Joy Connolly, CUNY "Agency and Imagination in the Making of Classical Canons"

 

In this lecture, Connolly rejects the label “reception” in favor of an understanding of canon-making built on agency, imagination, and relationality. Working with both ancient and modern thinkers—notably Cicero, Vergil, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Hannah Arendt, and Édouard Glissant—Connolly presents the Roman remaking of the Greek canon and the Roman migrant thinker as provocations and possible models for twenty-first century readers of Greek and Latin texts. 

Joy Connolly began her service as interim president of The Graduate Center of The City University of New York in December 2018. A distinguished professor of Classics, she joined The Graduate Center as its provost and senior vice president in August 2016. Previously, interim President Connolly served as dean for humanities at New York University. She earned an AB from Princeton University in 1991 and a PhD in classical studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. She is the author of two books and over seventy articles, book reviews, and essays. This summer, Connolly will begin her new appointment as the next president of the American Council of Learned Societies.