New Directions in Classics enters its eighth year of bridging the ancient Greek and Roman world to our present. Since its inception, this lecture series has consistently revealed that the ancient past is intertwined with our daily lives.
Co-organizers Dr. Peter J. Miller, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Classics, and Ruth Dickinson (BA Hons 18), member of the Board of Regents, have welcomed dozens of academics from around the world to UWinnipeg to demonstrate the connections between these seemingly distant worlds.
Presented by The University of Winnipeg’s Department of Classics, New Directions features exciting topics from engaging Winnipeg scholars and concludes with a University of Toronto postdoctoral fellow from the Jackman Humanities Institute Circle of Fellows.
New Directions speakers show that humanities scholarship can be cutting edge and accessible, sophisticated and public.
Dr. Peter J. Miller
The series kicks off on Friday, September 20, with Dying Like Men: Women and Martyrdom in Early Christianity, and then continues to explore themes that include archaeology and its connection to tragedy and war in the 20th century; theatre and its intense, vibrant, and visceral connection with the drama of the ancient Greeks; and how ancient poetry responded and still responds to the ongoing climate crisis.
“New Directions speakers show that humanities scholarship can be cutting edge and accessible, sophisticated and public,” shared Dr. Miller. “As always, we are inviting the campus and downtown community to learn about the classics and the innumerable ways in which ancient Greece and Rome are strangely alive in 21st century Winnipeg.”
Dickinson notes that the series continues to bring innovative ideas to the forefront in classics, and beyond, in academia in a public forum.
“In a turbulent and ever-changing world, New Directions allows connections to the past, which are grounded in historical records as actions and events, to ease current and present concerns through nuanced ideas and discussions that push new alternate solutions,” said Dickinson. “Join us, as these topics are explored with new research by fascinating scholars.”
New Directions Lectures
Dying Like Men: Women and Martyrdom in Early Christianity
Dr. Heather Barkman, University of Winnipeg
Friday, September 20, 4:00-5:00 p.m., Room 3D01
In the first few centuries of the Common Era, Christians were persecuted by Roman officials for refusing to sacrifice to the Roman gods. The men and women who were killed became known as martyrs. This lecture focuses on North African evidence and explores how women martyrs are depicted as distinct from men in their roles in the family and the method of their execution.
Praise, Poetry, and Sport in Ancient Greece
Dr. Peter Miller, University of Winnipeg
Friday, October 25, 4:00-5:00 p.m., Room 3D01
UCLA football coach Red Sanders was fond of saying, “winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” If this was true for mid-twentieth-century college football, it’s perhaps even more true for the complex and sophisticated athletic culture of ancient Greece. But Greek athletes didn’t only want to win. Just like today, they wanted everyone to know their accomplishments. This talk, based on a new book, examines how athletes used poetry, song, and sculpture, to transmit their fame across the ancient Greek world – and even to today.
The Complete Eradication of the Live Actor from the Tragic Stage
Pre- and Post-Human(-ist) Confluences in Contemporary Productions of Greek Tragedy
Dr. Paul Monaghan, University of Winnipeg
Friday, November 22, 4:00-5:00 p.m., Room 3D01
From theatre’s apparent beginnings in the late Archaic Age of Ancient Greece to the twenty-first century, the living body of the human actor has been seen as the central and defining feature of the medium, the source of theatre’s uniqueness as well as its limitations. The corporeality of the live actor, however, has impelled innovators to call for the complete eradication of the human actor from the stage. This presentation locates the origins of this depersonalizing attempt in the ambiguity of the masked actor at the very foundation of tragedy in ancient Greece and traces how posthumanist moves to supplant the human centre of theatre are, in fact, perhaps connected to the origins of drama in ancient Greece.
Calling Down the Moon?
Dr. Pauline Ripat, University of Winnipeg
Friday, January 24, 4:00-5:00 p.m., Room 2L13
Ancient Greek and Roman literature often refers to women “calling down the moon,” something which was considered to be a particular talent of mythological women such as Medea and of women from Thessaly. There is reason to believe that some folk healers also claimed to be able to entice the moon from the sky. But what does it mean to “call down the moon”? What did it entail, how was it imagined to work, how would anyone know when it had happened, and why would anyone want to do it anyway?
Hot Wars, Cold Wars and the Development of Classical Archaeology
Prof. Mark Lawall, University of Manitoba
Friday, February 28, 4:00-5:00 p.m., Room 2L13
Archaeology might seem like a discipline concerned with the past and its interpretation, but this talk examines how archaeology has been caught up in many of the most brutal conflicts of the 20th century and demonstrates how war has shaped the field. From Carl Blegen and Hetty Goldman eagerly excavating at Smyrna, but then leaving when the city fell to the newly founded Turkey, to two Americans, Emily and Virginia Grace, one of whom married an accused Soviet spy, while the other built her career on research into amphoras, archaeologists have taken advantage of political instability, or had their research disrupted and destroyed by wars across the last century.
Mother Earth: Ecofeminist Narratives in Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Dr. Cristiana Roffi, University of Toronto
Friday, March 28, 4:00-5:00 p.m., Room 2L13
Since antiquity, the feminization of nature and the naturalization of women have been linked to the domination of women and Earth. Grounded in an ecofeminist perspective, this talk investigates the association of Earth as a source of creation with femininity and motherhood in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In this critical moment of global urgency, this presentation offers insights into contemporary ecofeminist discourses, including the over-intensive exploitation of land and resources and the examination of human interactions with the environment over the longue durée.
