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Events

Fall 2009


The NYU Center for Ancient Studies and the Archaeological Institute of America present
Theme Parks, Treasure Hunters, and Tribal Icons:  World Heritage in an Age of Globalization
Dr. Neil Silberman, Center for Cultural Heritage, University of Massachusetts

Monday, December 7, 2009, 6:00 P.M.
Jurow Lecture Hall
Silver Center, Room 101A
32 Waverly Place or 31 Washington Place (wheelchair accessible)

This event is free and open to the public.

The NYU Center for International Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences presents
"From Athens to Bagdad to Timbuktu": transmitting philosophy in the Islamic world
Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Columbia University

Monday, November 30, 2009, 4:00 P.M.
4 Washington Square North, Conference Room, 2nd Floor

Please contact ebn216@nyu.edu for more information.

NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The Birth of European Painting in the Sands of Egypt

Thomas Mathews, John Langeloth Loeb Professor Emeritus in the History of Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

This lecture is a preliminary report on a project studying some 62 painted panels from Roman Egypt, which are practically the only surviving examples of this important artistic genre from the ancient world. Representing the Egyptian pantheon in its final manifestation, they are an important document of the history of religion. But the evidence also looks forward to the continuance of panel painting in the medieval world, introducing many of the formulae and compositions of Byzantine icon painting, formulae which endured even to the Renaissance.

Thursday, November 12, 2009, 6:00PM

Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028

This event is free and open to the public.  For more information please email isaw@nyu.edu.

New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Valley, 5000 – 3500 BC

Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
15 E. 84th Street
New York, NY 10028

The Lost World of Old Europe brings to the United States for the first time more than 250 objects recovered by archaeologists from the graves, towns, and villages of Old Europe, a cycle of related cultures that achieved a precocious peak of sophistication and creativity in what is now southeastern Europe between 5000 and 4000 BC, and then mysteriously collapsed by 3500 BC. Long before Egypt or Mesopotamia rose to an equivalent level of achievement, Old Europe was among the most sophisticated places that humans inhabited. Some of its towns grew to city-like sizes. Potters developed striking designs, and the ubiquitous goddess figurines found in houses and shrines have triggered intense debates about women’s roles in Old European society. Old European copper-smiths were, in their day, the most advanced metal artisans in the world. Their intense interest in acquiring copper, gold, Aegean shells, and other rare valuables created networks of negotiation that reached surprisingly far, permitting some of their chiefs to be buried with pounds of gold and copper in funerals without parallel in the Near East or Egypt at the time. The exhibition, arranged through loan agreements with 20 museums in three countries (Romania, Bulgaria and the Republic of Moldova), brings the exuberant art, enigmatic ‘goddess’ cults, and precocious metal ornaments and weapons of Old Europe to American audiences.

For more information please click here.

New York University's Center for Ancient Studies, Department of Classics, Graduate School of Arts & Science, and Institute for the Study of the Ancient World present
The New York University Graduate Conference
Honey on the Cup: Didactic in the Ancient World

Saturday, November 7, 2009, 9:00 A.M.
Jurow Lecture Hall
Silver Center, Room 101A
32 Waverly Place or 31 Washington Place (wheelchair accessible)

9:00 A.M. Coffee and Registration

9:45 A.M. Welcoming Remarks

10:00 A.M. POETICS OF DIDACTIC
The Poetics of Knowledge in Oppian’s Halieutica
Emily Kneebone, Cambridge University

Looking at ‘Atomistic’ Repetition in the De Rerum Natura of Lucretius
Timothy Haase, Brown University

Teaching Stoic(s) Thinking
Orazio Capello, University of Southern California

11:30 A.M. Break

11:45 A.M. RECEIVING DIDACTIC
Fretful Birds and Philosopher Cows: Cicero’s Prognostica and Aratus’s Diosemeia        
Christopher Polt, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Didactic, Rhetoric and Genre: Reading Lucian’s ‘Conversations with Hesiod
Sarah Olsen, University of California, Berkeley

From Libya to Egypt: Lucan and the Limits of Didactic Poetry
Patrick Glauthier, Columbia University

1:15 P.M. Lunch

3:15 P.M. QUESTIONING GENRE
Simonides’ Protagoras Fragment and the Problem of Didactic ‘Genre’
Alexander Hall, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Thank You for Being a Friend: Ovid’s Euxine Instructions to Friends at Rome
Whitney Snead, University of Cincinnati

Experto c(r)edite: Vitruvius’ New Didactic
John Oksanish, Yale University

4:45 P.M. Break

5:00 P.M. Keynote Address: Ways of Knowing and Teaching in Early Greek Poetry
Prof. J.S. Clay, University of Virginia

Reception to Follow

New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The Annual Leon Levy Lecture

The Historian in the Future of the Ancient World: A View from Central Eurasia
Nicola Di Cosmo, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University

Thursday, November 5, 2009
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
15 E. 84th Street
New York, NY 10028

Much of the making of the ancient world has to do with the movement of peoples, and with the languages, genes, and material cultures they carried from place to place. Central Eurasia from the Pontus to the Baikal was a major theater of population movements from the dispersal of the Indo-Europeans to the migratory waves of the early Middle Ages. While often met with skepticism, the recent encounter between molecular biology and genetic studies with linguistics, archaeology, and physical anthropology has heralded radical changes in the study of the ancient world, if nothing else because all these disciplines have consequently been thrown into closer contact with each other. A dialogue has developed among geneticists, linguists, archaeologists and anthropologists over the past twenty-some years that, while sometimes dissonant and acrimonious, has produced ideas and data that may prove useful for historical research. How should the historian of the ancient world view this development? Does the historian have a role to play? This question will be discussed especially in relation to the study of ancient Eurasian nomads.

For more information please click here.

New York University's Department of Classics presents
Conception and practice of Roman rule: the example of transport infrastructure
Anne Kolb, University of Zurich

Thursday, October 29, 2009, 6:00PM
Classics Department Conference Room, 5th floor
Silver Center for Arts and Science
32 Waverly Place or 31 Washington Place (wheelchair access)

New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The ISAW Visiting Research Scholar Lecture Series
The Horse is Man's Wings: Archaeological Science and the Changing Nature of the Human-Horse Relationship in Central and East Asia in Prehistory
Mim Bower, Cambridge University

Tuesday, October 27, 2009, 6:00PM
ISAW Lecture Hall, Second Floor
15 E. 84th Street
New York, NY 10028

The relationship between horses and humans reaches far back into prehistory. At first, horses were a source of human food, but at some time in the past, perhaps during the process of domestication, horses took on a much greater role. Not only were they ridden, giving humans the possibility of traveling with great speed over large distances, or harnessed in chariots, which could be used to show status and power, they became venerated in a way that no other domestic animals have been. During the 2nd and 1st millennia BC, all across central and east Asia, in harness or with chariots, in groups, or alone, horses were buried along with their owners and carers, sometimes with the most amazing grave goods. Ultimately, an entirely new way of life developed from these practices: equestrian pastoral nomadism. But the importance of the horse in central and east Asia does not end in prehistory. The horse remains a powerful symbol in many cultures today and is associated with ideas of identity and nationhood.

In this presentation, Dr. Bower will report on the results of a large interdisciplinary archaeological science project which explores the evolving relationship between horses and humans, from prehistory to the present day using a wide range of cutting edge archaeological science methods, including archaeogenetics (living population genetics and ancient DNA), geometric morphometrics, paleopathology, zooarchaeology and ethnography, while working towards an understanding of the changing relationship between humans and horses across time.

For more information, please click here.

New York University's Department of Classics presents
How Ancient Empires Govern
Anne Kolb, University of Zurich
Michael Peachin, New York University

Sunday, October 25, 2009
Classics Department Conference Room, 5th floor
Silver Center for Arts and Science
32 Waverly Place or 31 Washington Place (wheelchair access)

For more information please contact hoyerdan@gmail.com.

New York University's Institute of Fine Arts presents
Archaeologies of Performance: Ritual Movement through Greek Sacred Space
Joan Connelly, New York University

Friday, October 23, 2009, 4:00pm
Institute of Fine Arts
1 East 78th Street
New York, NY 10075

This event is free and open to the public.  For more information, please click here.

New York University's Department of Classics presents
Fragments of an Imaginary Past: Strategies of Mythical Narration in Callimachus' Aitia
Evina Sistakou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Thursday, October 22, 2009, 6:00PM
Classics Department Conference Room, 5th floor
Silver Center for Arts and Science
32 Waverly Place or 31 Washington Place (wheelchair access)

For more information please contact hoyerdan@gmail.com.

New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The ISAW Visiting Research Scholar Lecture Series
The Temple of Osiris in Abydos during the Late Period
David Klotz

Tuesday, October 20, 2009, 6:00PM
ISAW Lecture Hall, Second Floor
15 E. 84th Street
New York, NY 10028

For more information, please click here.

New York University's Department of Classics presents
When Tragedy is Funny
Fred Ahl, Cornell University

Tuesday, October 6, 2009, 12:30PM
Classics Department Conference Room, 5th floor
Silver Center for Arts and Science
32 Waverly Place or 31 Washington Place (wheelchair access)

For more information please contact hoyerdan@gmail.com.

New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The ISAW Visiting Research Scholar Lecture Series
A Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire? The View from New York
David Taylor, University of Oxford

Tuesday, October 6, 2009, 6:00PM
ISAW Lecture Hall, Second Floor
15 E. 84th Street
New York, NY 10028

The overwhelming majority of the surviving epigraphic texts of the Late Antique Roman provinces of Syria and Mesopotamia are written in Greek, and in a number of recent books and articles it has been argued that Greek was in fact the ordinary daily language of the local populations. By examining examples of the full available range of ancient linguistic evidence, and drawing on sociolinguistic theory about multilingualism and diglossia, this thesis will be challenged, and a more complex pattern of language usage will be sketched out. The consequences of this for issues of local identity and culture will then be explored.

For more information, please click here.

New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The Sarcophagus East and West

Wu Hung, University of Chicago
Jas Elsner, Oxford University

Friday, October 2- Saturday, October 3, 2009
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
15 E. 84th Street
New York, NY 10028

This conference focuses mainly on decorated stone sarcophagi from around the second century BCE to the third century CE, when this type of burial equipment not only continued to develop in the parts of Europe dominated by the Roman Empire, but also enjoyed considerable popularity in East Asia. Whereas the chronological and formal developments of each regional tradition remain an important research goal, this conference encourages comparative observations and interpretations of ancient sarcophagi in broader geo-cultural spheres and more specific ritual/religious contexts. It is hoped that by addressing these two research objectives simultaneously, this conference will help open new ways to think about the development of art and visual culture in a broadly defined ancient world, where the art historical materials available are subject to comparable methodological constraints both from archaeological excavation and from known literary and historical contexts.

For more information please click here.

Xenophon_Poster_long.jpgThe NYU Center for Ancient Studies presents the
Rose-Marie Lewent Conference on Ancient Studies

Xenophon in a New Voice

Wednesday, September 30, 2009, 5:30 P.M.
Hemmerdinger Hall
Silver Center for Arts and Science, Room 102
32 Waverly Place or 31 Washington Place (wheelchair accessible)

Welcome
Matthew S. Santirocco
Seryl Kushner Dean, College of Arts and Science, and Angelo J. Ranieri Director of Ancient Studies, New York University

Discussants
Paul Cartledge
Hellenic Parliament Global Distinguished Professor in the History and Theory of Democracy, New York University; A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, Cambridge University

David Thomas
Independent Scholar; Contributor, The Landmark Xenophon’s Hellenika

Robert B. Strassler
Independent Scholar; Editor, The Landmark Xenophon’s Hellenika

Phil Terry
Chief Executive Officer, Creative Good; Founder, Reading Odyssey

All events are free and open to the public. For more information about the colloquium, please contact the College Dean’s Office at 212.998.8100

Fordham University presents
Invective and Its Audience From Demosthenes To Libanius
Raffaella Cribiore, New York University

Wednesday, September 30, 2009, 3:00 P.M.
Fordham University
Lincoln Center Campus
LL 518

For more information, please contact Robert J. Penella at 718-817-3137 or rpenella@fordham.edu
LegitViolence_poster_final_red.jpgThe NYU Center for Ancient Studies presents the
Ranieri Colloquium on Ancient Studies

Legitimating Violence: Execution, Human Sacrifice, Assassination

A conference in honor of Larissa Bonfante

Thursday, September 24, 2009
Hemmerdinger Hall
Silver Center for Arts and Science, Room 102
32 Waverly Place or 31 Washington Place (wheelchair accessible)

5:00 P.M. Welcome
Matthew S. Santirocco, Seryl Kushner Dean, College of Arts and Science, and Angelo J. Ranieri Director of Ancient Studies, New York University

Larissa Bonfante and NYU
David Levene, New York University

Legitimating Violence and Caesar's Toga
Michèle Lowrie, University of Chicago

5:45 P.M. Violence and Cruelty in Ritual
Henk Versnel, University of Leiden

7:00 P.M. Reception

Friday, September 25, 2009

9:00 A.M. Cicero's 'Gentleman's Guide to Lynching'
Andrew Riggsby, University of Texas at Austin

10:00 A.M. How Republican was the Roman Republic?
Clifford Ando, University of Chicago

11:30 P.M. "These Are Men Whose Minds the Dead Have Ravished": Combat Trauma and the Tragic Stage
Peter Meineck, New York University

12:30 P.M. Lunch Break

1:30 P.M. Vows and Violence: The Dilemma of Judge Jephthah of Israel
Jack Sasson, Vanderbilt University

2:30 P.M. Blood is Seed: Martyrdom and the Fracture of Ancient Political Theology
Adam Becker, New York University

This colloquium is co-sponsored by the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, the Institute of Fine Arts, and the Departments of Classics, Anthropology, and Hebrew and Judaic Studies, NYU.

All events are free and open to the public. For more information about the colloquium, please contact the College Dean’s Office at 212.998.8100 or e-mail ken.kidd@nyu.edu
New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Digging Up the Remnants of Scientific Graeco-Syriaca - Chiefly from the Works of Barhebraeus
Hidemi Takahashi, University of Tokyo and Yale University MacMillan Center

Monday, September 21, 2009, 5:00 P.M.
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
2nd Floor Seminar Room
15 E. 84th Street
New York, NY 10028

Space is limited, please RSVP to alexander.jones@nyu.edu.

For more information, please click here.
The NYU Humanities Initiative and the Department of Classics present
Anti-democratic voices in ancient Greece and Rome (and their legacies)
Janet Coleman, New York University and London School of Economics

Thursday, September 17, 2009, 6:00 P.M.
20 Cooper Square (at East 5th Street), Room 503

Professor Coleman will discuss anti-democratic arguments found in the literature of ancient Greece and Rome, to illustrate the ever-present voices of potentially or actually dispossessed elites and their attitudes to 'ordinary minds'. Beginning with what we today take equality and democracy to mean, she seeks to demonstrate the uniqueness of what Athens had as democratic with its rather startling view of the political AS emotional. She will contrast this with Roman republican and imperial attitudes to the emotions, especially as influenced by Stoic philosophy, and with reference to their views of the emotionally undisciplined mob. Developing an argument that distinguishes between social free speech and political free speech, she wants to indicate that we owe more to the Romans than to the Greeks in that we have kept alive some of the most prominent anti-democratic voices of that ancient past, in our own.

Reception to follow.