Theodora Hadjimichael | Epinician and Enkomion: From Sent Texts to Performance
2023-03-09 16:00 - 17:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Dodd Hall 248
“Epinician and Enkomion: From Sent Texts to Performance.”

Sonia Sabnis | Apuleius' Metamorphoses in the Maghreb
2023-03-16 16:00 - 17:30 | Dodd Hall 248

Res Difficiles 4 | Difficult Conversations in Classics
2023-03-24 09:00 - 16:00
The 2023 Res Difficiles conference will take place on March 24th 2023. Register for the conference here.
Classics at the University of California Los Angeles, and Classics, Philosophy, & Religious Studies at the University of Mary Washington present Res Difficiles: A Conference On Challenges and Pathways for Addressing Inequity In Classics. Co-organized by Hannah Čulík-Baird and Joseph Romero.
May 24th 2023. All times Eastern Standard Time.
9-9.30 Settling In
9.30-10 Suzanne Lye, “Can We Please Get Back to Research?: Creating Space Through Service”
10-10.30 Tori Lee, “Networking in the Margins: Towards a Future for Affinity Groups in Classics”
10.30-10.45 Q&A
10.45-11.15 Tara Wells, “The Dangers of Reception: Harmful Uses of Classical Art for the Oppression and Othering of Indigenous Americans — Why it Matters”
11.15-11.45 Ashley Lance, “Rez Diff: Indigenous Philosophies and Ancient Thought”
11.45-12 Q&A
12-12.30 BREAK
12.30-1 Lylaah Bhalerao, “Black Carthage: Rethinking Perceptions and Presentations of Race in the Punic City”
1-1.30 Jermaine Bryant, “Beyond Reception: On the Limits of Classical Reception and New Directions”
1.30-1.45 Q&A
1.45-2.15 Javal Coleman, “Comparative Slaveries in Ancient and Modern Contexts”
2.15-2.45 Farnoosh Shamsian and Gregory Crane, “Re-reading Plato In Persian: Linguistic Diversity Through Digital Annotations”
2.45-3 Q&A
3-4 Keynote: Jackie Murray, “Race, Slavery, and Tyranny in Plato’s Republic”
All times are US Eastern. The event will be live-streamed via Zoom and use automated Zoom captioning. Participants/viewers may live-tweet the event on the hashtag #ResDiff4

Chris Whitton | Plotting and replotting in Tacitus Annals 14
2023-04-03 12:00 - 13:00 | Dodd Hall 248
Chris Whitton will give a Brownbag talk on April 3rd from 12 PM to 1 PM in Dodd 248. All welcome!

Dan-el Padilla Peralta | Classicism and other phobias: offense and defense
2023-04-06 16:00 - 17:30
This talk will outline the contents of a newly drafted book manuscript that queries the relationship(s) between classicism, understood as a system of aesthetic determination and calibration that is not necessarily reducible to or coterminous with classics, and Black life. The main argument is that classics has been overrepresented as if it is or should be the one privileged classicism, in a historical process that is inseparable from the emergence of anti-Blackness. I begin with a general orientation to the book’s main aims, offer a selection of teasers from the main chapters, and conclude with a mix of protreptic and pugilism.

Book Sale
2023-04-17 09:00 - 16:00 | Dodd 232
Please join us for our Annual Classics Book Sale on the second floor of Dodd, Monday April 17th!

Maria Wyke | "Feminizing Ancient Rome: Women at the Cinema from the 1900s to the 1920s"
2023-04-20 17:00 - 19:00
Audio / Visual Romans I
Thursday April 20th 2023

Annual UCLA Joan Palevsky Lecture
Professor Maria Wyke, University College London
“Feminizing Ancient Rome: Women at the Cinema from the 1900s to the 1920s“

The medium of the moving image started out as part of variety programmes and women often appeared in it advertising to men the pleasures of the new technology. However cinema soon began to give greater agency to women including in its reconstructions of the Roman world. Storylines gave women larger roles than those in the primary sources. Visual perspective, words and accompanying music worked to colour women’s stories in empathetic terms, from empresses to slaves. This lecture will explore some of those strategies for feminising Roman history and some of the reasons why they were developed.

Audio / Visual Romans II
Friday April 21st 2023

Film Screening with Live Accompaniment and Original Score by Michele Sganga
Cajus Julius Caesar, 1914. Directed by Enrico Guazzoni

A live screening at UCLA’s James Bridges Theater of the rarely seen yet remarkable Italian silent feature film Cajus Julius Caesar (1914, dir. Enrico Guazzoni) brought over especially from the archives of the Netherlands Film Institute and accompanied by an original score composed for the occasion by the noted concert pianist and composer Michele Sganga. Caesar’s life is presented in three movements: first romantic melodrama (his secret love for the beautiful Servilia); then triumph (his victory in Gaul); finally tragedy (death at the hands of his friends).

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Maria Wyke and Michele Sganga.

Film Screening of Cajus Julius Caesar (1914) with live accompaniment and original score by Michele Sganga
2023-04-21 16:00 - 19:00 | James Bridges Theater, 235 Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Audio / Visual Romans II
Friday April 21st 2023

Film Screening with Live Accompaniment and Original Score by Michele Sganga
Cajus Julius Caesar, 1914. Directed by Enrico Guazzoni

A live screening at UCLA’s James Bridges Theater of the rarely seen yet remarkable Italian silent feature film Cajus Julius Caesar (1914, dir. Enrico Guazzoni) brought over especially from the archives of the Netherlands Film Institute and accompanied by an original score composed for the occasion by the noted concert pianist and composer Michele Sganga. Caesar’s life is presented in three movements: first romantic melodrama (his secret love for the beautiful Servilia); then triumph (his victory in Gaul); finally tragedy (death at the hands of his friends).

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Maria Wyke and Michele Sganga.

Retirement Celebration in Honor of Professor Brent Vine
2023-04-28 16:00 - 20:00
On Friday April 28th the Department of Classics and the Program in Indo-European Studies will be hosting a retirement party in honor of Brent Vine at the Faculty Club. Invitations to follow.

Chris Gipson | Reader’s Digest: Extinguishing Kleos in Lykophron’s Alexandra
2023-05-01 12:00 - 13:00
Dodd 248/Zoom; 12-1. All welcome!
Hercules rescuing Hesione from a sea-monster. Engraving by B. Picart after C. Le Brun.

Roundtable organized by Giulia Sissa | Aristotle: Forever After?
2023-05-01 12:00 - 15:00 | Kaplan 348
Professor Giulia Sissa’s roundtable entitled: Aristotle: Forever After? will be held on Monday, May 1st from 12:00 PM to 3: 00 PM. This event will be in-person and online.
All are welcome!

Rob Sobak | Demsystifying the SLAC Job Application Process
2023-05-02 09:00 - 11:00 | Dodd 232
In this graduate workshop Professor Rob Sobak of Bowdoin College will take Classics students through the process of applying for a job at a small liberal arts college (SLAC) in the US.

Joe Goodkin | The Blues of Achilles
2023-05-06 14:00 - 16:00 | Fowler Museum
This Saturday Joe Goodkin will perform “The Blues of Achilles” at UCLA. Undergrads, postbaccs & grads from across Southern CA are welcome to attend this inaugural event of the SoCal Classics Collective, beginning at 2:30 pm at the Fowler Amphitheater. The performance will be followed by light refreshments and Q & A with Joe Goodkin.
Prior to the performance (2pm) students will have the opportunity to meet with UCLA faculty and graduate students for an informal discussion about life after the BA.
Joe Goodkin is a Chicago-based singer/songwriter. He tours the country performing his one-man folk-opera interpretation of Homer’s Odyssey (over 350 performances in 46 US states, Canada, Greece, Italy, and The Netherlands) and for years released music under the name Paper Arrows (five records total). In 2020, he premiered a new classically-inspired work, The Blues of Achilles, a 17 song reimagining of Homer’s Iliad, and performed both classically-inspired works extensively during the pandemic in the Zoom environment. From 2015 through 2017 he released a trio of EPs entitled Record of Life/Loss/Love and in 2019 a collection of live recordings entitled (somewhat confusingly) Paper Arrows. Throughout 2020 (yes, even during the pandemic) he released a new song a month. In 2022 he released a recording of The Blues of Achilles tracked by Steve Albini at Electrical Audio Studios.

"Writing your Dissertation Prospectus" Workshop
2023-05-11 16:00 - 17:00 | Dodd Hall 248
Followed by Department Happy Hour.

Elemental Readings I: Air
2023-05-19 13:00 - 2023-05-20 17:00 | Meyer and Renee Luskin Conference Center, UCLA, 425 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, California, 90095
A Luskin Endowment for Thought Leadership Conference, co-sponsored by the Departments of Classics and English, UCLA. May 19th – 20th, 2023.
Please register for this in-person only conference using the form above.
Organizers: Louise Hornby (English) & Alex Purves (Classics)
Keynote Speaker: John Durham Peters, María Rosa Menocal Professor of English and of Film & Media Studies, Yale University.

Confirmed Speakers/Participants

Shane Butler, Johns Hopkins University
Elizabeth DeLoughrey, UCLA
Katharine Earnshaw, University of Exeter
Louise Hornby, UCLA
Hsuan Hsu, UC Davis
Eleanor Kaufman, UCLA
Karla Nielson, Huntington Library
John Durham Peters, Yale University
Justine Pizzo, University of Southampton
Verity Platt, Cornell University
James Porter, UC Berkeley
Alex Purves, UCLA
Mario Telò, UC Berkeley
Ben Tran, Vanderbilt University
Victoria Wohl, University of Toronto
Dora Zhang, UC Berkeley
Recent work across a range of fields in the humanities and arts, as well as in environmental, media, and digital studies, has paid increasing attention to the role of the elements in shaping our experience and understanding of the world. This conference brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines who are seeking to redefine the role of air, atmosphere, and the weather in traditionally non-scientific media (predominantly poetry, writing, music, photography, and film). The topic invites discussion of the mutability of weather as an invisible ontology (and marker of climate change) as well as discussions of atmosphere (whose porous and unfinished nature embraces a broad range of entities, from modes of knowing and feeling, to the stuff we breathe, to outer space). In each of these cases, air’s mediating possibilities across fields, materials, and periods are especially rich for collaboration and the exchange of ideas.
Our conference seeks fruitful points of contact between two colleagues in English and Classics at UCLA, who both work on air and the elements, joining with scholars from media studies, art history, and environmental humanities, for a multifaceted discussion of a common object.
Please send any inquiries to purves@g.ucla.edu
Please note that the conference will be on-site only.
Schedule
Friday, May 19th
1:20 Opening Remarks
Louise Hornby & Alex Purves, UCLA
1:30-3:30 Panel 1: Sentient Air
Hsuan Hsu, University of California, Davis, “Smellscape as Distributed Memory”
Victoria Wohl, University of Toronto, “Intelligent Air”
Response: Dora Zhang, University of California, Berkeley
3:30 Coffee Break
4-5:30 Keynote
John Durham Peters, María Rosa Menocal Professor of English and of Film & Media Studies, Yale University
“On Sensing and not Sensing the Air and the Weather”

Saturday, May 20th
8:00 am coffee, tea & light refreshments
8:30-10:45 Panel 2: Meteorologies
Verity Platt, Cornell University, “Air in Unexpected Places: Foam, Breath, and Philostratus’ Truth in Painting”
Louise Hornby, UCLA, “Outside Air: Cloud Forms in the Work of Tacita Dean and Ali Smith”
Justine Pizzo, University of Southampton, “Character Studies and the Changing Climate of Victorian Realist Fiction”
Response: Karla Nielson, the Huntington Library
10:45 Coffee break
11-12.45 Panel 3: Violence in the Air
Ben Tran, Vanderbilt University, “Unburied Sound and the Atmosphere”
Mario Telò, University of California, Berkeley, “Achrony and Aeropolitics in Aulis”
Response: Liz DeLoughrey, UCLA
1-2 Lunch break
2- 4:15 Panel 4: Ambience
Eleanor Kaufman, UCLA, “Mudimbe’s Air in French Philosophy”
Katharine Earnshaw, University of Exeter, “Thought Bubbles and Feeling Blue (or, Micromeditations on affective Chromacities)”
Shane Butler, Johns Hopkins University, “First Atmosphere: Ashes”
Response: Jim Porter, University of California, Berkeley
4:30-5 Closing Remarks
Louise Hornby & Alex Purves, UCLA

MA Paper Presentations
2023-06-01 16:00 - 17:00 | Dodd 248
Please join us on Thursday June 1st for the paper presentations by two students in our department who are working towards their MA degrees: Grant Hussong and Tom Francis.
Tom Francis, “Italic Funky Facts and Nitty Gritty: A Semantic Reappraisal of Umbrian *-nky- Perfects and Oscan -tt- Perfects”
Grant Hussong, “The Act of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes: Deleuze, Brakhage, and the Epicurean Philosophical Tradition.”
This event will be followed by a celebratory / End of Year reception.

Classics Department Commencement Celebration
2023-06-17
Please join us in celebrating our graduating majors and minors! This event precedes the Hum II commencement ceremony in Royce. More details to follow.

UCLA Graduate Student Conference
2023-09-29 - 2023-09-30 | Royce Hall 314, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
UCLA Graduate Student Conference 2023
September 29-30, 2023
314 Royce Hall, UCLA
Knowing and Knowing Nothing: Learning, Teaching, and Apprenticeship in the Ancient Mediterranean
Keynote Address by Rebecca Futo Kennedy, Associate Professor & Chair of Classical Studies at Denison University, “Knowing and Not Knowing Others: Ethnography as an Unreliable Teacher.”
This conference will be held in person. Schedule TBA
For more information: https://uclaclassicsgradconference.wordpress.com

The UCLA Department of Classics and PIES Welcome Reception, Friday October 6
2023-10-06 16:00 - 18:00 | Coral Tree Walkway
The UCLA Department of Classics and the Indo-European Studies Program will be holding their annual Welcome Reception on Friday, October 6th at 4 PM.
Location: Coral Tree Walk in the UCLA Sculpture Garden
All are welcome!

The Joan Palevsky Chair of Classics Inaugural Lecture, Mon. Oct. 16
2023-10-16 17:00 - 20:00 | Royce Hall 314, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
The UCLA Department of Classics Presents The Joan Palevsky Chair of Classics Inaugural Lecture on Monday, October 16, 2023
Professor Kathryn Morgan will present her talk entitled Projecting the Past: Plato’s Historical Imagination in Royce 314 at 5:45 PM.
Please join us for a reception prior to the lecture in Royce 306 at 5 PM. All are welcome to attend.

Navied Mahdavian | A Careers After Classics Lecture Series Talk
2023-10-23 12:00 - 13:30 | Dodd 248
The UCLA Department of Classics presents A Careers After Classics Lecture Series featuring New Yorker Cartoonist Navied Mahdavian who will be speaking about his new book “This Country”

His talk will be at 12 PM on Monday, Oct. 23 in Dodd 248.

All are welcome!

Victoria Wohl | Autobiography of a Demon
2023-11-02 16:00 - 17:30 | Dodd 248
Victoria Wohl will give her talk entitled Autobiography of a Demon on Thursday, November 2 at 4 PM in Dodd 248.

Vinzenz Brinkmann and Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann | Filling The Gap: New Considerations of the East Pediment of the Athenian Parthenon
2023-11-07 17:00 - 18:30 | Dodd 247
Filling The Gap: New Considerations of the East Pediment of the Athenian Parthenon
From the ancient writer Pausanias, we learn that the east pediment of the Athenian Parthenon depicted the birth of Athena. However, the figures in the center of the pediment were probably destroyed as early as in early Christian times, and for more than two hundred years, archaeologists have discussed numerous reconstruction proposals for the missing figures and the names of the surviving sculptures without reaching a consensus. But perhaps researchers have overlooked the fact that certain reliefs on the lids of Roman sarcophagi copied the representations in the east pediment.
Is it conceivable that we may be able to reliably reconstruct this largest and most important image of ancient Greece? The preserved fragments of those lost figures from the central part of the pediment seem to support this thesis.

Andrew Laird | From Classical Rhetoric to Ethnohistory in Post-Conquest Mexico: Education of a Native Elite, and its Consequences
2023-11-09 16:00 - 17:30 | Dodd 248
From Classical Rhetoric to Ethnohistory in Post-Conquest Mexico: Education of a Native Elite, and its Consequences.

Emilio Capettini | "The Dolphine-Haunted Artifacts of Dimmed Atlantis": Evocations of Graeco-Roman Antiquity during the HIV/AIDS Crisis
2023-11-15 17:00 - 18:30 | Dodd 248
The UCLA Department of Classics and the UCLA Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture present a Reception of Hellenic Culture Lecture Series featuring Emilio Capettini (Professor, UC Santa Barbara) on Wednesday, November 15 at 5 PM
The lecture entitled “The Dolphine-Haunted Artifacts of Dimmed Atlantis”: Evocations of Graeco-Roman Antiquity during the HIV/AIDS Crisis will be held in Dodd 248 followed by a reception.

Andreas Schachner | “A New Look at an Ancient City: An Outline of the Development of Hattusha during the 2nd Millennium BC”
2024-02-26 17:00 - 19:00 | Fowler Museum A222
Please join us on Monday, February 26 at 5 PM for Prof. Dr. Andreas Schachner (German Archaeological Institute, Istanbul, and University of Würzburg, Germany) for his talk entitled “A New Look at an Ancient City: An Outline of the Development of Hattusha during the 2nd Millennium BC” in Fowler Room A222. Reception to follow.
All are welcome!
Lecture description
In the 2nd millennium BC, despite geographical obstacles, the Hittites succeeded in establishing the only supra-regional empire with its center in Central Anatolia, which was one of the major political players in the competition of the great empires of the Late Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean. Even though the urban settlement of Boğazköy is several centuries older than the foundation of the Hittite dynasty, its development reflects essential characteristics of the Hittite state. The lecture will present these events by means of a virtual tour of the city, thus demonstrating its unique position not only in Anatolia but also in comparison with other regions of western Asia.
Andreas Schachner biography
Andreas Schachner (born 1967) is a senior research associate at the German Archaeological Institute´s Istanbul Section and an adjunct Professor for Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Würzburg, Germany. After having participated in various excavations in Turkey and Uzbekistan during his education (PhD in 1999) he conducted two independent research projects in Southeastern Turkey while working as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Near Eastern Archaeology of Munich University. Since 2006 he directs the German Archaeological Institute´s Boğazköy Excavations focusing not only on the Hittite remains but taking the settlement history as whole into account. The research in Hattushais characterized by an interdisciplinary approach that combines humanities and methods of various natural sciences and attaches particular importance to the application of archaeometric research. Beside his excavation responsibilities Andreas Schachner´s research interests cover a wide range of mainly Bronze and Iron Age topics reaching from the Anatolian Highlands to the Caucasus, Syria and Mesopotamia, but also the history of archaeology in the Near East as well as issues of heritage conservation and management. His numerous publications deal not only with his fieldwork but contribute to theoretical and methodological aspects of the Ancient Near Eastern art, archaeometric analysis of materials as well as various aspects of the relationship between humans and their geographical environment in Antiquity.

Richard Hunter | “Plutarch and the History of Greek Poetry”
2024-03-04 17:00 - 18:30 | Dodd 248
Please join us for a talk by Richard Hunter (University of Cambridge) entitled “Plutarch and the History of Greek Poetry” on Monday, March 4 at 5 PM in Dodd 248. Reception to follow.
All are welcome!

Rubina Raja | Urban Culture in the Syrian Desert: New research on Palmyra
2024-03-11 12:00 - 13:30 | Dodd 248

Anthony Kaldellis | Who Invented the “Modern Greeks,” and Why?
2024-03-12 17:00 - 18:30 | Dodd 248
The UCLA Department of Classics and the UCLA Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture present a Reception of Hellenic Culture Lecture Series featuring Anthony Kaldellis (University of Chicago) on Tuesday, March 12 at 5 PM.
The lecture entitled “Who Invented the “Modern Greeks,” and Why?” will be held in Dodd 248 followed by a reception.

Alex Dressler | The Way and Its Poor: Bareness of Life in Roman Aesthetic Theory
2024-04-04 16:00 - 17:30 | Dodd 248
The UCLA Department of Classics presents a talk by Alex Dressler (University of Wisconsin-Madison) on Thursday, April 4 at 4:00 PM.
The lecture entitled “The Way and Its Poor: Bareness of Life in Roman Aesthetic Theory,” will be held in Dodd 248 followed by a reception.
