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Special Event
Bloomsday 2025
Ulysses and The Odyssey
Mon, Jun 16, 2025, 4:30 pm

This Bloomsday, we welcome all Princeton Joyceans to a classically themed celebration of James Joyce's Ulysses, led by Prof. Jesse Lundquist! Join us for a short talk on the classical influences…

Location
143 East Pyne (Prentice Library)
Sponsor
Co-sponsored by the Department of Classics and the Princeton Public Library
Social
Classics Alumni Brunch
Reunions 2025
Fri, May 23, 2025, 10:00 am

The Classics Department's annual Reunions Alumni Brunch. Join fellow alumni and current students and faculty for endless coffee and breakfast food, plus a special update on all things Princeton Classics!

Location
Prentice Library, East Pyne 143
Lecture
The New Euripides Papyrus (P.Phil.nec 23 verso): The Agon in Polyidos
Ioanna Karamanou
Thu, May 1, 2025, 4:30 pm
Location
East Pyne 161
Speaker
Conference / Workshop
After Babylon
The Legacies of Cuneiform Culture
Tue, Apr 29, 2025, 9:00 am

The history of the region now known as Iraq is rarely told as one long and continuous story. It is instead split into periods between which little or no continuity is assumed to exist. A deep scholarly divide separates those who study the cuneiform cultures of ancient Mesopotamia from those who study the following periods, including the Islamic…

Sponsor
Co-sponsored by the Department of Classics, the Department of Near Eastern Studies, and the Program in Near Eastern Studies
Lecture
What does Jean-Michel Basquiat have to do with Socrates, the Punic Wars & Hypatia of Alexandria? An interpretation of Jawbone of an Ass (1982)
Gábor Betegh
Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 12:00 pm

On the middle panel of Basquiat’s “Jawbone of an Ass,” we find a striking collection of names and historical events from Greco-Roman Antiquity. Interpreters have maintained that it is a random list without internal coherence, arranged alphabetically, that “stand for the richness of classical Greek culture.” In this presentation, I suggest an…

Location
Scheide Caldwell 209
Speaker
Lunch Talk
Lecture
New Excavations at Pompeii: Seasonality and Non-Elite Lifestyles
Allison Emmerson
Mon, Apr 21, 2025, 4:30 pm

Pompeii has long occupied a privileged place in modern imaginings of the Roman past. Beyond the city’s well-known monuments, however, lies a well of data that has barely begun to be tapped. This talk will introduce the research program of Tulane University’s Pompeii I.14 Project, an interdisciplinary excavation focusing on one large building…

Location
East Pyne 010
Speaker
Sponsor
Co-sponsored by the Departments of Classics and Art & Archaeology and the Program in Archaeology
Special Event
A New Translation of The Odyssey
Daniel Mendelsohn in conversation with Yelena Baraz
Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 6:00 pm

Join us as celebrated author, critic, classicist, and translator Daniel Mendelsohn discusses his new translation of The Odyssey.
 
Widely known for his essays bringing classical literature and culture to mainstream audiences in the New Yorker …

Location
Labyrinth Books
Speakers
Sponsor
Co-sponsored by Princeton University's Humanities Council and Labyrinth Books.
Book Event
Co-Sponsored Event
Lecture
Communicating on Rome's Edges: Tongues, Gesture, and Art
Anthony Corbeill
Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 4:30 pm

How did Romans communicate along the expanding edges of empire—on the verbal, physical, and visual levels—when Latin is unavailable? This illustrated presentation treats four different periods and locations: 1) interactions between Etruscan and Roman culture in the early to middle Republic; 2) modes of contact during the late Republic and early…

Location
Jones 100
Speaker
Lecture
Entrepreneuring Women: The spaces of textile manufacture in classical Greek cities
Lin Foxhall
Wed, Apr 9, 2025, 4:30 pm

Textile production was a vital part of classical Greek economies, predominantly managed and carried out by women. Recent scholarship, shaped by New Institutional Economics, suggests a division of labor where men wove luxury textiles in workshops for the market, while women created basic textiles at home for domestic use. However, this view,…

Location
East Pyne 010
Sponsor
Program in the Ancient World
Magie Lecture
Program in the Ancient World
Lecture
Pragmatic Irony in Ancient Rome
Luca Grillo
Fri, Apr 4, 2025, 12:00 pm

Ancient Romans had a great sense of irony, in theory and in practice. They used it abundantly and discussed what it is, what it achieves, and how it works and relates to other figures of rhetoric. And yet, their practice of irony seems to stretch beyond these theories. In this presentation I have two main arguments: pragmatics…

Location
161 East Pyne
Speaker
Lunch Talk
Lecture
Euripides’ Proliferative Aesthetics
Naomi A. Weiss
Thu, Apr 3, 2025, 4:30 pm

Already in his own lifetime, Euripides was known for pushing the boundaries of what a tragedy could or should be. While recent scholarship has tended to focus on discrete areas of experimentation, especially Euripides’ play with music and genre, this paper proposes the model of proliferation as a more holistic way of approaching his most…

Location
East Pyne 010
Speaker
Symposium
Consuming Ecologies: Environment and Society in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Environmental History Lab
Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 10:00 am

This one-day workshop aims to investigate late antique and early medieval ecologies as unfolding socio-environmental formations. Recent scholarship has highlighted some of the messy ecological entanglements that gave root to political ideologies and homegrown squashes across the Mediterranean world—feeding hairy pigs alongside…

Location
Julis Romo Rabinowitz Room A17
Co-Sponsored Event
Lecture
From Science to Narrative: Pottery Production and Social Dynamics in Archaic Rome
Mattia D'Acri
Fri, Mar 28, 2025, 12:00 pm

What do simple clay vessels reveal about the rise of one of history’s greatest cities? This talk explores the social and economic changes that transformed Rome and Latium between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE, focusing on the people behind the pottery. From everyday cooking pots to refined tableware, these ceramics hold clues about the lives of…

Location
209 Scheide Caldwell
Speaker
Sponsor
Program in the Ancient World
Lunch Talk
Program in the Ancient World
Lecture
Politics and the Art of Lying in Horace's Odes
Peter Heslin
Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 4:30 pm

We are living, sadly, in an age of the big political lie: leaders avowing untruths so stark and incredible that their purpose is not so much to mislead as to assert control. In an emerging autocracy, the big lie serves to remind the populace that obedience is more important than truth. Among the lies promulgated by the emperor Augustus as he…

Location
East Pyne 010
Sponsor
Co-sponsored by the Department of Classics and the Humanities Council
Co-Sponsored Event
Lecture
Critical Classicality and (De)Colonial Vietnamese Writings: A Sneak Peek
Kelly Nguyen
Thu, Mar 20, 2025, 4:30 pm

This talk offers a preview of my forthcoming book, which explores how Vietnamese writers from the French colonization era to contemporary times have engaged with the Greco-Roman classical tradition for different liberatory purposes. I will introduce my overarching theoretical framework, “critical classicality,” a decolonial approach that…

Location
East Pyne 010
Speaker
Social
Sophomore Open House
Wed, Mar 19, 2025, 12:00 pm

Calling all Princeton sophomores to the Classics Department's annual open house! Join faculty and current majors for merriment, refreshments, and conversation on all the department has to offer. Pizza will be served!

Location
Prentice Library, 143 East Pyne
Undergraduate Student Event
Lecture
Ancient Egypt within its North-East African Context
John Baines
Wed, Mar 5, 2025, 4:30 pm

Egypt’s most direct connections were and are within the Africa where it is sited. Ancient Egypt is often seen as a civilization on the edge of the ancient Near East rather than through the more immediate lens of the regions closest to it. Recent scholarship has enhanced understanding of the African context, and it uses a more holistic…

Location
A17 Julis Romo Rabinowitz
Speaker
Sponsor
Program in the Ancient World
Program in the Ancient World
Special Event
Humanities Research / Creative Projects
A Breakfast Conversation with Uberto Pasolini
Sun, Feb 16, 2025, 11:00 am

In a special collaboration through the Humanities Initiative's new Media & Meaning series, we are proud to offer a breakfast conversation with filmmaker Uberto Pasolini (The Full Monty, The Return) and Profs. Rachael DeLue, Barbara…

Location
East Pyne 161
Speakers
Sponsor
Sponsored by the Department of Classics, the Humanities Council, the Humanities Initiative, and the Program in Italian Studies
Co-Sponsored Event
Round Table
Special Event
The Return: Q&A with director Uberto Pasolini
with Barbara Graziosi
Sat, Feb 15, 2025, 7:00 pm

On February 15th, Uberto Pasolini, the director of THE RETURN, will be present at the Princeton Garden Theatre for a post-film discussion moderated by Barbara Graziosi, the Ewing Professor of Greek at Princeton University and chair of the Classics Department.

In this retelling of Homer’s Odyssey, Ralph Fiennes…

Location
Princeton Garden Theatre
Speakers
Sponsor
Co-sponsored by Princeton Classics and the Humanities Council
Co-Sponsored Event
Performance / Screening
Special Event
Princeton Certamen
Sat, Feb 8, 2025, 9:00 am

Empowered by a love for the Classical world and the JCL, a group of Princeton students — from states ranging from Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Virginia, to Wisconsin — founded the first annual Princeton Certamen held on March 24, 2018. As the tournament enters its 6th year, we are excited to continue to promote love for Classics…

Location
McCosh 50
Lecture
American Tempests: Virgilian Storms on Strange Seas
Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 4:30 pm

This talk offers a study of an epic topos – the storm at sea – in two of the earliest Latin epics written in Spanish and Portuguese America: José de Anchieta’s De Gestis Mendi de Saa (Coimbra 1563) and Francisco de Pedrosa’s Austriaca sive Naumachia (c. 1580). Anchieta and Pedrosa stand in a long tradition of early…

Location
010 East Pyne
Speaker
Symposium
Special Event
Life, Liberty, Love, Food & Drink: On Poetry & the Creative Process
A Celebration of the Special Poetry Issue of "The Classical Outlook"
Mon, Jan 27, 2025, 4:30 pm

A panel discussion on poetry, pedagogy, classics, and the creative process, celebrating the Special Poetry Issue of The Classical Outlook

featuring
A.E. Stallings
Charles Martin
Chris Childers
Emma Hunter
Meredith Bergmann…

Location
010 East Pyne
Sponsor
Sponsored by the Departments of Classics and Comparative Literature, the Humanities Council, and the Bain-Swiggett Fund, Department of English
Lecture
Troy and Gordion: An Excavator’s Perspective on Two Legendary Sites in Anatolia
C. Brian Rose (University of Pennsylvania)
Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 12:00 pm
Location
144 Louis A. Simpson International Building
Speaker
Sponsor
Sponsored by the Departments of Classics and Art & Archaeology
Lunch Talk
Symposium
Boethius: A Symposium
Fri, Dec 6, 2024, 3:00 pm

Please join us for a symposium honoring the life, work, and legacy of Boethius on the occasion of the (supposed) 1500th anniversary of his death!

Short talks and discussions will be led by                  

Claire Apostoli …

Location
161 East Pyne
Sponsor
Co-sponsored by the Department of Classics, the Program in Medieval Studies, and the Committee for the Study of Late Antiquity