New Approaches to Classics Lecture Series: Jared M. Hudson
"Pomponius Mela on the Periphery: Latin Geography and the Roman Empire."
This event is free and open to the public.
Pomponius Mela’s first-century CE geography (De Chorographia) offers a unique portrait of what purports to be the entire world articulated in highly artistic rhetorical Latin prose. Once a central text in antiquity and beyond, this detailed geographical handbook has since become practically forgotten. Tracing some of the historical causes for this neglect, this paper examines some of the distinctive features of this fascinating and unclassifiable text, arguing that Pomponius Mela’s written geography represents an important cultural shift in unofficial Roman representations of the layout and knowability of global space.
Event Series (if not listed): New Approaches to Classics Lecture Series.
Friday, November 7, 2025, 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM.
BOSTON UNIVERSITY; 725 Commonwealth Ave. B18 (basement).
Paul Russell (Harvard University)
Harvard Classics Lectures
Celtic Languages and Literatures (Celtic historical linguistics).
Event Series: GSAS Workshop "Indo-European and Historical Linguistics”.
Friday, November 14, 2025, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Boylston Hall 335, 5 Harvard Yard, Cambridge, MA 02138.
Emily Hauser (University of Exeter)
Harvard Classics Lectures
Dr. Emily Hauser will talk about her bestselling book, Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World through the Women Written Out of It (Chicago 2025).
Event Series: Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar: Civilizations of Ancient Greece and Rome.
Wednesday, November 19, 2025, 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Sackler Lecture Hall, Sackler Lecture Hall, 485 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02138.
For more info visit mahindrahumanities.harvard.edu. Alessandro Carrera (University of Houston)
PEDAGOGIES FOR LIFE: Staging Political Virtue: Plato’s Republic and the Drama of Desire
Speaker: Alessandro Carrera, University of Houston
Discussant: Martin Puchner, Harvard University
Plato's Republic has shaped how we think about politics, ethics, and justice for more than two millennia. In On Political Virtue: Plato’s Republic and the Politics of Desire, the Italian philosopher Carlo Sini reinterprets this foundational dialogue in a strikingly original way. Rather than treating it as a straightforward defense of reason or ideal governance, Sini reads Plato’s work as a theatrical piece : a carefully staged philosophical performance that hides its message even as it delivers it. Through this lens, politics appears not as a purely rational enterprise, but as something animated by desire, exclusion, and spectacle.
In this conversation, Alessandro Carrera, the book’s editor and translator, will guide us through Sini’s provocative re-reading of Plato. He will explore what it reveals about the origins of…
Event Series (if not listed): Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar: Pedagogies for Life.
Thursday, November 20, 2025, 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY; CGIS South, S020 (Belfer Case Study Room); 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA 02138.
For more info visit mahindrahumanities.harvard.edu. Greta Galeotti (Harvard University)
Harvard Classics Lectures
Classics (Greek dialectology, Lesbian Greek).
Event Series: GSAS Workshop "Indo-European and Historical Linguistics”.
Friday, November 21, 2025, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Boylston Hall 335, 5 Harvard Yard, Cambridge, MA 02138.
New Approaches to Classics Lecture Series: Olaoluwatoni A. Alimi
"Augustine's Varieties of Natural Slavery."
Olaoluwatoni Alimi is an Assistant Professor in Religion and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.
This event is free and open to the public.
Augustine is typically interpreted as having denied that there are natural slaves. Against the common interpretation, I argue that Augustine affirmed three separate natural slavery theses (and rejected only one). Aspects of Augustine’s accounts of natural slavery were central to 17th-century English rationalizations for slavery. However, they also left open several lacunae that these pro-slavers turned to Aristotle to fill. The methods for filling these lacunae were in turn central to the legal codification of some modern notions of race, including three familiar features: first, that race is immutable; second, that race is inheritable; third, that blacks are deficient to whites.
Event Series (if not listed): New Approaches to Classics Lecture Series.
Monday, December 8, 2025, 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM.
BOSTON UNIVERSITY; 725 Commonwealth Ave. B18 (basement).
77th Latin Carol Celebration
MOX EST CELEBRANDUM!
You are invited to the 77th Annual Brown University Latin Carol Celebration!
This joyful program features seasonal readings by President Christina H. Paxson and members of the Department of Classics. Musical prelude and accompaniment by University Organist, Mark Steinbach, plus the Chattertocks’ rendition of The Twelve Days of Christmas and a special arrangement by the Brown Madrigal Singers.
Conducted entirely in Latin (with a bit of ancient Greek and Sanskrit). English translations are provided for those whose Latin is a little (or a lot!) rusty.
The Latin Carol Celebration is free and open to the public and lasts a little over an hour.
We are delighted to continue this time-honored tradition and look forward to seeing you there!
VENITE ~ AUDITE ~ CANTATE ~ OMNES.
Event contact to appear in listing: Classics_Department@Brown.edu.
Monday, December 8, 2025, 8:00 PM – 9:15 PM.
BROWN UNIVERSITY, Sayles Hall Auditorium. 81 Waterman St, Providence, RI 02912 & on Zoom.
For more info visit events.brown.edu. Walter Scheidel (Stanford University)
Harvard Classics Lectures
Title TBD.
Event contact to appear in listing: Contact: classics@fas.harvard.edu. Event Series: Harvard Classics Departmental Seminar Series.
Tuesday, January 27, 2026, 3:00 PM – 4:15 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, TBD.