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Are changes in color vision and color terminology part of a single evolutionary process? And if so, what significance might the perceptual abilities and linguistic conventions of diverse peoples hold for understanding how this process unfolds? What might such diversity, moreover, tell us about spiritual development and the cultivation of civil society? These questions were at the heart of a philologically driven nineteenth-century debate about color. Carried out mainly between English- and German-speaking interlocutors, the outcome of this debate was understood to have significant implications for educational standards, the organization of knowledge, natural history, the development of industry, and Western standing in the world. It moved between interests in the Homeric texts, color blindness, Darwinian evolutionary theory, and colonial administration. My talk will present this history with a view to (a) the relationship between classical studies and a shifting constellation of neighboring disciplines, and (b) the contributions of nineteenth-century classicists to hierarchical conceptions of human difference.
Judith Kaplan is Integrated Studies Teaching Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania
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