Poster Design by Ann Higgins, (510) 526-6496
The Sather Professor
A Brief History of the Professorship
A List of Sather Professors
Forthcoming Sather Professors
Mary Beard
Visiting Sather Professor of Classical Literature, Fall 2008
Professor of Classics, Cambridge University
Roman Laughter
October 2:
No Laughing Matter
Maud Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall, 8 pm
October 9:
The Funny Side of Cicero
370 Dwinelle Hall, 5:30 pm
October 16:
Power of Laughter
370 Dwinelle Hall, 5:30 pm
October 23:
The Sense of Humor
370 Dwinelle Hall, 5:30 pm
October 30:
Seeing the Joke
370 Dwinelle Hall, 5:30 pm
November 6:
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
370 Dwinelle Hall, 5:30 pm
The public is invited. Please note the different time for Lectures 2-6.
More about Mary Beard and her Sather Lectures
Mary Beard is a fellow of Newnham College and Professor of Classics at Cambridge University, where she earned her doctorate in 1982. She is the author or co-author of over sixty articles and nine books on topics ranging from Greek and Roman religion, epigraphy, art history, social history, and literature, to the history of the museum and the reception of Classics in the modern world. Her first publication, Rome in the Late Republic (1985, second edition 1999, written with Michael Crawford), remains a standard history of the period, while her two-volume Religions of Rome (1998, with John North and Simon Price) provided a new foundation for subsequent research in the field. Her latest books are The Parthenon (2002; translations subsequently published in Greece, Sweden, and Italy); The Colosseum (2004, with Keith Hopkins); The Roman Triumph (2007); and The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found (forthcoming at Harvard University Press).
Beard is also well known in the UK and beyond for her contributions to the Times Literary Supplement (where she has been Classics editor since 1992), the London Review of Books, and the New York Review of Books, and for her popular Times blog, A don's life. She makes regular appearances on British radio and television and serves as a consultant for television and movies. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts as well as the Society of Antiquaries and has curated several exhibitions, most recently "From Ancient Art to Post-Impressionism" at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
Beard has delivered lectures around the world, including the Syme Lecture (Wellington, New Zealand), the Danziger Lecture (University of Chicago), the Prentice Lecture (Princeton), the O'Meara Lecture (National Library of Ireland, Dublin), and the Jackson Knight Lecture (University of Exeter). She has held visiting professorships at The Getty Research Institute, L'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, L'Université de Paris, and the University of Wisconsin (Madison), and she will be the Geddes-Harrower Professor at the University of Aberdeen in fall 2009.
In addition to delivering her Sather lectures, Professor Beard will teach a graduate seminar on Suetonius' Life of Nero.
Forthcoming Sather Professors
(2009-10) Heinrich von Staden, Institute for Advanced Study
(2010-2011) Alessandro Barchiesi, University of Siena at Arezzo
(2011-2012) Nicholas Purcell, Oxford University