24 November 2022, 6 pm | International House, Kringsweg 6, Cologne 

Guest Lecture – »Classics Now: The Importance of Studying Antiquity in Our Present Age of Crisis«

Jackie Murray (Professor of Classical Philology, University of Kentucky, SUNY Buffalo, Fellow of the American Academy, Berlin)

The Humanities, especially disciplines like Classics, are under attack. They are being pulled apart by various political and identitarian forces that want to weaponize the cultural capital of classics. At risk in this struggle is the critical and scientific approach to antiquity that comes from decoupling "The ancient Greeks and Romans" from the ideological content of "Western" culture.  So, it’s crucial that scholars take stock of the aspects of the discipline that have been feeding these forces. The idealization of the past by classicists has prevented the past from teaching its real lessons about human nature.

In cooperation with the Department of Classics