"Beyond Antiquity: The Classical Ideal from Petrarch to Poliziano, Poussin, and Wren" organized by James I. Porter
January 5, 2005
4:00 - 7:00 p.m.
Classics Library (Angell Hall 2175)
A one-day colloquium entitled "Beyond Antiquity: The Classical Ideal from Petrarch to Poliziano, Poussin, and Wren" organized by James I. Porter (University of Michigan) examining the idea of "the Classical" in the medieval and Renaissance periods. Guest speakers included James Clark (University of Bristol), who works on monastic orders in Britain and Classical learning; Christopher S. Celenza (History, Michigan State University), who works on Italian humanism; Richard Neer (Art History, University of Chicago), who is a Classical art historian whose specialty includes Poussin; and Lydia Soo (University of Michigan), who is an architect with special research interests in Roman architectural history. Moderators included U-M faculty Basil Dufallo (Classics), Elizabeth Sears (History of Art), and Karla Taylor (English and Medieval & Early Modern Studies). Co-sponsored by the History of Art Department, the program in Medieval and Early Modern Studies, the Department of Classics, the Gerald F. Else Fund,
Classical Reception and the Political
September 25, 2005
10:00 a.m. - 6:15 p.m.
Angell Hall 3222
University of Michigan-University of Bristol symposium on Classical Reception and the Political.
Workshop on Interpreting the Bacchae for Performance.
January 31, 2005
7:00 to 8:30 p.m.
On Monday evening, members of the cast and crew of the Basement Arts acting troupe, who performed Euripides' Bacchae on February 10-12 in the Frieze Building, met with members of the Classics Department, English Department, and Residential College, to discuss questions and problems of interpretation of the play for performance. Ruth Scodel, Yopie Prins, Kate Mendeloff, and Mike Sampson along with Al Duncan and other members of the Bacchae troupe, considered issues like humor in the play, the presentation of Pentheus, metatheatricality, chorus, the concept of the god and the Dionysus/Pentheus 'ahh' moment. There was no formal presentations but rather discussion of these issues in a workshop format, with the aim of putting the resources of the Classics and English Departments at the service of the acting troupe.
CONTEXTS FOR CLASSICS is pleased to present our October
TRANSLATION WORKSHOP:
"Simone Weil: Iliados interpres artificiosa"
a discussion led by James P. Holoka
Professor, History/Foreign Languages and Bilingual Studies, Eastern MichiganUniversity
Tuesday, October 25th, 2005
3:00 p.m.
Tisch Hall 2018 (Comparative Literature
James Holoka is a professor in the history and foreign language departments at Eastern Michigan University; he received his Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Michigan. Since then, he has written on authors ranging from Homer to Catullus to Aldous Huxley. His recent work includes a translation and commentary of Simone Weil’s essay “L'Iliade ou Le poème de la force,” published by Lang in 2003.
Homer's Iliad is the consensus choice as the West's greatest epic. Over twenty-seven centuries, it has been analyzed and neoanalyzed, disarranged and rearranged, stratified and unified, allegorized and satirized, torn by wolves and restored by lords. The bibliography of secondary literature now runs to over 300 items a year. This workshop will focus on one celebrated twentieth-century interpretation: Simone Weil's famous 1941 essay, The Iliad or the Poem of Force. It will examine her critical methods and weigh her distinctive judgments about Homer's epic. It will ask what predispositions shaped her view of the poem and why her idiosyncratic reading of it should command our attention.