin 202 Problems with Prophecy in Senecan Drama Examining prophecy via the role of the /vates/ (prophet/poet/bard), I focus on the failures of prophecy in Senecan drama. Prophets who are traditionally (that is, in pre-Senecan Greek and Latin literature) successful at being able to forecast the future—Cassandra, Tiresias, Calchas—are unable to give accurate representations of what will come to pass in Seneca's plays. Where prophecy per se is a flawed enterprise, I argue that we find in the other resonance of /vates/ (poet) characters who are more successful and autonomous at conveying privileged knowledge. With this in mind, I look at Seneca's non-prophet 'usurpers' and make a case for what this can tell us about the status of human-divine relations, and about poetics, in Seneca and in early imperial literature more generally. |
|
|
Wednesday, February 6, 2013 Candidate for the Position in Classics
Lauren CurtisOlin 204 Nymphs in the Night Performance, Myth and the Transformation of Tradition in Virgil, Aeneid 10 Roman poetry of the Augustan period is full of evocations of Greek song culture. How does such poetry create imagined worlds of performance? How do responses to tradition generate new literary experiences? I address these questions by focusing on a pivotal but underappreciated narrative moment in Virgil’s Aeneid when Aeneas encounters a group of sea nymphs who urge him on to war. The scene recalls and reconfigures a particular constellation of Greek mythic and performance traditions related to choral song and dance. It does so, moreover, while dramatizing the invention of Roman ritual practice. I propose, then, that in Virgil’s narrative, epic gains foundational power from its appropriation of Greek performance culture. |