Previous Benefactors' Fund Lectures

2023 - Olympia, competing and feasting in the sanctuary of Zeus. Recent excavations and research of the German Archaeological Institute.Reinhard Senff, Scientific Director of the DAI, Athens and head of excavations at Olympia, Greece

2022 - Euripidaristophanizing, Helene Foley, Columbia University (Greek literature)

2021 - Thucydides on Race - Emily Greenwood, Yale University

2019 - From Quintilian to Dred Scott: An Issue in the Jurisprudence of Slavery - Matthew Leigh, Oxford University

2018 - We the People - Athenian Style: How Modern Democracy is Not Ancient - Paul Cartledge, Cambridge University

2017 - God-like power? Rome's Imperial Women and Religion, Mary T. Boatwright, Duke University

2016 - Author words and meaning: Plato and the problem of hermeneutics, Stephen Halliwell, University of St. Andrew

2015 - A Maiden's Consent: Romance and Sexual Ethics at the Dawn of Christianity, Tim Whitmarsh, University of Cambridge

2014 - How Greek is Greek Art?  Originals, Mashups, & Identity in the Past; Carla Antonaccio, Duke University *Cancelled*

2013 - Soldiers Home, Life after Battle, Lawrence Tritle, Loyola Marymount University

2012 - Oracles, Omens, and Dreams among the Philosophers, A Cognitive Approach to Divination, Peter Struck, University of Pennsylvania

2011 - Reading Between the Poems: Desire and Deception in Ovid Amores 2, Ellen Oliensis, University of California, Berkeley

2010 - Pots, Politics and the Impact of Democracy on Athens: How the Iconography of Painted Pottery Changed Between 520 - 440 BC, Robin Osborne, Professor of Ancient History, University of Cambridge, UK

2009 - War, Justice, and Empire in Classical Athens, David Cohen, Sidney and Margaret Ancker Professor in Rhetoric and Classics at University of California, Berkeley

2008 - Finding a New Greek Temple: Excavations and Explorations at Bonjaket in Albania, Jack Davis, University of Cincinnati, Director of the American School of Classical Studies, Athens

2007 - From Roman Games to Reality TV: Spectacles of Humiliation and the Politics of Empire, Daniel Mendelsohn, award winning author, journalist and critic

2006 - Imitation, Evolution, and Cultural Change: Towards a History of Mimetic Regimes, Thomas Habinek, University of Southern California

2005 - Smoking the Womb: Gynecological Therapy in Ancient Greece, Lesley Dean Jones, University of Texas at Austin

2004 - What is 'Classical' About Classical Antiquity?, James Porter, University of Michigan

2003 - A Higher Order of Killing: The Origin, Evolution, and Canonization of the Roman Amphitheater, Katherine Welch, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

2002 - Storytelling, Metamorphosis, and Reliable Narrators in Ovid's Metamorphoses, Michael Simpson, University of Texas at Dallas

2001 - What Augustine Didn't Confess, James O'Donnell, University of Pennsylvania

2000 - Roman Selfhood: Sensualists, Stoics, and Spectators in the Early Empire, Shadi Bartsch, University of Chicago

1999 - Same Sex Marriage in Roman Law, Bruce Frier, University of Michigan

1998 - Imagining Sappho's Music, Christian Wolff, Dartmouth College

1997 - Feasting on Nature: The Archaeology of Roman Leisure, Bettina Bergmann, Mount Holyoke College

1996 - Stringing the Patriarch's Bow: Honor, Class, and the Family in Homer's Odyssey, William G. Thalmann, University of Southern California

1995 - Hypatia: Lynchings Ancient and Modern, Alan Cameron, Columbia University

1994 - The Art of Livia and the Power of Women in the Age of Augustus, Diana E.E. Kleiner, Yale University

1993 - The Gender of Sound, Anne Carson, McGill University

1992 - The Bronze Age Origins of Greek Sculpture, Jane Carter, Tulane University

1991 - The Death of Pleasure: Literary Critics in Technological Societies, W.R. Johnson, University of Chicago

1990 - Ancient Art in the New World: America's Debt to Antiquity, Maxwell Anderson, Emory University Museum

1989 - Hippocleides Doesn't Care: Athenian Drama and the Poetics of Manhood, John J. Winkler, Stanford University

1988 - Cyclic and Homeric in Early Greek Art, Steven Lattimore, University of California, Los Angeles

1987 - A New Pompeii on Cyprus, David Soren, University of Arizona