Department Colloquium: Katherine Blouin (University of Toronto) "Doing Classics on Indigenous Land"

Speaker: Katherine Blouin, Associate Professor of History and Classics, University of Toronto

Title: "Doing Classics on Indigenous Land"

Abstract: What does it mean to teach, learn and research Classics on Indigenous Land? What does it mean to do so in a settler colony located on what many Peoples call Turtle Island? How are we (not) accountable for the role played by Classics, Archaeology, and other Mediterranean and West Asian Antiquity Fields in (settler) colonial contexts? How does modern settler colonialism inform our reconstruction of ancient Indigeneities? How does our relationship to the Land we come from and the Land we are currently working on play a role in the way we think about ancient Mediterranean and West Asian worlds? Why is that so? What can Antiquity scholars learn from ancient and modern Indigenous ways of being, knowing and learning? And what catharses are triggered in the process? Drawing from my own (un)learning work in and outside the classroom, this paper will propose avenues for answers and ways forward.