MLA Faculty Lecture: Greek Drama at the Movies
Join the Master of Liberal Arts (MLA) program on June 16 for a sneak peek at an upcoming Autumn Quarter class taught by UChicago Classics Professor David Wray.
About the Event
Join the Master of Liberal Arts (MLA) program for a sneak peek at an upcoming Autumn Quarter class: “Greek Drama at the Movies,” taught by UChicago Classics Professor and MLA Faculty Member, David Wray.
Western theater, as an art form and a cultural institution, traces its origin back to the Greek tragedies and comedies produced two and a half millennia ago. In our own time, filmmakers continue to use the ancient Greek mythological dramas as reference points, springboards of inspiration, and models for adaptation and innovation.
Led by Professor David Wray, Our Faculty Presenter
Foreshadowing his upcoming class, Professor Wray's Faculty Lecture on June 16 will examine some of the original texts alongside their modern film adaptations that range from “faithful” attempts to recreate Athenian performance conventions to transcultural reworkings that represent Athenian soldiers as gang members fighting on the streets of Chicago.
Who's Speaking
David Wray
Associate Professor in the Department of Classics, The Department of Comparative Literature, and the College
David Wray is is an associate professor in the Department of Classics, the Department of Comparative Literature, and the College. He is the author of Catullus and the Poetics of Roman Manhood (Cambridge 2001), a coeditor of Seneca and the Self (Cambridge 2009), and is currently writing Ovid at the Tragic Core of Modernity. His research and teaching interests include Hellenistic and Roman poetry (especially Apollonius Rhodius, Catullus, Lucretius, Virgil, Tibullus, Ovid, Seneca, Lucan, and Statius); Greek epic and tragedy; Roman philosophy; ancient and modern relations between literature and philosophy; gender; theory and practice of literary translation; and the reception of Greco-Roman thought and literature, from Shakespeare and Corneille to Pound and Zukofsky. He is a member of the Poetry and Poetics program.
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