Dartmouth Events

Please join us on October 13, 2022, 5:30 pm in Life Sciences Center 100 (Oopik Auditorium) for a lecture by

Prof. Patrice Rankine of the University of Chicago
Black Classical Receptions and the Problem of Sigmund Freud's Oedipus

Situating classical reception as a process and not simply a one-to-one correspondence, in this presentation I explore some of the complexity in uses of the myth of Oedipus that cast him as Black in dramatic performances in the United States. Sigmund Freud's understanding of Sophocles' Oedipus is an important filter for all modern and contemporary interpretations of the play, and as such a problem that Freud presents becomes critical to later stagings of the character from this drama and from Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus.

Free and open to the public.
Reception to follow

For remote participation, use this link:
https://dartmouth.zoom.us/j/91537071827?pwd=U3d6clB0S25WT216dTUwbi94VDB4Zz09

Patrice Rankine, Professor in Classics at the University of Chicago, researches the Greco-Roman classics and their afterlife, particularly as they pertain to literature, theater, and the history and performance of race. He is author of Ulysses in Black: Ralph Ellison, Classicism, and African American Literature (2006) and Aristotle and Black Drama: A Theater of Civil Disobedience (2013), as well as coauthor of The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas (2015). His current book projects include Theater and Crisis: Myth, Memory, and Racial Reckoning, 1964–2020 and Slavery and the Book, for which he has conducted research on slavery in Brazil and organized an international symposium, "Transhistorical and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Slavery." In addition to the reception of classics in current times, Rankine is interested in reading literature with the insights gained from various theoretical approaches, such as race and performance, queer theory, and "history from below," or social history.