2019: Diversifying Classics

February 28-March 1, 2019

The Department of Classics is pleased to announce the eighth annual colloquium of the Theodore B. Guérard Lecture Series, Classical Charleston: “Diversifying Classics.”

This year's colloquium focuses upon the ways in which Classics opens a window into a diverse and multicultural world, and how this diversity allows for a variety of methodological approaches and applications for cross-comparative cultural study. Discussion also turns to the structural elements that historically have constrained these approaches, and a wider discussion on how to move the discipline (and the perception of the discipline) forward into a redefinition of Classics for the 21st century.

The lectures will be live-streamed in two ways. Live streaming will occur via Facebook Live, found on the Department's Facebook page. Opportunities for engaging in the Q&A portion will be made available to scholars affiliated with educational institutions via Zoom.  Pre-registration (free) for this option is required. Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/classical-charleston-diversifying-classics-tickets-55079573487

Thursday, February 28: The Multicultural Mediterranean (Alumni Center, SOEHHP, 4:00-6:00pm)

  • “‘Western Civilization’ and the Whitewashing of the Multiethnic Ancient Mediterranean” - Rebecca Futo Kennedy, Denison University (4:00pm)
  • “Multicultural Voices in Classical Scholarship” - Arum Park, University of Arizona (5:15pm)

Friday, March 1: Diversifying the Discipline (Alumni Center, SOEHHP, 4:00-6:00pm)

  • “From 'Western Civ’ to Global Citizenship: How Ancient Rome Can Help Us Rethink Diversity” - Nandini Pandey, University of Wisconsin-Madison (4:00pm)
  • “Sustaining Classics into the 21st Century” - James Newhard, College of Charleston (5:15pm)

Dr. Rebecca Futo Kennedy is Associate Professor of Classics at Denison University and Administrative Director of the Denison Museum. Her research interests include the intellectual, political, and social history of Classical Athens, Athenian tragedy, and identity formation (both gender/sexuality and race/ethnicity) and immigration in the ancient world. She is the author most recently of Immigrant Women in Athens: Gender, Ethnicity, and Citizenship in the Classical City (Routledge, 2014) and editor of the Handbook to Identity and the Environment in the Classical and Medieval Worlds (with M. Jones-Lewis; Routledge, 2015). She is a translator and editor (with S. Roy and M. Goldman) of Race and Ethnicity in the Classical World: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Hackett, 2013) and editor of the The Companion to the Reception of Aeschylus (Brill 2017). She is currently writing a book on race and ethnicity in antiquity and its entanglements in modern white supremacy and is co-translating a sourcebook of ancient texts on women in ancient Greece and Rome.

Dr. Arum Park is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Arizona. Her primary areas of research are Archaic and Classical Greek poetry, and she is currently finishing a book on the concepts of truth, gender, and genre in Pindar and Aeschylus. In 2017 she published her first book, an edited volume called Resemblance and Reality in Greek Thought (Routledge). This volume, a festschrift dedicated to her advisor Dr. Peter M. Smith, represents her increasingly service-oriented approach toward scholarship. She has recently turned her attentions to outreach and advocacy publication: for the Society for Classical Studies blog she has written about pedagogy and about diversity and equity in Classics, and she is currently working with the University of Arizona’s Center for Digital Humanities to visualize data on Race and Classics.

Dr. Nandini Pandey is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her first book, The Poetics of Power in Augustan Rome: Latin Poetic Responses to Early Imperial Iconography (Cambridge 2018), explores the complex relations among Roman poets, their audiences, and early imperial power. Her next project explores diversity and ethnic difference in Roman imperial literature and culture. She has published scholarly articles on a wide range of topics including Vergil and Ovid's engagement with Augustan art and ideology, the Julian star, women's hair in Latin elegy, Lucan's Bellum Civile, Roman provincial subjecthood, the reception of Vergil, and John Webster's Duchess of Malfi. She also writes regular features for Eidolon on classics in modern life, from HBO's Westworld and Pixar's Coco to America's war on terror and the racial politics of classics.

Dr. James Newhard is Professor and Chair of Classics and Director of the Center for Historical Landscapes at the College of Charleston. He is a landscape archaeologist with an emphasis upon integrating human and environmental histories to develop an overall understanding of the long-term interactions between humans and the physical world. He has also authored and co-authored multiple works on ancient Mediterranean socio-economic systems, archaeological field methods, informatics, and geoarchaeology. Most recently, he has co-edited Archaeology and Urban Settlement in Late Roman and Byzantine Anatolia: Euchaïa-Avkat-Beyözü and its Environment (Cambridge 2018). In addition to his work in landscape archaeology, his experiences in directing academic programs and departments have led him to interests in the history of classics and archaeology as academic disciplines.

This colloquium is co-sponsored by the the School of Languages, Cultures, and World Affairs, the Office of Institutional Diversity, the Sustainability Literacy Institute, the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, the Department of History, the African American Studies Program, Classics Club, and Eta Sigma Phi.

For more information, contact Dr. James Newhard (newhardj@cofc.edu) or Dr. Samuel Flores (floresso@cofc.edu).