Gorgonic Transfigurations: Haraway's Terrapolis and the Chorus of Pythian 12
By Brittany Hardy, University of Michigan
In this paper, I utilize Donna Haraway’s concept of Terrapolis to expand our understanding of choreia. As theorized by Haraway, Terrapolis is an imagined space that is multiworldly and multispecies, that embraces the interconnectedness between humans and other species, and that recognizes the agency of nonhuman entities (Haraway 2016). It is a vision of a world characterized by interdependency and productive collaborations across orders of being. This concept of Terrapolis opens up new, productive avenues for exploring the phenomenology of ancient Greek choreia.
Kingfishers Above the Waves: The Transformative Power of Choral Alterity
By Rebekah Spearman, University of Chicago
In a striking fragment, Alcman comments “no more, sweet-throated, sacred-singing girls, can my limbs carry me; let, oh let me be a kerulos [a male halcyon], who flies with the halcyons over the wave’s blossom having a heart without pity, lilac like the sea, a holy bird” (Alcman fr. 26). The fragment presents the relationship between male poet and parthenaic chorus as similar to the flight of mythical birds over the ocean. They are alike in species but different in gender, united in identity and freedom, yet discrete.
The Dance of the Amazons: Intertext and Precedent in Callimachus’ Hymn to Artemis
By Julia Irons, University of Chicago
In this paper I read the dance of the Amazons in Callimachus’ Hymn to Artemis (237-250) in relation to the dance of the Cretan sailors in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (513-523), proposing first an intertextual connection and then exploring an interpretive implication. Structural parallels between the two hymns have often been noted, especially the Artemis’ adaptation of the Apollo’s mid-way closure and then resumption (Bing and Uhrmeister; Vestrheim; Hunter and Fuhrer; Fain; Stephens).