Classics Commons^™

The Labyrinth Of Memory: Iphigeneia, Simonides, And Classical Models Of Architecture As Mind In Chris Nolan’S Inception (2010), Benjamin Haller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Chris Nolan’s 2010 film Inception uses architecture as a language whereby to comment upon the relationship of the protagonist, Dom Cobb, with his deceased wife, Mal. This paper argues that three classical models – Homer’s tomb of Myrhine described in the Iliad, Iphigeneia’s dream of the collapse of the house of Agamemnon in Euripides’s Iphigeneia Among the Taurians, and Simonides’ Memory Palace mnemonic technique – manifest parallel uses of architecture as a metaphor for mind.

The film identifies each of its main characters – Dom, Mal, and Ariadne – with different architectures and with different modes of cognition. The …

300 And Fellini-Satyricon: Film Theory In The Tertiary Classroom, Leanne Glass

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Pedagogical practices in Reception-based courses on ancient Greece and Rome in film often focus on an individual film’s connections to its historical themes and meta-narrative. In contrast, courses based on Film Studies often focus pedagogical discourses on filmic techniques or the filmmaking process per se. Regularly, the two approaches remain discrete and discipline-based.

In view of this disjuncture in teaching approaches and foci, the intention of this paper is to explore the benefits of film theory, including its consideration of film technique, within Classical Reception courses. Therefore, the suggestion offered herein is that more emphasis on the pedagogies of Film …

Theseus Loses His Way: Viktor Pelevin’S Helmet Of Horror And The Old Labyrinth For The New World, Alison Traweek

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This article explores the relationship between the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, and Viktor Pelevin’s 2006 adaptation of it, The Helmet of Horror, particularly how it can serve as a case study for the nature and significance of adaptation. It examines the idea of memory, a central theme of the novel, and considers how three aspects of the original myth – the Minotaur, Ariadne’s thread, and the labyrinth itself – shape and inform Pelevin’s retelling. Each of these is unique to this myth in antiquity, and together, they structure the story. Each is also fundamentally connected to the …

The Odyssey And Its Odyssey In Contemporary Texts: Re-Visions In Star Trek, The Time Traveler’S Wife, And The Penelopiad, Mary Economou Bailey Green

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Homer’s The Odyssey is the archetypal quest story. The dialogue began with Homer, and contemporary texts and popular culture media have continued the tradition of deconstructing and recreating stories, addressing issues related to the human psyche. As Hardwick and Stray note, the relationship between ancient and modern is “not merely inherited but constantly made and remade,” one that we see in the following varied genres and versions that retell the Odyssean myth, relating re-visions of characters, relationships, structures, and themes. The original Star Trek episode “Who Mourns for Adonais” is an allegory of the Odyssean quest for human knowledge, while …

O Homer, Where Art Thou?: Teaching The Iliad And The Odyssey Through Popular Culture, Mallory Young

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Like so many of my academic colleagues, I spend an inordinate amount of time lamenting our students’ lack of engagement, discipline, and preparation. The problems are naturally exacerbated when the subject is literature and the literature in question is, by its nature, far removed in time and place from students’ daily lives. At the same time, requirements to study literature have become compressed, if not eliminated entirely. Ancient Greek works, in particular, seem to pose special problems for unmotivated or unprepared students. As our students become less likely to have a prior context from which to approach ancient texts, the …

Wounds That Will Not Heal: Heroism And Innocence In Shane And The Iliad, Carl A. Rubino

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

George Stevens’ film Shane, which dates from 1953, remains an especially successful version of the heroic paradigm that is established in Homer’s Iliad. Just as Achilles, the hero of Homer’s poem, considers abandoning the war at Troy in favor of a long and uneventful life at home, the film’s mysterious hero makes a futile attempt to abandon his violent past for a “normal life” as an ordinary farmer in the American west. In the end, however, the threatened status of the domestic world Shane is trying to enter makes it impossible for him to renounce his heroic nature and violent …

“Every Time I Write A Rhyme / These People Think It’S A Crime”: Persona Problems In Catullus And Eminem, Jesse Weiner

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This essay interprets Eminem’s song, “Criminal” (2000, The Marshall Mathers LP, Track 18), as a Catullan project in establishing distance between the poet and poetic persona, accomplished through Catullan invective. Drawing upon pedagogical experience, I argue that Catullus (a Roman poet of the 1st Century BCE) and Eminem use analogous rhetorical tactics and structures to challenge accusations (real or imagined) of poor character stemming from their poetry. Catullus and Eminem vociferously articulate a separation of art from artist, using common transgressive poetics. Each poet disavows his own self-constructed stance of authenticity with similar threats of violence and postures of …

Book V Of The Mathematical Collection Of Pappus Of Alexandria, Translated By John B. Little, Pappus Of Alexandria, John B. Little

Holy Cross Bookshelf

John B. Little is the translator.

Book V of the Mathematical Collection is addressed to a certain Megethion, about whom we know nothing else. From the context he may have been a student or patron of Pappus in Alexandria. In a heading at the start, Pappus says that the general theme will be comparisons between different geometric figures. The overall structure brings interesting relations and connections to the fore. The book opens with a very well-known and charming discussion of how the importance of such comparisons can be seen by considering the structures built by non-human creatures such as bees. …

Review Of Sarah F. Derbew. 2022. Untangling Blackness In Greek Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp Xvi, 253. Paperback. (Isbn 9781108817912) $25.99., Emma English

New England Classical Journal

No abstract provided.

A Letter From Cane President Thomas J. Howell

New England Classical Journal

No abstract provided.

Masthead

New England Classical Journal

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

New England Classical Journal

No abstract provided.

Reception Of The Testimonium Flavianum: An Evaluation Of The Independent Witnesses To Josephus’ Testimonium Flavianum, Chrissy M.E. Hansen

New England Classical Journal

The Testimonium Flavianum’s authenticity has been a prominent concern in Jesus studies for centuries. Recent studies have largely ruled it partially authentic, with the works of Whealey, Paget, and Allen arguing that independent witnesses to the Testimonium Flavianum existed beyond Eusebius. This essay assesses the independency of these alleged witnesses to the Testimonium Flavianum and concludes that none hold water. Per this paper’s findings, all versions of the Testimonium Flavianum have their origin in either Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiastica or Demonstratio Evangelica.

Review Of Melanie Racette-Campbell. 2023. The Crisis Of Masculinity In The Age Of Augustus. Wisconsin Studies In Classics. Madison, Wisconsin: The University Of Wisconsin Press, Wisconsin Studies In Classics. Pp. Xi, 262. Hardcover. (Isbn 9780299343507) $99.95., Jaakkojuhani Peltonen

New England Classical Journal

No abstract provided.

Review Of Ronnie Ancona And Georgia Tsouvala (Eds.). 2021. New Directions In The Study Of Women In The Greco-Roman World. New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. Xvi, 278. Hardcover. (Isbn 9780190937638) $110., J. Jo Spellman

New England Classical Journal

No abstract provided.

Amy Barbour: Biography As Scholarly Self-Fashioning, Talia Boylan

New England Classical Journal

Amy Barbour (PhD Yale, 1902) was one of the first women to receive a PhD in Classics in the United States. This essay describes how Barbour’s social context, gender, and national identity inflected her engagement with transatlantic intellectual trends. A biographical sketch culminating with Barbour’s career at Smith College as Professor of Ancient Greek is followed by a description of her academic achievements in the light of contemporary disciplinary anxiety and the use of biography as a scholarly tool. This two-pronged approach complements the valuable body of scholarship on North American women Classicists, which has focused more on those women’s …

Echoes Of The Past: The Vitellian Women In Tacitus’ Histories, Caitlin Gillespie

New England Classical Journal

This article argues that Tacitus’ characterizations of female members of the Vitellii evoke literary representations of several prominent Roman women of the late Republic and Julio-Claudian era. Tacitus draws upon a range of figures for his Vitellian women, from Fulvia to Livia, Antonia the Younger to Octavia. Literary resonances contribute to Tacitus’ representation of Vitellius as a bad emperor who nevertheless cared about his family. In rejecting or reflecting literary models, Tacitus uses Vitellius’ mother Sextilia, wife Galeria, and sister-in-law Triaria to create echoes and distinctions between past and present civil conflicts.

Statues In Plutarch's Lives, Donald Lateiner

New England Classical Journal

This article surveys where Plutarch mentions statues in the Lives and how they enrich his biographies. He alludes to statues in introductions, after death in conclusions, and in synkriseis. 1] They describe his subjects’ appearance. 2] They expressed community appreciation. 3] After some Hellenic and Roman honorands lost favor or were assassinated, their images suffered destruction. 4] Several communities compensated victims for ignominy by replacing their statues. 5] Several subjects erected statues as propaganda. 6] Several “heroes” address other men’s statues. 7] Statues or their absence counterpoint deaths and funerals. 8] Statues ironically embody excessive ambition. 9] Subsequent ancient …

Review Of Amy A. Koenig. 2024. The Fractured Voice: Silence And Power In Imperial Roman Literature. Madison, Wisconsin: The University Of Wisconsin Press, Wisconsin Studies In Classics. Pp. Vii, 228. Hardcover. (Isbn 9780299345303) $99.95., Sigrid Schottenius Cullhed

New England Classical Journal

No abstract provided.

Full Issue (51.2)

New England Classical Journal

No abstract provided.