US and UK Scholars tackle social justice and the uses/misuses of Classics in Western education
The departments of Classics, Philosophy, and Religious Studies and Classical Studies at Boston University co-sponsored a webinar entitled “RES DIFFICILES: A Conference On Challenges and Pathways for Addressing Inequity In the Ancient Greek and Roman World,” on Friday, May 15, 2020, with American and British scholars and broadcast to nearly 250 attendees in the U.S., U.K., and a dozen other countries from Australia to Russia. The co-hosts, Joseph Romero (UMW Classics) and Hannah Čulík-Baird (BU Classical Studies), assembled a group of scholars to address a critical issue in a discipline that is rapidly transforming itself into a significant contributor in the humanities for social justice. Romero also delivered a paper entitled, “Walking the the Cleopatra Ode (Hor. carm. 1.37), Then and Now.” The conference had originally been scheduled to take place on the UMW campus, but the pivot to webinar after the COVID-19 interruption produced the happy result of convening scholars from all over the world.