Department of Classical StudiesSpeaker: Jeremy McInerney (University of Pennsylvania)
Jeremy McInerney (Phd University of California, Berkeley, 1992) is Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a specialist of the ancient Greek world and his main research interests are epigraphy, landscape, sanctuaries, ethnicity, and social and political history. His main publications include The Folds of Parnassos: Land and Ethnicity in Ancient Phokis (1999); Cattle of the Sun: Herding and Sanctuaries in Ancient Greece (2010); Blackwell's Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean (2014), Valuing Landscape in Classical Antiquity (with Ineke Sluiter, 2016), and A New History of Ancient Greece (2018).
His keynote lecture will focus on the monumental polyandrion in Arta (Ambracia). Since its first publication in 1992, the epigram inscribed on the monument has been studied in detail (SEG 41 540; SEG 44 463; SEG 45 661; SEG 46 676). Initial discussions of the text dwelt on questions of form, content and dating, with particular attention to letter forms (Corinthian), prosody, and the historical circumstances of the commemoration (an otherwise unattested naval battle perhaps involving Corinth and Ambrakia against Kerkyra). The most recent study, Estrin 2020, has properly emphasized the monumentality of the structure as a component of how the funerary epigram was experienced. However, Professor McInerney will concentrate on two further aspects of the monument (the epigraphical layout and its location) that shed light on the configuration of memory, space and performance at the Arta polyandrion, and help us somehow re-perform the original commemorative act.
Promoted by: LabSA, LIMS, and the University of Trento
*This talk takes place on February 23 at 6 pm in Trento, which is 12 Noon, EST.