Events and News

Women of the Sacred South | Solange Ashby

Women of the Sacred South | Solange Ashby

 
Please join the Department of Classical Studies for a talk by Solange Ashby entitled Women of the Sacred South on Thursday, March 7th at  4pm in the Pendleton Atrium.  An abstract of the talk is below.
 
Dr. Ashby’s expertise in sacred ancient languages including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Coptic, Ethiopic, Biblical Greek and Biblical Hebrew underpins her research into the history of religious transformation in Northeast Africa and the Middle East.
 
For more information about Solange Asbhy, visit her profile on UCLA website.
 
Abstract:
 
Solange Ashby
Women of the Sacred South

The prominence of powerful goddesses, the reverence awarded to the queen mothers of Kush, and a series of sole-ruling queens (one of whom led her army in battle against the invading Romans), highlight the unusually high status of women in these ancient African societies along the Nile and serve as a fitting focus for the study of female power in the ancient world. This lecture will examine more closely the queens, priestesses, and goddesses who were exceptionally prominent in ancient Nubia. Focusing on four specific women, Dr. Ashby will explore how ancient Africans of the Nile Valley understood female power and presence to be an essential enlivening element in maintaining Maat, the balance of male and female energies, in order to cultivate “divine right order” in the world and in the cosmos.

Melissa Mueller - Sappho and Homer: A Reparative Reading

April 10, 2023 | 5PM | Humanties Commons / FND 300

Melissa Mueller - Sappho and Homer: A Reparative Reading

Like all lyric poets of her time, Sappho was steeped in the affects and story-world of Homeric epic, and the language, characters, and themes of her poetry often intersect with those of Homer’s. Yet the relationship between Sappho and Homer has usually been framed as competitive and antagonistic. Sappho and Homer: A Reparative Reading instead sets the two poets side by side, within the embrace of a non-hierarchical, “reparative reading” culture, as first conceived by queer theorist and poet Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. This talk will provide a brief overview of reparative reading and then offer two close readings, one exploring how Aphrodite’s humiliation and distress in the Iliad become the enabling condition for Sappho’s “Hymn to Aphrodite,” and the other how Dawn’s failed prayer, as recounted by Aphrodite in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, reverberates through Sappho’s Tithonos Poem. Sappho’s lyrics, it is argued, foreground the queer and the non-heteronormative, priming us to hear and feel such resonances even in Homer.

Upcoming Events

Visit the MFA with the Department of Classical Studies

RSVP Using this Link: https://forms.gle/Cc7NoGG84ZMSVxne7

Study Abroad Event to be hosted 11/18

Want to learn more about study abroad and summer opportunities with the Department of Classical Studies?

Come to Founders 307 on Friday November 18th @ 3:30pm: talk with professors, ask questions and learn about the options. Snacks will be provided! Please RSVP for this Event.

 

 

Past Lectures

Adrienne Mayor: Gods and Robots: Myths and Ancient Dreams of Technology

Tuesday, March 3, 2020  Student Open Class Session: Wednesday, March, 2020

Suzy Newhouse Center for the Humanities

Gods and Robots Informational Poster

Speaker Series 2020: Classics at Work, Classics in the World

In the fall of 2020, the Department of Classical Studies hosted several talks as part of a series called: "Classics at Work, Classics in the World.” Speakers shared their approaches to the translation and popular adaptation of classical texts, as well as perspectives on the global reception of Classical Studies. 

 

The Thesaurus linguae Latinae: Lexicography Past and Future

Amy Koenig | Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in Munich

Click here for more information.

 

Dreams of Sikandar: Alexander the Great and Colonial India

Phiroze Vasunia | Professor of Greek and Latin, University College London

Click here for more information.

 

Talking Back to Myth

Madeline Miller, Classicist and author of Circe and The Song of Achilles

Wednesday, November 11 at Noon

Click here for more information.

 

Translating Ovid in the Age of #MeToo

Stephanie McCarter |Professor of Classical Languages, Sewanee, The University of the South

Click here for more information.

 

The Trasimeno Archaeological Project: Uncovering a Roman Villa in Central Italy

Rebecca Schindler | Professor of Classical Studies at DePauw University (Wellesley '91)

Click here for more information.

Co-sponsored by the Greco-Roman Society

The Department of Classical Studies supports Wellesley 4 Black Students

The Department of Classical Studies recently received a letter from the Wellesley 4 Black Students seeking to engage Wellesley College in dismantling systems of state-sanctioned violence that disproportionately harm Black people, and to create a world defined by life affirming institutions. 
 
In response to this letter, the Department of Classical Studies has written to senior administration and the Trustees of Wellesley College in support of this initiative. We want Wellesley College to play its part -- to acknowledge that anti-Black racism, embedded in the history and framework of our country, exists everywhere, including here at Wellesley College. We must take responsibility for its role in the systemic oppression of Black people, both on campus and in the world, and to this end we urged the administration to listen carefully and respond promptly with purpose and clear action to the demands that its Black students are making of our institution at this critical moment.

As scholars of Classical Studies, we are well aware of the way our field has been complicit in colonialism and imperialism, as well as essential to the construction of white identity. Our campus conversations on this topic in recent years have acknowledged these facts, but we are now spurred to take more substantial actions. We are taking time this summer to reevaluate our curriculum, exploring and discussing ways to make Classics at Wellesley more inclusive of Black students. To that end, we would like to engage with our current students in a series of conversations about racist assumptions that underpin traditional work in Classics and the ongoing appropriation of ancient Greek and Roman texts and symbols by white supremacists. We are educating ourselves on anti-racist pedagogy as we work to create a learning environment inclusive of all Wellesley students. 
 
Next week we will invite students to a Zoom meeting in which we will read and discuss articles that consider the way the field of Classics has interacted with race, especially Blacks in America. We hope that together we can develop programming and practices that acknowledge this difficult history and chart a pathway toward a better future for all.
 
 

Past Student Events