The Black Aeneid

Catalog description

This research seminar will bring the insights of critical race theory to bear on Vergil's Aeneid. Its general objective will be to assess how these insights reinforce and/or complicate existing ideas about the poem and its reception. We will frame our work in terms of three major questions: (1) To what extent are ancient conceptions of blackness thematized in the poem? (2) What insights can be gained by studying the poem with reference to modern conceptions of Blackness? (3) How has race figured in assessments of and responses to the Aeneid by scholars, writers, and artists? To answer these questions we will organize our work under three research rubrics, each of them based on a secondary character whom the poem figures explicitly or implicitly as black. These are: The Black Hero (Memnon); The Black Suitor (Iarbas); The Black Poet (Iopas). Students will work in groups to address these and other topics with a view to understanding the potential significance of such features in the poem as a whole and in its reception. The goal of the course will be to produce publishable research as well as materials to facilitate teaching the Aeneid with appropriate attention to issues of race in the poem, in classical studies, and in ancient and modern society. Each student will write a paper reporting on their own research, or a part of it, during the seminar and will contribute to one of several collaborative papers that will be assessed for eventual submission to an appropriate peer-reviewed journal. Graduate-level Latin is a pre-requisite for this course.