Penn Public Lectures on Classical Antiquity and the Contemporary World
Department of Classical Studies
Thursday, April 21, 2022
5:00 pm
Penn Museum, Widener Hall and on Zoom
The study of antiquity is full of surprises. We constantly learn new things about the ancient Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman worlds, and their interactions with multiple other cultures. Our work is inherently interdisciplinary: we use historical, linguistic, literary and archaeological methods to understand ancient societies in their entirety. We celebrate opportunities for dialogue with colleagues in other fields, and with contemporary artists and writers.
Premodern cultures were very different from any in the contemporary world. They can also seem similar, often in unexpected ways. In looking to the distant past, we are challenged to ask new questions about the present. Interpretations of the ancient past have shaped, and continue to shape, modern identities. We repudiate the uses of Greek and Roman antiquity in both scholarly and popular contexts as tools for oppression and exclusion. In our teaching, research and public engagement, we work for a more equitable and inclusive study of antiquity. The Penn Public Lectures aim to advance the public good in the United States through lively, rigorous, and timely engagement with the classical past.
This third lecture in the series lays out several ways the study of antiquities may still be understood as mattering for the public today, focusing on the process of scholarship and specifically the acts laid out in the title and tackling some of the most pressing challenges to the construction of “classics” now. The Penn Public Lectures aim to advance the public good in the United States through lively, rigorous, and timely engagement with the classical past.
Joy Connolly began her service as President of the American Council of Learned Societies on July 1, 2019. A scholar of ancient Roman rhetoric and political thought and their enduring influence in modernity, she came to ACLS after serving as provost and interim president of The Graduate Center of The City University of New York, the principal doctorate-granting institution of the nation’s largest public urban university. Prior to joining CUNY, she was dean for the humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Science (2012-2016) and director of the College Core Curriculum at New York University (2009-12).