Vincent J. Rosivach Annual Lecture in Ancient Mediterranean Studies

The Vincent J. Rosivach Annual Lecture Series in Ancient Mediterranean Studies is proud to invite the Fairfield community and the public at large to this year's lecture by T.H.M. Gellar-Goad (Wake Forest University) and Caitlin Hines (University of Cincinnati), "Antiracist Curricular Reform: Big and Small Ideas for 21st-Century Humanities," on Monday, November 11, 2024, from 5pm to 6:30pm in the Oak Room (Barone Campus Center).

 

Increased racial conflict in the United States and a renewed rise in white supremacy and ethnic nationalism across the world have prompted academics in the Humanities to reexamine our educational programming through the active lens of antiracism. But even as dominant public discourses have shifted in favor of efforts to reform Humanities curricula, such efforts have been met by a virulent reactionary backlash that could discourage those hoping to effect change within and beyond their academic institutions. In this public lecture, Gellar-Goad and Hines share lessons learned from founding CLASSICS BEYOND WHITENESS at Wake Forest University, an antiracist project that celebrates the unique pedagogical, scholarly, and artistic contributions of Black Classicists, foregrounds the reception of Classical antiquity by artists and communities of color, highlights recent efforts to create a more diverse and inclusive field, and confronts the hateful backlash that has targeted those efforts. The initiative began with guest lectures, workshops, reading groups, and exhibitions, and has grown to involve new courses, a new tenure-track faculty line, publications in print, and a new requirement that all WFU Classics majors and minors study critical race theory. In this talk, Gellar-Goad and Hines leverage their experiences bringing these ideas (big and small) to fruition, in order to offer actionable inspiration and aspirations for expanding the reach of antiracist initiatives beyond disciplinary and institutional boundaries.

 

T. H. M. Gellar-Goad is Professor of Classics and Denton Fellow at Wake Forest University. He is author of Laughing Atoms, Laughing Matter: Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura and Satire; Plautus: Curculio; Masks (punctumbooks.com/titles/masks/); A Commentary on Plautus’ Curculio; and the forthcoming Plautus: Epidicus. He co-edited with Christopher B. Polt Didactic Literature in the Roman World and co-directed with him the 2023 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute The Performance of Roman Comedy (romancomedy.wfu.edu).

Caitlin Hines is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Cincinnati. Her research specialties include body metaphor and fertility politics, especially in Latin poetry of the Augustan age. Her first book, Rome’s Visceral Reactions: Politics and Poetics in Flesh and Blood (forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press) explores the shifting valences of the Latin word viscera as it expanded from an unmarked anatomical referent into rich political and reproductive metaphors during crisis moments in Roman history. She co-founded the CLASSICS BEYOND WHITENESS series with T.H.M. Gellar-Goad while serving as a postdoctoral fellow at Wake Forest University (2018-2020).

This event, which is free and open to the public, is co-sponsored by the Vincent J. Rosivach Lecture Series in Ancient Mediterranean Studies and the Magis Core.