Visiting Scholars

Visiting Scholars

Open House | Looking Backward: Through the Lens of Odyssey 24, with Gregory Nagy

We were pleased to welcome Gregory Nagy, the Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, who joined members of the Kosmos Society on November 21 for an Open House discussion on “Looking Backward: Through the Lens of Odyssey 24.” You can view the recording on the Kosmos Society YouTube channel, or in the frame below. Odyssey 24 is the final “book” of… Read more

Visiting Scholars

Open House | Rites of Passage and the Making of Achilles in Statius’ Achilleid, with Patricia Hatcher

We were pleased to welcome Patricia Hatcher, CUNY Graduate Center, to join members of the Kosmos Society for an Open House discussion on Rites of Passage and the Making of Achilles in Statius’ Achilleid. This talk applies anthropological ritual theory to Statius’ Achilleid to reinterpret Achilles’ early life as a series of rites of passage. Drawing on Arnold van Gennep’s tripartite model and Victor Turner’s concept of liminality, the discussion… Read more

Visiting Scholars

Open House | Ares, Aphrodite, and a Monkey’s Rump: Some Thoughts on Public Humiliation, with Prof. Christopher Brown

We were pleased to welcome Professor Christopher Brown, William Sherwood Fox Professor of Classics at Western University, Ontario, Canada, who joined members of the Kosmos Society for an Open House discussion on Ares, Aphrodite, and a Monkey’s Rump: Some Thoughts on Public Humiliation. Professor Brown revisited a passage in the Odyssey that he published as an article in 1989, the story of the adultery of Ares and Aphrodite (Odyssey 8.266–366).… Read more

History,  Visiting Scholars

Open House | Plato and the Tyrant, with Professor James Romm

We were pleased to welcome Professor James Romm, The James Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics, Bard College, when he joined members of the Kosmos Society for the Open House discussion (below) on Plato and the Tyrant: The Tale of the Platonic Letters.  Plato made three trips outside Athens during his life, all of them to the Greek city of Syracuse (in Sicily). His relations with two powerful tyrants there, a… Read more

Visiting Scholars

Open House | How to Talk About Love, with Professor Armand D’Angour

We were pleased to welcome Professor Armand D’Angour, of Jesus College, Oxford, who joined members of the Kosmos Society for an Open House discussion on “How to Talk about Love: Plato’s Symposium.” The earliest and most brilliant philosophical treatment of Love is Plato’s dialogue Symposium. In it, a group of seven men, including the comic playwright Aristophanes and the philosopher Socrates, offer speeches describing what they think love is. The… Read more