Past Events

Thursday, May 10 2018 4:00 pm

Mythbusting the Ancient Theater

Thursday, May 10, 2018, 4:00 pm
Curtin Hall Room 866

It is often asserted that the Greek theater was in decline in the postclassical period. This model assumes that Roman cultural influence drive drama off the stages of the Greek world, while pantomime (a silent, masked dance) “replaced” spoken drama. This paradigm of the trajectory of the ancient theater was developed in the early modern period, and continues to exert a surprising level of influence today. In this talk, Dr. Skotheim will “bust” this myth about the ancient theater history, and showing how consideration of the material evidence can change our perspective on the role of drama in postclassical Greek and Roman society.

Sunday, April 15 2018 3:30 pm

The Cosmic Significance of Wealth Acquisition in Ancient Greece: the Athenian General Nicias as a Case Study

Since Moses Finley, scholars studying the ancient economy have largely abandoned the search for cultural particularism in ancient economic mentality and behavior, and have moved instead to a New Institutional Economics approach, which is heavily grounded in modern social science theory and economic models. But while the search for what was unique about ancient mentalité has been largely left behind, a growing chorus of increasingly vocal critics is stressing the need for culturally specific models of behavior, as has been convincingly demonstrated by anthropologists. In this workshop Dr. Leese will explore the economic, political, and religious behavior of Nicias, the famous Athenian general of the Sicilian Expedition and argue that Nicias’ behavior shows how difficult it is to identify what was culturally specific about ancient Greek economic mentalité.

Friday, March 2 2018 3:30 pm

Fitting Archaeology into a Multidisciplinary Grand Challenge Program: “Planet Texas 2050”

Professor Rabinowitz studies Greek colonization, cultural interaction, ancient food and drink, archaeology of daily life, and digital approaches to archaeology. He has also several digital humanities projects about the Classical past funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Thursday, September 14 2017 4:00 pm

Assumption of Risk in Athenian Law

Dr. Phillips is a specialist in ancient Athenian law, and his recent publications include a reassessment of the legal definition of hubris in his contribution to The Topography of Violence, edited by Werner Riess and Garrett G. Fagan, and a discussion of the legal ramifications of pollution brought on by homicide in the proceedings from a conference on Greek and Hellenistic legal history in Portugal in 2015. In this seminar, he will be telling us about his recent work on “Assumption of Risk in Athenian Law,”which has just been published.

Friday, December 2 2016 3:30 pm

What’s the “Difference”?

Dr. Muse will be speaking to us about Callias (III),a notorious figure in fifth-century Athens, who inherited from his father Hipponicus (II) the largest fortune in Greece and allegedly squandered nearly all of it. A patron of the itinerant intellectuals known as sophists, upon whom he lavished great sums of money, Callias appears as a salient exemplum in the dialogues of Plato and Xenophon in debates about two of the most important topics of their day and ours: education and wealth.

Friday, September 23 2016 3:30 pm

Commemoration, Conflict, and the Classical Tradition: The Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery

In 1910 the United Daughters of the Confederacy commissioned sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel to design and execute a monument memorializing Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War. In this workshop, Dr. Wickkiser will survey the design that Ezekiel chose, which includes classicizing elements; the location of the monument within a highly contested landscape of memory; and the life of Ezekiel himself, a Jew who fought for the Confederacy and remained throughout his life a passionate advocate for religious freedom.

Sunday, April 17 2016 3:00 pm

Stonehenge: New Discoveries

Michael Parker Pearson, University College London
Sunday, April 17, 2016, 3:00 pm
Sponsored by Archaeological Institute of America

Sunday, December 6 2015 3:00 pm

Warfare, Weapons, and Skeletal Trauma in Early Medieval Ireland

Rachel Scott, Anthropology, DePaul University
Sunday, December 6, 2015, 3:00 pm
Sponsored by Archaeological Institute of America

Friday, November 13 2015 3:30 pm

Reading Augustan Rome

Dr. Nandini Pandey, Assistant Professor of Classics, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Friday, November 13, 2015, 3:30 pm
UWM Curtain Hall 939

Sunday, November 1 2015 3:00 pm

The Rising Star Expedition and the Discovery of Homo naledi

John Hawks, Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Sunday, November 1, 2015, 3:00 pm
Sponsored by Archaeological Institute of America