Departmental Lecture Series
All lectures, unless otherwise indicated, take place in the Classics Department Library, Marion McCain Arts and Social Sciences Building, Room 1184, at 5:30 p.m. All lectures are free and the public are most welcome to attend.
UPCOMING LECTURES 2024-2025
TBA
PAST LECTURES
April 2nd, 2024
Ms. Cristalle Watson
The University of British Columbia
Scriptural Paraphrase and Vergilian Exegesis in Proba's Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi
March 19th, 2024
Dr. Luke Togni
St. Bonaventure University
The Birth of the Ideas: Bonaventure on the externalization, and cruciformity of divine ideas
March 5th, 2024
Dr. Carolyn MacDonald
University of New Brunswick
Looking with the Beloved: Oppositional Views of Visual Fantasy in Tibullus
February 27th, 2024
Dr. Gerjan Altenburg St. Francis Xavier University
Classical Sources and Contemporary Court Cases: Voyeurism in the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya and Pleasant Bay, Nova Scotia
January 23rd, 2024
Bryan Heystee
Memorial University of Newoundland
Simone Weil on Plato's Cave
January 15th, 2024
Dr. Bruce Gordon
Yale Divinity School
Semper Reformanda: Robert Crouse and the Receptions of Augustine in the Reformation
November 21st, 2023
Dr. Gerard Nadaff
York University, Professor Emeritus
“Discovering φύσις: …"
October 24th, 2023
Dr. Sara Ahbel-Rappe
University of Michigan
Four Platonists and a Charioteer
September 26th, 2023
Dr. Frances Pownall
University of Alberta
Pulp Fiction? Folly and Violence in Hellenistic Athens
October 10th, 2023
Dr. Natalie Swain
Acadia University
The Conjunction of Ancient Knowledge in Video Game Play: "An Embodied Textuality"
March 14th, 2023
Ms. Sophie Jacome
Playwright and Independent Scholar in Theatre and Classics
The New Telling of Tales: Adapting Classical Stories for the Modern Stage
February 7th, 2023
Dr. Zena Hitz
St. John's College
Lost In Thought & Learning for Learning's Sake
January 26th, 2023
Dr. Seth Sanders
UC Davis
Literary Creativity across the Mediterranean
November 1st, 2022
Dr. Spencer Pope
McMaster University
Owls under the Roof: the Production of Athenian Coinage and the Public Treasury
October 18th, 2022
Dr. Robin Baker
Winchester University
Taking Old Things and New, from the Storehouse: Matthew's Gospel and Mesopotamian Esoteric Tradition
September 13th, 2022
Dr. Roger Wilson
University of British Columbia
Living In Luxury: The Late Roman Villa at Caddeddi on the Tellaro, near Nota, Sicily
March 21st, 2022
Dr. Jack Mitchell
Dalhousie Univeristy
The Odyssey of Star Wars: An Epic Poem
March 8th, 2022
Dr. Neil Robertson
University of King's College
Leo Strauss and Plato's Ideas
March 1st, 2022
Dr. Sveva Savelli
Department of Modern Languages and Classics, St. Mary's University
Colonial Encounters and power dynamics in the territory of the Oenotrians: Insights from the Metaponto Archaeological Project
Tuesday, October 26th 2021
Dr. Nicholas Thorne
BA (Vind), MA (Dalhousie), PhD (Pittsburgh)
Plato & Thucydides
Tuesday, October 12th, 2021 at 7:00pm
Dr. Mike MacKinnon
University of Winnipeg
Pet Animals in Roman Antiquity: Reconstructions from Archaeological Evidence
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2021
Dr. Dermot Moran
Boston College, Joseph Chair in Catholic Philosophy
God as "Non-Other" (Nil Aliud) in Eriugena and Cusanus
Wednesday, February 24th, 2021
Dr. André Laks
Universidad Panamericana in Mexico City
Parmenides and the Anxiety of Platonism: On the Articulation of His Poem
Tuesday, January 19th, 2021
Dr. Rodica Firanescu
Dalhousie University
Speech-Acts Theory in Arabic Grammarians
Tuesday, November 24th, 2020
Dr. Victoria Austen-Perry
University of Winnipeg
Distinguit et Miscet: Framing Roman Garden Spaces in the Villas of the Elite
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2020
Dr. Katya Vogt
Columbia University
Pyrrhonian Indeterminacy
Wednesday, October 21st, 2020
Dr. Sarah Murray
University of Toronto
Early Iron Age Origins of Ritual Practice and Athletic Nudity at Olympia and Delphi
Tuesday, February 25th, 2020
Dr. Melissa Funke
University of Winnipeg
Post-Classical Receptions of Immigrant Sex Workers in Classical Athens
Tuesday, February 11th, 2020
Dr. Ronald Haflidson
St. John's College
Augustine's Confessions, Book 10
Tuesday, January 21st, 2020
Dr. Warren Huard
University of Winnipeg
Herakles the God
Tuesday, November 5th, 2019
Dr. Elizabeth Asmis
University of Chicago
Epicurean Justice With a Focus on Lucretius
Tuesday, October 8th, 2019
Dr. Paul Shore
University of Regina
Early Jesuit Translation of the Qu'ran
Tuesday, September 24th, 2019
Dr. Ben Akrigg, CAC Visiting Speaker
University of Toronto
Wealth and Inequality in Ancient Economies
Tuesday, September 17th, 2019
Dr. Deborah Roberts
Haverford College
Translation Issues in Aeschylean Poetry
Tuesday, March 12th, 2019
Dr. Therese Cory
University of Notre Dame
Tuesday, February 26th, 2019
Dr. Rodney Ritzsimons
Trent University
"Emergent polis in Crete"
Tuesday, February 26th, 2019
Dr. Larissa Atkison
Dalhousie University
"To Nobly Lie; Deception and Complicity in 'Philoctetes'"
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
Dr. Chris Gibson
"Plato and Gadamer's Magical Mystery Tour: The Relevance of Plato's Dialogues to 20th Century Philosophical Heremeneutics"
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Dr. Giulia Bonasio
Dalhousie University
"Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics"
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
Dr. Page duBois
University of California - San Diego
"Parrhesia and Polytheism"
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Dr. David Konstan
New York University
"The Invention of Sin"
Tuesday, October 16, 2018
Dr. Geoffrey Moseley
Sewanee University of the South
"Reception of Plato and Aristotle in the Muslim World"
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
Dr. Kelly Olsen
University of Western Ontario
"Noblewomen and Leisure in Roman Antiquity"
Tuesday, March 27th, 2018
Dr. István Perczel
Central European University
"The Seventh Letter to Polycarp and links to Pseudo-Dionysius, Proclus, and a debate concerning the eternity of the world"
Tuesday, March 6th, 2018
Dr. Myles McCallum
St. Mary's University
"A River Runs through It: The Tiver's influence on the commercial organization of Roman central Italy"
Tuesday, February 13th, 2018
Dr. Emily Varto
Dalhousie University
"Greeks, Romans, and the 'Science of Man': Building a History of the Classics and Early Anthropology"
Tuesday, November 14th, 2017
Dr. Evan King
"Not According to Us: Berthold of Moosburg and the Retrieval of Platonic Theology in the 14th Century"
Tuesday, October 3rd, 2017
Ms. Emma Curran
Princeton University
Monday, September 25th, 2017
Dr. Lisa Hughes
Classical Association of Canada Lecture Tour
University of Calgary
"The Art of Performance in Pompeii"
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Dr. Florence Yoon
University of British Columbia
"Stop calling them "messengers": distinguishing character identity and function in Greek Tragedy"
The term "messenger" is a familiar one in the discussion of Greek tragedy, but its imprecision has contributed to a long-standing category confusion. This paper argues for a more restricted use by examining the related categories of tragic heralds and messengers, and insisting upon distinction between two commonly confused aspects of character: in-world identity and extradramatic function.
Thursday, March 2, 2017
Dr. Michèle Anik Stanbury
McCain Postdoctoral Fellow
Mount Allison University
"The Metaphysical Origin of the Principles of Logic in Plotinus’ Emanative System"
Dr. Stanbury writes: "Plotinus’ theory concerning the role and status of logical principles is a complex one. He does not outright reject the validity of logical principles. Their scope and utility, however, are circumscribed. The limitations of the scope of these principles—particularly the first among them, the principle of non-contradiction—is articulated most clearly in relation to the divine Intellect: the Intellect is asserted to be simultaneously one and many absolutely and without qualification.
I argue, first, that this seemingly contradictory statement is not a violation of the PNC, but rather an indication that the Intellect transcends the realm within which the PNC is applicable. To establish this claim, I argue that there are in fact pre-requisites for the PNC’s applicability which are not present in the mode of existence of the Intellect.
If it is indeed the case that there are Plotinian metaphysical realms which transcend the logical principles, but others within which they hold sway, then these principles must have a source or origin within Plotinus’ emanative system. In the second part of my essay, I attempt to identify the metaphysical origin of the logical principles in the process by which the world soul emanates from the divine Intellect, focusing particularly on the implications of Ennead III.7: On Eternity and Time."
Monday, January 23, 2017
Dr. Matthew Wood
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
"Moving Images: An Interpretation of Rhetoric 411b 2-4"