COLLOQUIUM: Peter Meineck, NYU, "Activating Classics: how ancient literature can help defend democracy"

Thursday, February 1, 2018 - 4:30pm to 6:00pm

402 Cohen Hall

In this illustrated talk Peter Meineck will describe his work with members of American veteran community and their public engagement programs that have sought to bring veterans and the public together in conversation about war and society with programs based around homecoming, women at war, and the ethics of war. In a new program, The Warrior Chorus, veterans are being trained to devise and lead their own active public programming with a focus on the meaning of democracy. This has so far led to a program with refugees and veterans in Athens, public performances at cultural institutions such as the Met Museum and Brooklyn Academy of Music and classical political advocacy at the US Capitol.

Peter Meineck, holds the endowed chair of Professor of Classics in the Modern World at New York University. He was the founder of Aquila Theatre and an Honorary Professor at the University of Nottingham. He has published extensively on ancient drama including several translations of Greek plays, the edited volume (with David Konstan) Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks (Palgrave 2014) and Theatrocracy: Greek Drama, Cognition and the Imperative for Theatre (Routledge 2017). He has been developing and implementing public programs based on classical material since 1991 and his work has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman's Special Award in 2010, the American Philological Association/Society for Classical Studies Award for Outreach in 2011 and the 2014 Communicator Award for the YouStories app. He is interested in ancient performance, cognitive theory, and public engagement, and has been working with veterans since 2007. He also serves as Rescue Captain at the Bedford Fire Department in New York. 

Full BIO: https://as.nyu.edu/content/nyu-as/as/faculty/peter-meineck.html