"Global Classics" Presidential Panel
by Joe Farrell
This year’s presidential panel brought together scholars from four different continents to discuss the theme of “Global Classics.” It was inspired by a memorable 1999 presidential panel organized by David Konstan that was devoted to exploring and fostering relations between classical scholars across North, Central, and South America. The success of that panel suggested that it was time to consider the different ways in which the study of Greek and Roman antiquity is developing around the globe. To that end, five scholars from Mexico, Egypt, Zimbabwe, India, and China came to San Diego to offer their reflections on the present and their thoughts about the future.
As one commentator remarked, “the Global Classics panel, with speakers from China, Egypt, Zimbabwe, India, and Nigeria, put a crowded room of American and European classicists under unusual external scrutiny.” That assessment is perfectly correct, and one could add that those present in the crowded room relished the scrutiny, and also the information about how people in different places around the world practiced their discipline — or, in light of what Jinyu Liu had to say about the complexities of translating the word “we” in books about the ancient Greeks and Romans, it might be better to say, “their” discipline. The common thread among these very different presentations was how variously the sense of connection to these cultures can and must be defined. In Latin America, as in the United States and Canada, Hellenic studies has historically enjoyed a certain cachet as compared with Roman studies, perhaps all the more because Spanish and Portuguese are closer relatives of Latin than is English. In Egypt, Ancient Mediterranean studies are carried out with a vivid understanding of the fact that key elements of ancient Greek literary culture would not have reached “us” if it had not been for the work of medieval translations into Arabic, and of the relation between Classical Greek and Coptic texts from later periods. A colleague whose research involves comparative studies of the ancient Roman and modern Zimbabwean army with respect to land distribution and the construction of masculinity reflected on the role of Latin as a legacy of European colonialism and as a language used, in his own experience, for medical incantations sung by traditional healers. The surprising scarcity of Greek and Latin language study in India, a country blessed with several classical languages of its own and one that two centuries of British rule have made one of the largest Anglophone countries in the world, was the topic of another talk. Finally, the flourishing of Classical Studies in China, together with the parallel yet independent development of intellectual movements similar to some found in North America and Europe (an optimist v. pessimist debate about the meaning of specific literary traditions; a neo-Straussian perspective on the ancient state) revealed a perspective that is at once familiar and sufficiently different as to stimulate reflection on the comparable North American and European traditions.
A second version of this panel will take place in London at the CA/FIEC congress as a continuation of the well-received series of panels organized reciprocally by the CA and the SCS at one another’s annual meetings.
We thank the participants in the San Diego panel. A brief biography of each of them appears below.
Omar Alvarez is Professor of Classics and Philosophy in the National University of Mexico. He is a specialist in presocratic philosophy.
Obert Mlambo is Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History in the University of Zimbabwe. His research focus is Roman history.
Ophelia Riad is Professor Emeritus of Classics in the University of Cairo. She is a specialist in Hellenistic and Byzantine literature.
Harish Trivedi is Professor of English Emeritus in the University of Delhi. His research focuses on postcolonial literature.
Jinyu Liu is Associate Professor of Classics at Depauw University and Distinguished Guest Professor at Shanghai Normal University. She is currently directing a project to translate the complete works of Ovid into Chinese for the first time.
More January 2019 Newsletter Content
Read our Annual Meeting wrap-up, along with the CFPs for 2020
See the winners of the first round of our Classics Everywhere grant program
SCS President Mary T. Boatwright wrote a letter addressing the incidents at the 2019 annual meeting
The SCS Board has issued a public statement on anonymous attacks
