2023

This presentation is sold out. Giftbooks, or in German, Taschenbücher, were a distinctive feature of the 19th-century cultural landscape. With some features reminiscent of today's smart phone, it was a high-end book that could literally fit in your pocket, a literary miscellany that could be read on the move. It was also a publication intended for reader interaction; often it included pages for notes, pencils, pockets, puzzles, dance instructions, and even mirrors.

Toward the end of the 19th century, increasing scholarly attention was focused on analyzing contemporary customs—especially religious beliefs and practices—to identify “survivals” from the pre-Christian Greek past. For Greek folklorists, such instances provided tangible legitimation for the transhistorical continuity of the Greek people. Whereas, for foreign scholars, they offered potential insights for reconstructing the mentality and behavior of the ancient Greeks.

This presentation is sold out. Recent events across the globe have provoked a flood of excellent work on the condition of contemporary democracies. Diagnosis: not good. The presenter recently taught a class that used this literature to shed light on moments of crisis in the two most famous ancient democracies, those of Athens and Rome. The session will discuss that class and present some of the student research that arose from it.