You’re invited! Join the New Alexandria Foundation for a lively dialogue with Naomi Weiss, Professor of Classics at Harvard University and creator of Ancient Greece Today, a podcast from the Center for Hellenic Studies. This special Dialogue invites the public into a conversation about the Bacchae and Episode 7 of Ancient Greece Today, featuring Lucy Jackson (Durham University) and Monica Youn (poet, academic, lawyer).
What to Expect
This is not a formal lecture — it’s a guided conversation with plenty of time for your questions. To prepare, listen to Episode 7 of Ancient Greece Today — hosted by Naomi Weiss with guests Lucy Jackson (Associate Professor of Classics, Durham University) and Monica Youn (poet and Professor of English, UC Irvine) — available May 21. Then read the play in the NAF Sourcebook and come ready to talk about Dionysus, madness, and what this play still does to us.
About the Podcast
Ancient Greece Today brings scholars together with playwrights, novelists, poets, performers, and other artists to explore the ancient Greek world and how it is used and reimagined in the present day. The podcast introduces ancient Greek literature and its afterlife in an accessible format, demonstrating the continued relevance and vitality of humanistic study and creative practice. It is designed from a pedagogical perspective as a free resource for teachers and students. The first season, “Tragedy Today,” focuses each episode on a single play and its use, adaptation, and transformation in the 20th or 21st century.
Meet Your Speaker
Naomi Weiss is Professor of the Classics at Harvard University. Originally from Cambridge, England, she was educated at the University of Oxford and UC Berkeley. A scholar of archaic and classical Greek literature and culture, she is the author of The Music of Tragedy: Performance and Imagination in Euripidean Theater (2018) and Seeing Theater: The Phenomenology of Classical Greek Drama (2023), which received the 2024 Goodwin Award of Merit from the Society for Classical Studies. She has co-edited Genre in Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry (2019) and Music and Memory in the Ancient Greek and Roman Worlds (2021), and is series co-editor of Cambridge Elements in Greek and Roman Drama and Performance.
Event Details
Date: Wednesday, June 3, 2026
Time: 12:00–1:00 p.m. ET / 16:00 UTC
Location: Online via Zoom
Cost: Free
Recording: This session will be recorded and posted to our YouTube channel after the event.
Expect spirited discussion, big questions, and new insights!
Want to be the first to learn about other upcoming New Alexandria Foundation events? Join our Subscriber List!