The lecture series Black Classicism- Moving Forward began in September 2020 and is co-sponsored by the Core Curriculum, the Department of Classical Studies, and the African American and Black Diaspora Studies Program. This lecture series is designed to engage with and critique the ancient world from the perspective of Black authors, artists, and thinkers.
Lectures are open to faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students and draw attendees from throughout New England. About one lecture is held each semester. If you wish to be put on the mailing list or if you have further questions, please contact us at classics@bu.edu or 617-353-2427.Our theme for 2024-2025 is “Black Classicism Moving Forward: Art and Institutions”
This year’s speakers include:
Elizabeth Marlowe, (Colgate University)
Monday, April 7, 5:oopm
CAS B18, 725 Commonwealth Ave.
Title: Decolonizing Museums and the Case of the ‘Elgin Marbles’: Exceptionalism vs Solidarity
Kimathi Donkor, (University of the Arts, London)
Monday, November 18, 5pm (Virtual Zoom Lecture)
Title: ‘Andromeda Africana Revisited’
Past Presenters:
Presenters for 2023-2024 include:
Samuel Agbamu (University of Reading)
Thursday, March 28th, 2024. 5:00pm EST, Zoom
Topic: Putting the ‘Human’ in Humanism: Unsettling the Coloniality of Antiquity
Sonia Sabnis (Reed College)
Friday, November 10th, 2023. 4:30pm EST
CAS 224, 725 Commonwealth Ave
Topic: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Citationality of Ancient Greece & Rome
Presenters for 2022-2023 include:
Dominic Machado (College of the Holy Cross)
Tuesday, March 14th, 2023. 5:30pm EST
Virtual: Zoom
Topic: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Classics: A Model For A More Just Field?
Rosa Andújar (King’s College)
Wednesday, November 9, 2022. 5:30pm EST
Virtual: Zoom
Topic: Dionysus in the Caribbean: Appropriating Ancient Greek Theatre in the American “Mediterranean” Sea
Presenters for 2021-2022 include:
Mathias Hanses (Penn State University)
Thursday, March 3, 2021, 5:30pm
Topic:
Cicero with Local Applications: W. E. B. Du Bois’ Views of the Ancient Mediterranean at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Patrice Rankine (University of Chicago)
Wednesday, December 1, 2021. 5:30pm
Topic: The Classics, Race, and Community-Engaged or Public Scholarship
Presenters for 2020-2021 include:
Nicole Spigner (Northwestern University)
Tuesday, April 6, 2021. 5:30pm
Topic: “Niobe in Noir”: The Poetry of Phillis Wheatley and H. Cordelia Ray
Emily Greenwood (Yale University)
Monday, October 26, 2021, 5:30pm
Topic: Black Classical Philology: Writing back to a deadly metaphor in Aristotle’s Politics“. Based on material from her current book project, Black Classicism and the Expansion of the Classical Tradition.
Margaret Malamud (New Mexico State University)
Monday, October 19, 2021, 5:30pm
Topic: “‘Her brown hands bore me alabaster smooth’: Sculpting Cleopatra in Stone and Word.” Based on a poem by Tyehimba Jess about the 19th-century sculptor, Edmonia Lewis and her piece, “The Death of Cleopatra.”
