The Liberation of Black Earth: What Indigenous and Black Agricultural Movements Can Teach Us About Solon
By Sarah Teets (University of Virginia)
This paper considers the position of the natural world in the poetry of Solon (F 4, 34, and 36). These texts display a deep connection between justice for the land itself and for people who have been dispossessed, enslaved, exiled, or otherwise oppressed. The Solonian reforms and Seisachtheia show many parallels with Biblical and other Near Eastern documents proclaiming land reform (Blok and Krul).
Empathy for the Enslaved? The Senatus Consultum Silanianum and Popular Protest in 61 CE
By Alex Cushing (University of Toronto)
Empathy for the Enslaved?: The Senatus Consultum Silanianum and Popular Protest in 61 CE
Rising from the Ashes of Troy: the Trojan Women Project
By Michael Morgan (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Our paper focuses on the Trojan Women Project, a program, now in its second year, that brings together UC undergraduate students and female incarcerated students from the Ventura Youth Correctional Facility to re-write Euripides’ Trojan Women using digital storytelling. As part of the project, the students, free and imprisoned, interpret the play as artist-activists and collaborate to create a video that re-tells the tragedy as a story of recovery after the destruction of Troy.
Public Humanities and Communal Conversations: The Classics as a Window into Mass Incarceration
By Emily Allen-Hornblower (Rutgers)
Over the last 5 years I have taught several college courses behind bars at men’s prisons (medium and maximum security). The discussions, particularly regarding Greek tragedy, have been so thought-provoking and enlightening that I decided to open these up to the broader public. I was able to do so in the context of my outreach project, “The Public Face of Emotions: Public Engagement, Prison and the Emotions in Our Lives,” supported by a Whiting Public Engagement seed grant, and 2 other microgrants (the Just One Foundation and the SCS).
Applied Classics’: Training a New Generation of Citizen Scholars
By Alice König (University of St Andrews)
My paper will discuss a new undergraduate module which I have recently set up at the University of St Andrews, entitled ‘Modern Classics: Applications and Interventions’. It is a ‘Living Lab’-style module with a strong emphasis on helping students to develop as ‘citizen scholars’. Guest lecturers deliver workshops on (for example) ancient democracy and modern politics; ancient migration and modern refugee narratives; historic climate change and modern climate debates; ancient approaches to science and modern constructions of expertise; ancient and modern attitudes to race and gender.