Two Vanderbilt faculty members present at national meeting of Society for Classical Studies
Two Vanderbilt Classical and Mediterranean Studies faculty members are representing the department at the January 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Classical Studies, the national professional organization for the discipline. Isabella Reinhardt will present on “Ares, Xerxes, and Collective Suffering in Aeschylus’ Persians” on Jan. 6 in the panel “Tragedy and Theory.” Dr. Reinhardt says, “The talk offers a new reading of the figure of Xerxes in Aeschylus’ Persians. It advances a three-part argument, claiming first that Xerxes ends the play with more power than he began; second, that we can understand his negative power as analogous to that of Ares; and third, drawing on James C. Scott, that the result of Xerxes’ military loss is the increased legibility of his power. The talk continues my study of Aeschylus, but turns away from epistemology to consider relationships of coercion between the individual and collective.” James Zainaldin is presenting on Jan. 6 in the seminar “Classical East and West: Case studies in philosophy and medicine to discuss methods, aims, and results of comparative research.” His paper, “A Philological Approach to Comparative Studies? The Development of Pulse Lore in Classical Greco-Roman and Chinese Medicine”, uses the case of ancient medicine to explore methodologies for comparative studies between Greece, Rome, and China. If you’re at the SCS make sure to stop by their talks!