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…

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!

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…

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…

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…

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 …

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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!

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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 …