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Registered meeting attendees are invited to the SCS Plenary Session and Presidential Reception on Saturday January 5 at the AIA-SCS Annual Meeting in San Diego.
Luis Alfaro
From the Ancient to the Streets of L.A.: Imagining the Greek Classics for Communities Today
Thursday, January 3, 8:15-9:30PM
San Diego Marriott Marquis at the Marina
Marriott Grand Ballroom 9
Hosted by the SCS and co-organized by Classics and Social Justice and the Onassis Foundation USA
In his lecture, playwright Luis Alfaro, author of Mojada and Oedipus El Rey, guides us on a journey from Athens to East L.A. as we connect the ancient myths and bring them alive for contemporary audiences today. Socrates reminds us that storytelling changes and grows, but do stories ever lose their meaning and power? Come discover the journey that makes these classics still essential today.
Last week the SCS blog reflected on what really does seem to be a golden age of Classics podcasting, where audio content that you can listen to on a portable device whenever convenient has made it easier than ever to teach people about ancient history, to help teachers develop the active use of ancient languages, and to share cutting edge research and scholarly perspectives on the material we study.
By Erin Averett, Sarah E. Bond, Derek Counts, and Bethany Wasik
By Curtis Dozier and Christopher B. Polt
In order to prepare for the SCS’s upcoming sesquicentennial at the annual meeting in San Diego from January 3–6, 2019, the SCS blog is highlighting panels, keynotes, and workshops from the schedule. This week we are focusing on the Podcasting the Classics panel (8:00am–10:30am on Saturday, Jan. 5) by pointing to some resources for those who want to explore the medium more fully.
Mary Beard
What is Classics?
Saturday, January 5, 6:15-7:30pm
San Diego Marriott Marquis at the Marina
Marriott Grand Ballroom 9
This lecture is free and open to the public.
What do we mean by Classics now? Why should we study the ancient Greeks and Romans (and other ancient cultures)? How do we think through its apparently reactionary heritage?
This lecture goes back through the 150 year history of the SCS in an attempt to give an optimistic view of the future of the past.
In order to prepare for the SCS’s upcoming sesquicentennial at the annual meeting in San Diego from January 3–6, 2019, the SCS blog is highlighting panels, keynotes, and workshops from the schedule. This week we are focusing on the Podcasting the Classics panel (8:00am–10:30am on Saturday, Jan. 5) by pointing to some resources for those who want to explore the medium more fully.
Today we feature a set of podcasts in which the host(s) interview guest classicists to discuss their work, their insights into the ancient world and its relevance for modernity, and their personal and professional experiences.
Ancient Greece Declassified (w/ Vanya Visnjic)
Explicitly aiming to demystify and to share scholarship on ancient Greece with the non-specialist public, this podcast explores Greek literature, history, philosophy and connects them to modern issues and interests (e.g., the possible causes of the Bronze Age collapse, how Athens dealt with demagogues, what makes Homer’s Odyssey great story-telling).
Classics Confidential (w/ The Open University’s Department of Classical Studies)
In order to prepare for the SCS’s upcoming sesquicentennial at the annual meeting in San Diego from January 3–6, 2019, the SCS blog is highlighting panels, keynotes, and workshops from the schedule. This week we are focusing on the Podcasting the Classics panel (8:00am–10:30am on Saturday, Jan. 5) by pointing to some resources for those who want to explore the medium more fully.
Today we feature a set of podcasts in which the host(s) present material about the ancient world directly to audiences, focusing variously on history, biography, culture, literature, archaeology, and reception. We’ve tried to select series that represent the enormous chronological, topical, and tonal variety that can be found in classics podcasts today (but there are so many available options that we simple couldn’t list everything here, so apologies to all the excellent podcasters we didn’t get to include!).
History of Egypt (w/ Dominic Perry)
In order to prepare for the SCS’s upcoming sesquicentennial at the annual meeting in San Diego from January 3–6, 2019, the SCS blog is highlighting panels, keynotes, and workshops from the schedule. This week we are focusing on the Podcasting the Classics panel (8:00am–10:30am on Saturday, Jan. 5) by pointing to some resources for those who want to explore the medium more fully.
In Epistles 2.1, Horace argues that poets are useful to the city because they can teach the young how to speak, turn people’s ears from crude discourse, and mold the hearts of others with kindly teachings. And what fuels their work? Why, “they live on pods” (vivit siliquis, 2.1.123)!
Horace is thinking legumes, but the same could easily be said of a different kind of pod—the podcast, or siliquasparsio, si licet Latine—which in recent years has helped to cultivate new audiences for classical studies and to find new avenues through which to share knowledge about the classical world. There’s now a podcast for almost every taste: the general public eager to fill their commute and feed their fascination with antiquity; teachers looking for alternative ways to engage with their students; professional classicists seeking metascholarly insights; and so on.
Luis Alfaro
From the Ancient to the Streets of L.A.: Imagining the Greek Classics for Communities Today
Thursday, January 3, 8:15-9:30PM
San Diego Marriott Marquis at the Marina
Marriott Grand Ballroom 9
Hosted by the SCS and co-organized by Classics and Social Justice and the Onassis Foundation USA
In his lecture, playwright Luis Alfaro, author of Mojada and Oedipus El Rey, guides us on a journey from Athens to East L.A. as we connect the ancient myths and bring them alive for contemporary audiences today. Socrates reminds us that storytelling changes and grows, but do stories ever lose their meaning and power? Come discover the journey that makes these classics still essential today.
Luis Alfaro works in theater, performance, poetry and is an associate professor at the University of Southern California. A Chicano born and raised in the Pico-Union district of downtown Los Angeles, Alfaro is the recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship, popularly known as a “genius grant”, awarded to people who have demonstrated expertise and exceptional creativity in their respective fields. He is the first Playwright-in-Residence in the 84-year history of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the largest repertory theatre company in the United States, serving for six seasons (2013-2019).
