Department Colloquium: Mario Telò (University of California, Berkeley) "Aristophanic Gyno-Futures: Reproduction Transness Disability"

Thursday, January 20, 2022 - 4:45pm to 6:15pm

On Zoom, registration link below. This talk will only be on Zoom, not in person.

Speaker: Mario Telò, Professor of Ancient Greek and Roman Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley

Title: "Aristophanic Gyno-Futures: Reproduction Transness Disability"

Abstract: In this paper I interrogate the possibility of a new "future" for literary studies by considering how the futures envisioned, suggested, or barred in two of Aristophanes’ woman-centered plays (Lysistrata and Women at the Thesmophoria) problematize the very idea of a linear, teleological future. Through formalistic textures that exceed the plays’ contextual framework and the very logic of humor, I track a restless, poietic disabling of micro and macro form and retrieve two metapolitical affects (agitation in Lysistrata and transitional insistence in Women at the Thesmophora) by which we may delineate an Aristophanes capable of speaking to the concerns of contemporary abolitionist discourse.

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