Past Colloquia

Colloquia 2017-2018

Thursday, November 30, 2017: Milette Gaifman (History of Art and Classics) presents “Monuments of Classical Culture: From Athens to New Haven”.

Wednesday, January 31, 2018: Stathis Livathinos, Director of the National Theatre of Greece, and director/producer Yolanda Markopoulou: on Making Homer’s ILIAD

Monday, February 26, 2018: New Yorker Staff Writer (DS alum!) George Packer

Monday, April 16, 2018: Homer’s Homelessness, Prof. Dan-el Padilla-Peralta, Princeton University

Colloquia 2016-2017

October 13, 2016: Class of ’37 Colloquium-Robert Pinsky, on Dante’s Inferno.

November 11, 2016: Class of ’37 Colloquium-Mary Beard (University of Cambridge) on “The Importance of Being Difficult: On Tacitus and Others”

January 26, 2017: Atheism and the Novel, with James Wood (Harvard, The New Yorker)

February 22, 2017: A Somali Tempest, with Prof. Toni Dorfman.

April 12, 2017: Is Ours a Godless Age? With Prof. Tony Kronman,

Colloquia 2015-2016

DS Colloquia for the academic year 2015–2016 were a series of panel discussions on moments and movements in history critical for understanding the textual tradition we study in Directed Studies.

October 8, 2015: 399 BCE: Athens in the Year of Socrates’s Death- Panel featuring Prof. Pauline LeVen (organizer), with Daniela Cammack (Yale & Harvard University) and Elizabeth Irwin (Columbia University)

November 2, 2015: On Rome- Panel featuring Prof. Kirk Freudenburg (organizer), with Noel Lensky and  Andrew Johnston (both of Yale University), and Joy Connolly (NYU).

November 16, 2015: What’s new about the Middle Ages?- Panel featuring Prof. Paul Freedman (organizer), with Howard Bloch (Yale University), and Sara Lipton (SUNY Stonybrook).

January 26, 2016: The Seven Heads of Martin Luther, with Bruce Gordon, Carlos Eire, and Euan Cameron, Union Theological/Columbia University

February 25, 2016: Is the Enlightenment Over? With Steven Smith, Isaac Nakhimovsky, and Jonathan Israel, Institute for Advanced Studies

April 21, 2016: W.E.B. Du Bois, with Jonathan Holloway, Brandon Terry, Harvard University

Colloquia 2014-2015

September 18, 2014: Justice Stephen Breyer

October 16, 2014: Climates Club, William Nordhaus, Sterling Professor of Economics and School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University

November 6, 2014: DS and the Classics: An Omni-Local Model, Emily Greenwood, Professor of Classics, Yale University

March 4, 2015: Richard Wagner’s “Gesamtkunstwerk” and the Media Age, Gundula Kreuzer, Prof. of Musicology, Yale University

April 2, 2015: Augustine’s Inner Search for the Trinity, Garry Wills, Prof. Emeritus of History, Northwestern University, (Yale University PhD History ’61)

April 16, 2015: Double Consciousness and its Discontents, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University, (Yale ‘73) on W.E.B. Du Bois

Colloquia 2013-2014

on history:
October 16, 2013: On History, Stephen Greenblatt, John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University

on Europe:
November 6, 2013: On Europe, Patrick J. Geary, Professor, School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study

on music:
November 12, 2013: Monteverdi’s Odyssey, Ellen Rosand, George A. Saden Professor of Music, Yale University

on Chinese Literature
February 12, 2014: On the Chinese Library, Tina Lu, Professor of Chinese Literature, Yale University

on musicology:
March 6, 2014: Gary Tomlinson, Professor of Musicology, Director of the Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University

on history:
April 16, 2014: On W.E.B. DuBois: How to Read Souls of Black Folk in a Post-Racial Age, Jonathan Holloway, Professor of History, American Studies, and African American Studies, Yale University

Colloquia 2013-1999 [pdf]