Odysseus Returns: Reflections on Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey
Sponsored by the Mahindra Humanities Center and the Center for Hellenic Studies.
Featuring a panel discussion with Emily Greenwood (Harvard University), David Elmer (Harvard University), and Jie Li (Harvard University), moderated by Robin Kelsey (Mahindra Humanities Center).
Tuesday, October 13, 2026, 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY; Fong Auditorium (Boylston 110), Harvard Yard, Cambridge, MA.
Aristotle and AI: Insights from Τhe Lyceum Project
"Aristotle and AI: Insights from The Lyceum Project" takes place on Wednesday, October 14, 2026, at 6 pm (EDT) at the Barker Center, 110 Thompson Room, Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University. The panel discussion is organized by the Center for Hellenic Studies in Greece, together with the Center for Hellenic Studies in the United States and the Pedagogies for Life Seminar of the Mahindra Humanities Center, in cooperation with the National Centre for Scientific Research "Demokritos," the World Human Forum, and the Maliotis Cultural Center.
The speakers will be Vangelis Karkaletsis (NCSR "Demokritos"), Alexandra Mitsotaki (World Human Forum), Maria Dagioglou (NCSR "Demokritos"), and Sergio Imparato (Harvard). The discussion will be moderated by Nicolas Prevelakis (Social Studies and the Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard), with opening remarks by Naomi Weiss (Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard) and Doris Sommer (Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard).
The event is open to Harvard and the broader…
Event Series (if not listed): Harvard Worldwide Week 2026.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026, 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY; Barker Center, 110 Thompson Room, Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University.
For more info visit greece.chs.harvard.edu. Aesthetics, Objectivity, and Interpretation in Archaeological Visual Practices
This one-day interdisciplinary symposium, organized in conjunction with the Fairfield University Art Museum exhibition James Welling: Cento (Walsh Gallery), and a FUAM supported talk by Professor emeritus Katherine Schwab the previous evening on October 15th, 2026, brings together scholars whose work examines the visual construction of antiquity through archaeology, art history, photography, and digital reconstruction. Inspired by Welling’s meditation on fragments, reproductions, and the afterlives of classical objects, the symposium asks how supposedly objective visualizations of the ancient world are themselves shaped through selection, mediation, and artistic intervention.
For a full program, in-person registration, or to register to participate via Zoom, please visit: https://fairfieldvisual.com/.
Event contact to appear in listing: Andrew Ward, award@fairfield.edu.
Friday, October 16, 2026, 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM.
FAIRFIELD UNIVERSITY; Dogwood Room, Barone Campus Center, Loyola Drive, Fairfield, CT 06824.
For more info visit fairfieldvisual.com. Hannah Hoffman (Harvard University)
Event Series: Methods and Practice in Classics Workshop.
Friday, October 16, 2026, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY; Boylston Hall 237.
Vanessa de Harven (UMASS Amherst)
“Substantial Confusion: Why Stoic ousia is not matter”
There is an underlying debate in the literature over how to understand and translate the term “ousia” for the Stoics. So far, this debate has taken place primarily in the margins and footnotes of debates about other matters. And yet the interpretive stakes are quite high — it makes no small difference to our reconstruction of Stoic metaphysics whether ousiais understood as matter along hylomorphic lines; or as the subject in which properties inhere; or, as I will argue, as corporeal substance along innovative corporealist lines. The aim of this paper, then, is to bring the topic of Stoic ousiaout of the footnotes and into a body of its own.
Given their affinity with the earth-born giants of Plato’s Sophist, it is fitting that the Stoics reserve the honorific “ousia” for body. But what are the implications of such a commitment? First, as body, ousia is solid three-dimensional extension, and as such it is a finite, undifferentiated, continuous…
Event contact to appear in listing: arruzzac@bu.edu.
Tuesday, October 20, 2026, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM.
BOSTON UNIVERSITY, 745 Commonwealth Ave # 525.
The John C. Rouman Classical Lectures Series, UNH (Emily Wilson)
The John C. Rouman Classical Lecture Series at the University of New Hampshire. Created in 1997 by the Christos and Mary Papoutsy Charitable Foundation, this extraordinary series of lectures and events continues to promote and enhance awareness of the Classics in New Hampshire. throughout New England, and beyond. Topics explored each year by the series will cover a range of subjects wthin Greco-Roman civilization including mythology,literature, history, philosophy, art and language, and will feature lectures delivered by internationally recognized speakers and scholars. Each year of lectures and special events will be unique in its scope and focus.
"Translating and Reimagining Homer" by Dr. Emily Wilson
For more information, contact the Classics Program directly at the University of New Hampshire, Murkland Hall, Rm. 316, Durham, NH 03824; (email) scott.smith@unh.edu or lisa.hartford@unh.edu.
Event contact to appear in listing: scott.smith@unh.edu or lisa.hartford@unh.edu. Event Series (if not listed): The John C. Rouman Classical Lecture Series (University of New Hampshire).
Tuesday, October 20, 2026, 7:30 PM – 9:00 PM.
UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, Memorial Union Building, Strafford Room, Durham, NH 03824.
Rex Wallace (UMass Amherst)
Event Series: GSAS Workshop "Indo-European and Historical Linguistics”.
Thursday, October 22, 2026, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY; Boylston Hall 335.
Michèle Lowrie (University of Chicago)
"Caesar, Carmen, and the Rule of Law."
Co-sponsored by the Mahindra Civilizations of Ancient Greece and Rome Seminar.
Event Series: Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar: Classical Traditions and Receptions.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY; TBD.
James Uden (Yale University)
Event Series (if not listed): Classical Receptions Workshop.
Friday, October 30, 2026, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY; Boylston 237.
Peter Osorio (Harvard University)
Plato's Authority and Plato the Author in Cicero's Tusculans Disputations
Abstract: In the Tusculan Disputations Cicero the character (‘M’) endorses a group of stoicizing views more strongly than in any other late dialogue. But Cicero the author writes the Tusculans as a response to another Latin philosophical book, Marcus Junius Brutus’ De virtute. In this paper, I focus on a series of textual-historical arguments in the first Tusculans in which ‘M’ fashions a Platonic tradition for his views on the basis of the Phaedo. Cicero's method is not only to oppose Brutus’ Antiochean ethics but to challenge Antiochus’ historiographical method of recovering Plato’s ethics from his successors and from Peripatetics. Cicero’s prefaces show that he does not accept M’s or Brutus’ commitments to Platonic authority, and that the textual arguments polemicize Antiochus’ arguments from authority and constitute a historical method of philosophical inquiry.
Event contact to appear in listing: arruzzac@bu.edu.
Tuesday, November 10, 2026, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM.
BOSTON UNIVERSITY, 745 Commonwealth Ave # 525.
Black Cicero: A Conversation with Mathias Hanses
Sponsored by the Department of the Classics and the Hutchins Center, Harvard University
Featuring Professor Mathias Hanses (Associate Professor of Classics, Penn State University) on his new book Black Cicero: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Ancient Romans in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Oxford University Press, 2026.
In conversation with:
· Hannah Čulik-Baird (Associate Professor of Classics, UCLA)
· Harriet Fertik (Associate Professor of Classics, Ohio State University)
· Andrea Kouklanakis (Associate Professor of Classics, CUNY)
· Professor Jesse McCarthy (John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Harvard University)
· Jackie Murray (Associate Professor of Classics, SUNY Buffalo)
· Dan-el Padilla Peralta (Professor of Classics, Arizona State University)
· Diontay Wolfries-Thomas (Department of the Classics, Harvard University)
The panel will be followed by an EOS Reads event (from 3:30-5 pm), focusing on Du Bois’s classicism: details and readings to follow.…
Thursday, November 12, 2026, 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY; Venue: Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Hip Hop Archive & Research Institute, 104 Mount Auburn Street.
Book Celebration in honor of Leah Whittington
Harvard Classics Lectures
Celebration in honor of Leah Whittington’s book, Antiquity Made Whole: The Renaissance Continuation of Ancient Literature.
Event Series: Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar: Civilizations of Ancient Greece and Rome. Event Series (if not listed): The Early Modern Workshop at Harvard University.
Tuesday, November 17, 2026, 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Thompson Room, Barker Center, Cambridge, MA.
For more info visit emworkshop.fas.harvard.edu. Harry Saunders (Harvard)
Event Series: GSAS Workshop "Indo-European and Historical Linguistics”.
Thursday, November 19, 2026, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY; Boylston Hall 335.
Ian Wilson (Harvard University)
Event Series: Methods and Practice in Classics Workshop.
Friday, November 20, 2026, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY; Boylston Hall 237.
Mauro Bonazzi (Universty of Bologna)
Work in Progress in Ancient Philosophy Series, Reason and Action in Plato's Psychology
In this talk I examine Plato's psychology through a tension between two accounts of reason in the Republic: the practical, supervisory role emphasized in Book IV and the desire for knowledge and contemplation foregrounded in Book IX. I argue that appeals to reason's desire for the Good do not fully reconcile these accounts, since the capacity to govern does not entail a desire to rule. Rather, the philosopher's psychic harmony emerges as a consequence of contemplation: intellectual desire weakens competing appetites, while contemplation of divine order promotes assimilation to it. Comparisons with the Phaedrus and the Timaeus further suggest that our deepest identity lies in the contemplative intellect rather than in the tripartite soul as a whole. This interpretation reveals significant continuities across the dialogues and invites reconsideration of the priority of contemplation over practical and political activity.
Event contact to appear in listing: arruzzac@bu.edu.
Tuesday, December 1, 2026, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM.
BOSTON UNIVERSITY, 745 Commonwealth Ave # STH 525.
Zachary Rothstein-Dowden (Harvard)
Event Series: GSAS Workshop "Indo-European and Historical Linguistics”.
Thursday, December 3, 2026, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY; Boylston Hall 335.