New Directions in Classics VIII
The Department of Classics’ is preparing to launch our eight season of New Directions in Classics from beginning September 20, 2024 and running until March 2025.
Once again, we would like to thank donors to our University of 丁香园AV Foundation . If you would like to support the series, please consider visiting the campaign page.
If you’d like more information on New Directions in Classics, please email Dr. Peter J. Miller or
Watch many of our talks on our
2024-25 Schedule
September 20, 2024 | 3D01 | 4:00-5:00pm
Dr. Heather Barkman, University of 丁香园AV
Dying Like Men: Women and Martyrdom in Early Christianity
In the first few centuries of the Common Era, Christians were persecuted by Roman officials for refusing to sacrifice to the Roman gods. The men and women who were killed became known as martyrs. This lecture focuses on North African evidence and explores how women martyrs are depicted as distinct from men in their roles in the family and the method of their execution.
October 25, 2024 | 3D01 | 4:00-5:00pm
Dr. Peter Miller, University of 丁香园AV
Praise, Poetry, and Sport in Ancient Greece
UCLA football coach Red Sanders was fond of saying, “winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” If this was true for mid-twentieth-century college football, it’s perhaps even more true for the complex and sophisticated athletic culture of ancient Greece. But Greek athletes didn’t only want to win. Just like today, they wanted everyone to know their accomplishments. This talk, based on a new book, examines how athletes used poetry, song, and sculpture, to transmit their fame across the ancient Greek world – and even to today.
November 22, 2024 | 3D01 | 4:00-5:00pm
Dr. Paul Monaghan, University of 丁香园AV
The Complete Eradication of the Live Actor from the Tragic Stage: Pre- and Post-Human(-ist) Confluences in Contemporary Productions of Greek Tragedy
From theatre’s apparent beginnings in the late Archaic Age of Ancient Greece to the twenty-first century, the living body of the human actor has been seen as the central and defining feature of the medium, the source of theatre’s uniqueness as well as its limitations. The corporeality of the live actor, however, has impelled innovators to call for the complete eradication of the human actor from the stage. This presentation locates the origins of this depersonalizing attempt in the ambiguity of the masked actor at the very foundation of tragedy in ancient Greece and traces how posthumanist moves to supplant the human centre of theatre are, in fact, perhaps connected to the origins of drama in ancient Greece.
January 24, 2025 | 2L13 | 4:00-5:00pm
Dr. Pauline Ripat, University of 丁香园AV
Calling Down the Moon: ?
Ancient Greek and Roman literature often refers to women “calling down the moon,” something which was considered to be a particular talent of mythological women such as Medea and of women from Thessaly. There is reason to believe that some folk healers also claimed to be able to entice the moon from the sky. But what does it mean to “call down the moon”? What did it entail, how was it imagined to work, how would anyone know when it had happened, and why would anyone want to do it anyway?
February 28, 2025 | 2L13 | 4:00-5:00pm
Dr. Mark Lawall, University of Manitoba
Hot Wars, Cold Wars and the development of Classical Archaeology
Archaeology might seem like a discipline concerned with the past and its interpretation, but this talk examines how archaeology has been caught up in many of the most brutal conflicts of the 20th century and demonstrates how war has shaped the field. From Carl Blegen and Hetty Goldman eagerly excavating at Smyrna, but then leaving when the city fell to the newly founded Turkey, to two Americans, Emily and Virgina Grace, one of whom married an accused Soviet spy, while the other built her career on research into amphoras, archaeologists have taken advantage of political instability, or had their research disrupted and destroyed by wars across the last century.
March 28, 2025 | 2L13 | 4:00-5:00pm
Dr. Cristiana Roffi, University of Toronto
Mother Earth: Ecofeminist Narratives in Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Since antiquity, the feminization of nature and the naturalization of women have been linked to the domination of women and Earth. Grounded in an ecofeminist perspective, this talk investigates the association of Earth as a source of creation with femininity and motherhood in Ovid's Metamorphoses. In this critical moment of global urgency, this presentation offers insights into contemporary ecofeminist discourses, including the over-intensive exploitation of land and resources and the examination of human interactions with the environment over the longue durée.
Learn more about the previous New Directions in Classics series: