Open House

Open House Discussions
Spring 2024

Please note that events are at 11 a.m. EDT, unless otherwise noted. Details will be updated in due course.

Friday, March 29: Paul Cartledge, Clare College, Cambridge

• Thebes: The lost city of ancient Greece

Friday, April 26, 1pm (note time): Joel Christensen, Brandeis

• Iliad 6: Violence and War Crimes

Friday, May 24: Leslie Kurke, Berkeley

• Sappho: Recently Discovered Fragments

Look out for further announcements!
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Videos of Past Open House events, and Visiting Scholars & Artists at Kosmos Society

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | Other videos

A

Seemee Ali, Carthage College

• ‘Eros and Cosmos: Approaching the Golden Cloud of Iliad 14‘

Justin Arft, University of Missouri

• A Cyclic Odysseus is a Dead Odysseus: Homer and the Epic Cycle on (Mis)Recognition

Justin Arft, University of Missouri, with Efimia D. Karakantza, University of Patras, Greece

• Continued conversation on Within the Kyklos: ‘Whose plan is this?‘ Divine plans and poetic narrative in the Iliad and the Odyssey
• See also: Efimia D. Karakantza & Justin Arft, below

Rodney Ast, University of Heidelberg

• Can the Digital Humanities Make Us Better Humanists?

Lucia Athanassaki, CHS Fellow

• Euripides’ Erechtheus in context

B

Paul Bardunias, Christian Cameron, Giannis Kadoglou

• Experimental Archaeology

Deborah Beck, University of Texas at Austin

• Similes and Storytelling in Homer’s Iliad

Natasha Bershadsky,

• Theognis, earwax and the end of the Lelantine War

Graeme Bird, Gordon College

• Homeric poetry, multitextuality, and jazz
• Making Connections: Exploring Beowulf
• Euclid saves us from ignorance

C

Christian Cameron, Paul Bardunias, Giannis Kadoglou

• Experimental Archaeology

Mat Carbon, Université de Liège

• A Middle Ground in the Middle Sea: the “Marriage” of Salmakis and Halikarnassos

Paul Cartledge, Clare College, Cambridge

• Sparta and its continuing myth

Joel Christensen, University of Texas, San Antonio/Brandeis University

• The Odyssey, “Breaking Bad,” and Problematic Endings
• The Children of Odysseus, and Multiformity
• ‘Epos and Eris: Composition, Competition and the ‘Domestication’ of Strife‘
• ‘Hammering a Nail with a Nail’: Reading Collections of Ancient Greek Proverbs
• “Beautiful Bodies or Beautiful Minds: Disability Studies in Homer.”
• Homer’s Thebes: Epic Rivalries and the Appropriation of Mythical Pasts
• Epic narrative and toxic heroism

Angela Cinalli, Center for Hellenic Studies

• Hellenistic poeti vaganti

Rob Cioffi, Bard College

• Disease and Social Order: The Plague Narratives of Thucydides and Lucretius
• Uncanny Intruders: Ghosts and Greek Literature

Diane Harris Cline, George Washington University, and Eleni Hasaki, University of Arizona

• The Social Networks of Athenian Potters

James Collins, University of Sydney

• Choral Performance and Civic Virtues

Gregory Crane and Farnoosh Shamsian

• Teaching Greek in the 21st Century

Maša Ćulumović, CHS

• Pindar’s Poetics of Homecoming
• Musical Heroes: A Discussion of Pindar’s Pythian 12

D

Armand D’Angour, Jesus College, Oxford

• Socrates and Aspasia of Miletus

Olga M. Davidson, Boston University

• ‘From Homer to Ferdowsi‘
• Persian epic and the embedding of a song of lament

Bettina Joy de Guzman, instrumentalist, educator, and Classicist

• Performing Ancient Greek Lyric and Music

Denise Demetriou, University of California, San Diego

• Immigration and Belonging: Phoenician Immigrants in 4th-Century BCE Athens

Stamatia Dova, Hellenic College Holy Cross

• “Odysseus and the Poetics of katábasis“

Casey Dué, University of Houston

• ‘The Iliad and the Greek Bronze Age’ 
• Achilles and Aeneas ‘beyond fate’: An exploration of Iliad 20 and the Multiformity of the Iliad
• “And Then an Amazon Came”: Homeric Papyri

E

Susan Edmunds

• Weaver as a Hero

David Elmer, Harvard University

• epaineîn and the Poetics of Consent in Homer

F

Nancy Felson, University of Georgia

• Exchanges in the Odyssey‘s Underworld
  with Laura Slatkin and Maša Ćulumović

Ryan Fowler, CHS Sunoikisis Fellow in Curricular Development

• ‘How and Why to Read Plato in the Early Common Era‘

Douglas Frame, Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies

• Nestor and Indo-European Twin Myths
• ‘Echoes of the Indo-European Twin Gods in Sanskrit and Greek Epic: Arjuna and Achilles’
• Gift of tripods in Odyssey 13
• The relevance of Odysseus’ words about kingship in Odyssey 8 , with Leonard Muellner

John C. Franklin, University of Vermont

• Kinyras: The Divine Lyre

G

Robert Garland, Colgate

• Dionysus versus Pentheus

Maria Gerolemou, Exeter

• Technolarynges and the Production of artificial voice in Antiquity

Finnian Moore Gerety, Brown University

• Living Traditions of Vedic Ritual and Recitation in India

Riccardo Ginevra, University of Cologne

• Comparative Mythology and Folktale Studies: Kore, Demeter, Baldr, and the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty”

H

Eleni Hasaki, University of Arizona, and Diane Harris Cline, George Washington University

• The Social Networks of Athenian Potters

Luke Hollis,

• Building Digital Classical Imagination

Alexander J. Hollmann, University of Washington

• Herodotus

I

Kyriaki Ioannidou

• Fragments of Menander and the Modern Stage

K

Giannis Kadoglou, Paul Bardunias, Christian Cameron

• Experimental Archaeology

Zoe Kalamara

• The Aeschylean ‘Odyssey’: A Journey in Fragments

Miriam Kamil, Harvard University

• The Cecropids and an Attic Aetiology in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 2.552–565, 708–832

Efimia D. Karakantza , University of Patras, Greece, & Justin Arft, University of Missouri

• “Whose plan is this? Divine plans and poetic narrative in the Iliad and the Odyssey”
• See also: Justin Arft and Guests, above

Rebecca Futo Kennedy, Denison University

• The Hippolytus of Euripides

Eunice Kim, Furman University

• Confessions of murder in the Odyssey

Scarlett Kingsley, Agnes Scott College, and Timothy Rood, St Hugh’s College, Oxford

• The End of the Histories

Andrew Koh, MIT Center for Materials Research and the Harvard Semitic Museum

• A Land Called Crete: From Harriet Boyd Hawes to the Cretan Collections Project

Thomas Köntges, Universität Leipzig

• Re-Re-Counting Plato: This Time with More Data

Lynn Kozac, McGill University

• Recall Strategies in the Iliad

L

Panayotis Fragkiskos League

• ‘Performance Traditions in Greece‘

Olga Levaniouk, University of Washington

• Penelope & Weaving
• Dialogue: Ancient Greek Brides, Death, and Exchange
• ‘The Dreams of Barchin and Penelope‘

Suzanne Lye, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Magical Strategies for Everyday Problems

M

Kevin McGrath, Harvard University

• Charioteers and Charioteering in the Iliad and Mahābhārata
• Indo-European Epic Poetry
• The narrative form of the Odyssey 

Richard P. Martin, Stanford University

• Muthos, Mythology, and the Language of Heroes
• The Táin
• Heroine cult and tragedy, with special reference to the Medea of Euripides
• What’s a kômos song?

Ivan Matijašić, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

• Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue and its Reception

Lindsey Mazurek, Indiana university, Bloomington

• The Egyptian Goddess in White Marble: Isis, Materials and the Reconfiguration of Greekness in the Roman Empire

Arti Mehta, Howard University

• Aesop and Fables
• A Young Woman’s Journey to Womanhood: Greek and Indic Models from Menander and Kālidāsa

Susan Sauvé Meyer, Penn

• ‘How to Flourish’: A new translation of the Nicomachean Ethics

Leonard Muellner, Professor Emeritus Brandeis University

• Iliad IX, and the Responses of Achilles
• Ovid’s Metamorphoses
• The Free First Thousand Years of Greek
• The relevance of Odysseus’ words about kingship in Odyssey 8 , with Douglas Frame
• A French Book on Ancient Greek Diseases and Thoughts about Translating it into English

Jackie Murray, University of Kentucky

• Apollonius’ Argonautica: Earth, Sky, and Sea

N

Gregory Nagy, Harvard University

• Herakles and The Best of the Achaeans
• Nostos, names, and the younger generation of heroes (transcript only)
• ‘From Homer to Virgil‘
• “Sappho 44”
• Aeneid 4–6
• The poetry of Horace
• The Arrhēphoroi as understood by Pausanias
• Homo ludens at play with the songs of Sappho: experiments in comparative reception theory
• Hēraklēs: Thinking comparatively about Greek mythology
• Minoan-Mycenaean Scribal Legacy
• See also: Alexander Herda, above

Gregory Nagy and Guests

• Epic Cycle, Oral Poetics & Composition-in-Performance
• On the Odyssey, Kingship, and Nestor, featuring Douglas Frame and Leonard Muellner
• Epic narrative, twins, and heroes, featuring Douglas Frame

Joseph F. Nagy, Harvard University

• ‘A Hero Named Heather and Other Peculiarities in the Early Medieval Irish Saga The Cattle-Raid of Fraech‘

O

Paul O’Mahony, actor, writer, and educator

• ‘The Power of Performance: Mythology and Outreach Today‘
• Crossing the Sea: Migration in the Ancient World

P

Heleni Palaiologou

• Late Bronze Age burials at Mycenae, and what they tell us

Chiara Palladino, Furman University

• Discovering Ancient Documents with Digital Mapping Tools

Ioanna Papadopoulou, Centre de philosophie ancienne de l’université libre de Bruxelle

• “Odyssey or the Return of a Song” 

Shubha Pathak, American University

• ‘Divine Yet Human Epics: Reflections of Poetic Rulers from Ancient Greece and India‘

Dan-el Padilla Peralta, Princeton University

• ‘Waste in antiquity’

Manuela Pellegrino

• Greek Language, Italian Landscape

Yiannis Petropoulos, CHS Greece

• ‘Monster Menageries of Homer and Hesiod‘
• Love wishes

Rachele Pierini, University of Bologna

• Re-inventing Old Craftsmanship: : Mycenaean Furniture and Today’s Design

Gloria F. Pinney, Harvard University

• The Legacy of Minos

Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge,

• Themis, thesmos and nomos: are there “divine laws” in ancient Greece?

Ryan Platte

• Equine Poetics

Tim Power

• Rhapsodes, Kitharôidia, and Performance in Ancient Greece

Brian Prescott-Decie

• Georgios Gemistos Plethon: The Role of Byzantine Scholarship in the Preservation of Platonic and Neo-Platonic Thought

Nicolas Prevelakis, Harvard University

• ‘Heroism, Charisma, and Legitimate Rule: A Dialogue with Max Weber‘

R

Robert Romanchuk, Florida State University

• Oral tradition as rhetorical resource in the Old Slavic translation of Digenis Akritis

Timothy Rood, St Hugh’s College, Oxford, and Scarlett Kingsley, Agnes Scott College 

• The End of the Histories

Jeffrey S Rusten, Cornell University

• Zeus in Comedy
• Thucydides on Early Greece and the Trojan War
• The Lexeis project: The great Greek author-lexica of the 19th century

S

Norman Sandridge, Howard University

• Xenophon, Agamemnon, and Leadership
• Deaths of ancient leaders

Julia L. Shear, American School of Classical Studies at Athens

• Lysias, his Funeral Oration, and Collective Memories in Classical Athens

Laura Slatkin, NYU

• ‘Tragic Visualizing in the Iliad‘
• Exchanges in the Odyssey‘s Underworld
  with Nancy Felson and Maša Ćulumović
• Teaching and Learning the Greek Classics in Prison

 Caroline Stark, Howard University

• The Reception of Greek in Renaissance Italy

Anna Stavrakopoulou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

• Dialogue of the deaf: puppeteers vs. interviewers on oral history and historical data

Keith Stone, Harvard University

• ‘Becoming Moses: Deuteronomy 32 in Performance‘
• Song of Moses, Song of Deuteronomy

Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, Wesleyan

• Silver and Stone: The Daguerreotypes of Girault de Prangey

T

Kathryn R. Topper, University of Washington

• Coming of Age at Thermon: Marriage and Its Discontents on the Metopes of Temple C

V

Jacqueline Vayntrub, Harvard University

• ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Search for Everlasting Life’

W

Erika Weiberg, Florida State University

• Wives of Returning Veterans in Classical Athenian Drama

X

Maria G. Xanthou, CHS, Hellenic Open University

• ‘Mothers of Heroes and Monsters: Althaea and Callirhoe‘
• Pindar
• Gold, kraters, and treasur(i)es in Herodotus Histories Book 1
• High and low: Xerxes’ desire of Thessalian heights and Tempe gorge
• Chalcidian regionality between Sithonia and Pallene: from periphery to epichoric identity
• Metus hostilis and fear appeals in 4th c. BCE rhetoric
• The Muse(s)’s “white noise”: the background of sound-scape and the gustatory acoustics of Pindar’s epinician odes

Other videos

Please see the pages “Reading Greek Tragedy Online” for the ongoing series of readings/discussion; and “Videos by theme” which lists Open House and other discussion videos by theme.