Katja Krause (Technische Universität Berlin)
How Does Science Serve Humanity? Two Medieval Visions for Contemporary Challenges
What is the true purpose of science—and can it serve the flourishing of the human person who pursues it? This question was as urgent in the thirteenth century as it is today. Amid the rise of the medieval university, urbanization, and the influx of Aristotelianism, two Dominican thinkers—Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas—offered strikingly different answers. Albert (ca. 1200–1280), who commented on the entire Aristotelian corpus then available, saw science as a path to the perfection of the human being, as homo solus intellectus. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), though shaped by the same tradition, denied that philosophical science could lead to full human perfection. This talk explores their contrasting visions to revisit a question of equal importance to us: what kind of knowledge forms not just our power to act, but our way of relating to the world? And in an age of artificial intelligence and institutional fragility, can these…
Event Series (if not listed): Aletheia Lecture on Catholic and Eastern Christianity.
Thursday, October 30, 2025, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, the Thompson Room, the Barker Center.
CANCELLED - Methods and Practice Workshop
Workshops
Presenter: Alanis Gonzalez
"Translating Imperial Histories and the Gazes of Futurity: A Comparative Analysis.
Event Series: Methods and Practice in Classics Workshop.
Friday, October 31, 2025, 12:00 PM – 1:15 PM.
Homer Reading Group
Workshops
Event contact to appear in listing: contact: lkiriakidi@g.harvard.edu.
Friday, October 31, 2025, 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM.
Boylston 203.
FAS Faculty meeting
FAS Faculty Meetings
includes in camera degree proceedings.
Tuesday, November 4, 2025, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
For more info visit secfas.fas.harvard.edu. Methods and Practice Workshop
Workshops
Presenter: Alexander Reed
"The Rural Peasantry of Roman Britain".
Event Series: Methods and Practice in Classics Workshop.
Tuesday, November 4, 2025, 3:00 PM – 4:15 PM.
Boylston 237.
Course Registration begins (enroll in courses)
Registrar's Calendar
Wednesday, November 5, 2025.
Greek Philosophical Texts Reading Group
Workshops
Event contact to appear in listing: contact: Peter Osorio (posorio@fas.harvard.edu). Event Series: Greek Philosophical Texts Reading Group.
Wednesday, November 5, 2025, 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM.
Alternating between Harvard University, Emerson 107, and Boston University, STH 525.
Julia Krivoruchko (University of Cambridge)
Harvard Classics Lectures
"Hebrew Texts and Their Greek Reflections"
The tradition of translating from Hebrew into Greek is more than two thousand years old, with ancient translations monopolizing most of the researchers’ attention. This talk will address less known medieval and modern Judeo-Greek materials and discuss their composition, performance and transmission in view of the manuscript evidence and comparative data. The presentation will explore the place of Judeo-Greek Biblical translations in relation to textual corpora circulating within the communities and in wider society.
About the speaker
Julia G. Krivoruchko gained her PhD in Classics at Lomonosov Moscow State University and had a distinguished career as a teacher of classical languages, linguistics and literature in universities in Russia, the Ukraine, Israel and Greece. Her acquaintance with the work of the Language Traditions Project in Jerusalem and its leader Prof. Shelomo Morag sparked her interest in the oral and written transmission of Jewish biblical translatio…
Event Series: Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar: Modern Greek Studies.
Wednesday, November 5, 2025, 4:45 PM – 6:00 PM.
Zoom (Please email jiwang@g.harvard.edu for Zoom link and code of this event.).
For more info visit mahindrahumanities.harvard.edu. Robert McCabe (Photographer) & Panagiotis Roilos (Harvard University)
Harvard Classics Lectures
"Greece after the War and the Art of Photography: Robert McCabe in Conversation with Panagiotis Roilos"
"When photographer Robert A. McCabe first came to Greece as a college student in 1954, he found a country still scarred by the Axis occupation of World War II and the civil war that followed: poverty was widespread, and the infrastructure was underbuilt and battered. But, at the same time, these were years of hope: new ventures ranging from shipping lines to state-sponsored tourist hotels to ice cream distribution heralded the nation’s rapid development into a modern European state. And all around were visible the beauty of the Greek landscape, the splendor of the Greek archaeological heritage, and the optimism of the Greek people, who maintained age-old cultural traditions even in the most challenging conditions.
This volume, published on the occasion of an important exhibition at the European Culture Centre of Delphi, collects 118 of the most compelling photographs that McCabe took in Greece between 195…
Event Series: Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar: Modern Greek Studies.
Thursday, November 6, 2025, 2:30 PM – 4:00 PM.
Zoom (Please email jiwang@g.harvard.edu for Zoom link and code of this event.).
Harvard Classical Receptions Workshop
Workshops
"Radical Trans-Racial Empathy from Juan Latino to Claudia Rankine" (Mira Seo, Distinguished Provost's Fellow, Visiting Associate Professor of Classical Studies, Wesleyan University).
Event Series (if not listed): Harvard Classical Receptions Workshop.
Thursday, November 6, 2025, 3:00 PM – 4:15 PM.
Boylston 203.
Dissertation Writers Workshop
Workshops
Event contact to appear in listing: contact: classicsDGS@fas.harvard.edu.
Friday, November 7, 2025, 12:00 PM – 1:15 PM.
Boylston 237.
For more info visit classics.fas.harvard.edu. Latin Reading Group
Workshops
Event contact to appear in listing: contact: lkiriakidi@g.harvard.edu.
Friday, November 7, 2025, 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM.
Boylston 203.
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).
Veteran's Day--Classes are held.
Registrar's Calendar
Department offices closed.
Tuesday, November 11, 2025.
Methods and Practice Workshop
Workshops
Presenter: Connor North
"Polybius and the Irrational".
Event Series: Methods and Practice in Classics Workshop.
Tuesday, November 11, 2025, 3:00 PM – 4:15 PM.
Boylston 237.
Greek Philosophical Texts Reading Group
Workshops
Event contact to appear in listing: contact: Peter Osorio (posorio@fas.harvard.edu). Event Series: Greek Philosophical Texts Reading Group.
Wednesday, November 12, 2025, 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM.
Alternating between Harvard University, Emerson 107, and Boston University, STH 525.
Senior Thesis Colloquium
Classics Concentrator Calendar
Friday, November 14, 2025, 8:45 AM – 5:00 PM.
TBD.
Homer Reading Group
Workshops
Event contact to appear in listing: contact: lkiriakidi@g.harvard.edu.
Friday, November 14, 2025, 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM.
Boylston 203.
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.
Classics Department Meeting
Harvard Classics Department Meetings
Tuesday, November 18, 2025, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
TBD.
Course Registration Deadline
Registrar's Calendar
Wednesday, November 19, 2025.
Greek Philosophical Texts Reading Group
Workshops
Event contact to appear in listing: contact: Peter Osorio (posorio@fas.harvard.edu). Event Series: Greek Philosophical Texts Reading Group.
Wednesday, November 19, 2025, 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM.
Alternating between Harvard University, Emerson 107, and Boston University, STH 525.
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. Dissertation Writers Workshop
Workshops
Event contact to appear in listing: contact: classicsDGS@fas.harvard.edu.
Friday, November 21, 2025, 12:00 PM – 1:15 PM.
Boylston 237.
For more info visit classics.fas.harvard.edu. Latin Reading Group
Workshops
Event contact to appear in listing: contact: lkiriakidi@g.harvard.edu.
Friday, November 21, 2025, 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM.
Boylston 203.
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.
Department deadline for traveling fellowships and GSAS merit fellowships
GSAS Calendar
Tuesday, November 25, 2025.
Submit applications in CARAT by noon.
For more info visit gsas.harvard.edu. Methods and Practice Workshop
Workshops
Presenter: Phoebe Lakin
"'Rosemary from a vanished world': Landscapes and Nostalgia in Virgilian Reception".
Event Series: Methods and Practice in Classics Workshop.
Tuesday, November 25, 2025, 3:00 PM – 4:15 PM.
Boylston 237.
Thanksgiving Recess
Registrar's Calendar
Department offices closed.
Wednesday, November 26, 2025 – Sunday, November 30, 2025.
Greek Philosophical Texts Reading Group
Workshops
Event contact to appear in listing: contact: Peter Osorio (posorio@fas.harvard.edu). Event Series: Greek Philosophical Texts Reading Group.
Wednesday, November 26, 2025, 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM.
Alternating between Harvard University, Emerson 107, and Boston University, STH 525.
FAS Faculty meeting
FAS Faculty Meetings
Tuesday, December 2, 2025, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
For more info visit secfas.fas.harvard.edu. Last Day of Fall Term Classes
Registrar's Calendar
Wednesday, December 3, 2025.
Greek Philosophical Texts Reading Group
Workshops
Event contact to appear in listing: contact: Peter Osorio (posorio@fas.harvard.edu). Event Series: Greek Philosophical Texts Reading Group.
Wednesday, December 3, 2025, 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM.
Alternating between Harvard University, Emerson 107, and Boston University, STH 525.
Fall Reading Period
Registrar's Calendar
Thursday, December 4, 2025 – Tuesday, December 9, 2025.
Homer Reading Group
Workshops
Event contact to appear in listing: contact: lkiriakidi@g.harvard.edu.
Friday, December 5, 2025, 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM.
Boylston 203.
Classics Department Meeting
Harvard Classics Department Meetings
Tuesday, December 9, 2025, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
TBD.
Fall Term Final Examinations Period
Registrar's Calendar
Wednesday, December 10, 2025 – Friday, December 19, 2025.
University Holiday: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
Registrar's Calendar
Department offices closed.
Monday, January 19, 2026.
Check-In Deadline for All Students
Registrar's Calendar
Monday, January 26, 2026.
First meeting of spring term classes.
Registrar's Calendar
Monday, January 26, 2026.
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.