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Item The account of Perseus in Orosius: sources and precedents(2023) Garstad, BenjaminOrosius includes a note on the hero Perseus that neglects the usually prominent features of his myth, saying little more than that Perseus led an expedition into Asia and, once victorious, named the people he conquered there Persians after himself. He is the earliest of the surviving Latin authors to say either of these things about Perseus. And he is apparently the first author to combine these pieces of information – until, that is, John Malalas, who says much the same things about Perseus not once, but twice. This paper will survey Orosius’ usual sources for possible influences, trace the development of the notions that Perseus invaded Asia and that the Persians were named for him, and explore the possibility that Orosius and Malalas might have shared a source on Perseus and the history of Assyria.Item Through a clock darkly: the time of the eye in Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei(2023) Hannan, Sean; Aleksander, Jason; Hannan, Sean; Hollmann, Joshua; Moore, MichaelAt 5:15 p.m. (Central Daylight Time) on Friday, May 15, 2015, Jean-Luc Marion delivered the Morimichi Watanabe Lecture in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Before the audience, which included many members of the American Cusanus Society, Marion presented a phenomenological reading of the icon in Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei. When, in 1453, Cusanus sent this treatise to some monks at Tegernsee who were interested in the theory and practice of mystical theology, he included a ‘Veronica’ painting of the face of Jesus with all-seeing eyes. This was a fateful inclusion, insofar as the icon has become an object of such fascination that it risks eclipsing the text it was meant to supplement. As David Albertson has demonstrated, the debate surrounding this icon animates philosophical disputation even today. Marion’s phenomenological interpretation of iconicity can itself be framed in response to Emmanuel Falque’s claim that what is at stake in De visione Dei is not the theological category of the icon, but the much broader aesthetic field of painting.Item Ordering empire: visions of imperial space in Herodotus’ Histories(2024) Romney, Jessica; de Oliveira Silva, Maria Aparecida; de Fátima Silva, MariaIn Aeschylus’ Persians, the Messenger’s account of the battle of Salamis presents a chaotic list of the subject peoples of the Persian King: over approximately thirty lines (302‑330), the Messenger crisscrosses the expanse of the Persian Empire, doubling back and pivoting, to create the sense of a conglomerate behemoth of an army confronting the small alliance of Greek poleis. Not a generation later, Herodotus would take on the same task of detailing the peoples subject to the Great King of Persia, but unlike Aeschylus, the historian proceeds in an orderly fashion, moving from the Persian centre outwards in, sweeping from north to east, south to west, in ever increasing distance from the Persian heartland (Hdt. 7.61‑100). This progression through the ethnē in Xerxes’ army and fleet functions similarly to the description of the map of the oikoumenē given in 4.36‑45, where Herodotus likewise begins at a Persian centre to move north and east, then south and west, in his description of the continents of Asia and Libya. The map of the oikoumenē in book 4 destablizes a Helleno‑centric geographic consciousness centred on Delphi; the detailing of the ethnē serving under Xerxes fills the geographical void that, on earlier Greek maps, hugged the edges of the oikoumenē. The result of these geographical exercises is that Herodotus presents his audience with an image of imperial space that is vast and overwhelming, in this case due to the level of detail and the orderly progression from point to point. By combining this effect with the new geographical consciousness that the Histories offers, Herodotus turns the idea and space of the Persian Empire into a thōma, something wondrous and terrible to behold in its totality.Item One nation under David: an ideological innovation in chronicles(2024) Ristau, Kenneth A.; Fulton, Deirdre N.; Ristau, Kenneth A.; Greer, Jonathan S.; Cohen, Margaret E.What was the relationship between the Pentateuch and the (so-called) Deuteronomistic History and how did these texts function as a corpus? What were the interconnections among these texts and those of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah? In this volume, leading voices come together to tackle questions about the composition and formation of the Hebrew Bible and the future directions of such studies in honor of Gary N. Knoppers.Item Bringing the violence into the light: #YoTeCreo, 'El caso manada' and La vida es sueño(2023) Cowling, ErinIñigo Rodríguez-Claro and Carlota Gaviño of Grumelot Compañía Teatral staged a version of Pedro Calderón de la Barca's La vida es sueño. Their version, conceived as "una reflexión sobre nuestra convivencia con el mundo de lo virtual. Mundo que, a pesar de ser cada vez más relevante para nuestra existencia, interpretamos como ilusión, como irrealidad, como engaño de los sentidos (o no)," closely follows Segismundo's own journey of discovery of what is real, and what is not.Item Intimacy and imagination(2024) Beauclair, AlainThis article offers an analysis of the concept of intimacy, arguing that it concerns moments of mutual imaginings generative of desire. As a peculiar mode of shared conduct, it is difficult to categorize the value of such actions insofar as they fall outside our ordinary conception of the public and private spheres. Nonetheless, when achieved, intimacy is not only an expansion of the private and a realization of a good-in-itself, but also has a bearing on our orientation to the broader world.Item Fugitives from France: Huguenot refugees, revolutionary émigrés, and the origins of modern exile(2023) Summers, Kelly; Andress, DavidAttempts to ban emigration from France in the 1680s, and again in the 1790s, failed, spawning two categories of exile that have more in common than is typically acknowledged. Huguenot refugees who fled Louis XIV’s Catholicization campaign tend to be viewed as the last religious exiles of the early modern era, whereas émigrés who left in the wake of 1789 are seen as exemplars of a new type of political exile born of revolution. In fact, a comparison reveals their shared origins in the conflict between a centralizing state intent on policing its populace’s beliefs and movements and the global reverberations of the Protestant Reformation and French Revolution, respectively. Both diasporas included a conspicuous subset who fought France in league with its foreign enemies, as well as an unarmed majority fleeing threats to their freedom of conscience, property, and at times, very lives. After tracing the evolution of such freighted terms as fugitive, refugee, rebel, deserter, and émigré, the chapter concludes by examining how France’s two great migrations were juxtaposed in revolutionary debates over the right to leave and return to one’s country, which partially explains their divergent treatment by historians.Item My land or hinterland: British Columbia, Vancouver, and the Peace River country(2024) Irwin, RobertThe history of Peace River region and its relationship with British Columbia, 1910-1945, is discussed.Item Cattle in the marketplace: the abandoned agora in Plutarch's Life of Timoleon and Dio Chrysostom's Euboean Discourse(2024) Bailey, ColinPlutarch, in the Life of Timoleon, notes that Syracuse's agora had been abandoned and was being used as a pasture before Timoleon's expulsion of the tyrants (Tim. 22.4-5). Dio Chrysostom, in his Euboean Discourse, describes an agora similarly serving as pasturage ( Or. 7.38-39 ). Since the condition of Sicily described in Plutarch's pages does not coincide with archaeological evidence from the island, and since Dio avoids naming his Euboean city, we may consider these descriptions to be more rhetorical or symbolic than strictly historical. A recent diachronic study of the agora, illustrating the continued use and maintenance of the agorai in Greek cities through the Hellenistic and Roman periods, similarly suggests that we should not take either author literally with respect to the image of an abandoned agora.Item The location of the Candace episode in the Alexander Romance and the chronicle of John Malalas(2023) Garstad, BenjaminThe Alexander Romance is vague about Alexander's passage from India to the realm of Candace of Meroë, but seems to suggest it is accomplished swiftly and easily. The earliest versions of the Romance, moreover, indicate there were close relations between Candace's kingdom and India, even that her ancestors once held power over India. If Candace's realm is identified as Ethiopia, this is a perplexing state of affairs. But it seems to have taken on a plausibility with the rise of the kingdom of Aksum. In the De Vita Bragmanorum Palladius depicts Aksum as a province of a vast empire centred on Sri Lanka. But it is John Malalas, in his universal chronicle, who modifies the story of Alexander and Candace to explicitly locate it in Aksum, or the land of the 'Inner Indians', as distinct from both India and Ethiopia. This modification not only made sense of several details in the Alexander Romance, but was also consistent with shifting attitudes toward Ethiopians and Aksumites in Late Antiquity.Item Research recast(ed): S3E4 - Re-creating beer and mulsum like ancient times with Dr. Matt Gibbs(2023) Leschyshyn, Brooklyn; Smadis, Natalie; Gibbs, MattOn today’s episode, we talk to Dr. Matt Gibbs about his research into ancient alcohol and recreating mulsum in today’s world. Understanding how alcohol played a role in ancient times, we look at the connection between social bonds and preventing mental and physical illness.Item Research recast(ed): Following up with Dr. Erin Cowling(2022) Ekelund, Brittany; Cave, Dylan; Cowling, ErinToday we follow up on Dr. Erin Cowling’s research with Spanish theatre, including an exciting new foray into the subdiscipline of Siglo Latinx.Item On time, change, history, and conversion(2020) Hannan, SeanSean Hannan offers a new interpretation of Augustine of Hippo's approach to temporality by contrasting it with contemporary accounts of time drawn from philosophy, political theology, and popular science. Hannan argues that, rather than offering us a deceptively simple roadmap forward, Augustine asks us to face up to the question of time itself before we take on tasks like transforming ourselves and our world. Augustine discovered that the disorientation we feel in the face of change is a symptom of a deeper problem: namely, that we cannot truly comprehend time, even while it conditions every facet of our lives. This book puts Augustine into creative conversation with contemporary thinkers, from Pierre Hadot and Giorgio Agamben to Steven Pinker and Stephen Hawking, on questions such as the definition of time, the metaphysics of transformation, and the shape of history. The goal is to learn what Augustine can teach us about the nature of temporality and the possibility of change in this temporal world of ours.Item To see coming: Augustine and Heidegger on the arising and passing away of things(2012) Hannan, SeanFor both Augustine and Heidegger, the temporality of things leads to a formidable problem in the history of philosophy. If our understanding of ‘what is’ depends on the enduring presence of something, then what are we to make of the fact that the world appears to us as an ever-changing flux? If the universe is the sum of all things arising and passing away, then we should come to see those things as utterly temporal, without thereby ascribing to them a lesser ontological status. But how can we see the world ‘temporally?’ By sketching out these thinkers' treatment of this question alongside one another, we should be able to get a sense of what it means to view the world in a manner more adequate to its temporality.Item Research recast(ed): S1E6 - A conversation with Dr. Erin Cowling(2021) Ekelund, Brittany; Cave, Dylan; Cowling, ErinToday we learn about chocolate, the meshing of scholarly and creative activities, and discuss early modern and contemporary Spanish theatre with Dr. Erin Cowling, an Associate Professor and Discipline Coordinator of Spanish in the Department of Humanities at MacEwan University. Erin has worked with directors, actors and other artists from around the world, adapting early modern Spanish plays (Think Shakespeare but in Spanish) for modern audiences, and she also had two books published this year (including one on Chocolate!).Item L’espace carcéral comme lieu d’évasion dans Riz noir d’Anna Moï(2022) Kim-Bernard, KyeongmiDans cette étude, j‘explore les descriptions des espaces clos dans le roman Riz noir d‘Anna Moï, dont la trame principale se déroule pendant quelques mois après le déclenchement de l‘Offensives du Têt au Vietnam. L‘imaginaire de la narratrice autodiégétique âgée de 15 ans flâne constamment entre deux espaces opposés par leur fonction : sa maison bourgeoise protégée de ce qui se passe à l‘extérieur en plein milieu des tueries violentes et l‘espace clos d‘une cellule de prison nommée « la cage aux tigres » dans laquelle elle passe dix-sept mois. C‘est dans ce dernier espace carcéral que le récit prend forme à l‘aide de multiples réminiscences. Les constants va-et-vient entre deux espaces clos, l‘un accueillant et l‘autre hostile, que la jeune prisonnière fréquente avec autant d‘obsession, se confondent en un seul lieu au moment du dénouement inattendu du récit. Ce rapprochement des deux lieux séparés arrive notamment lorsque le lecteur découvre l‘allusion à ce qui s‘est passé dans la vie de la jeune fille dans son domicile jusqu‘à son emprisonnement. En m‘appuyant sur l‘analyse thématique, je tente de mettre en lumière comment et pourquoi cet espace carcéral devient un lieu d‘introspection qui va la sauver paradoxalement de son isolement de l‘extérieur en devenant un moyen de s‘évader de son abîme intérieur.Item Contemporary care in three works about the Spanish Civil War(2023) Epp, MarlaThis article reads Pas pleurer (2014), Dolorès (2018), and Josep (2020) through the lens of care studies. While Lydie Salvayre, Bruno Loth, and Aurel work in different media, they each narrate their account of the Spanish Civil War through a series of flashbacks, with older adults recounting their past experiences. I argue that the notion of care acts as a link between the formal characteristics of these works and their content centered around vulnerable people. The interactive nature of the narrations set up echoes between the different time periods, drawing attention to ongoing, if varied, needs for care.Item The joy and melancholy of living beings in Mon ancêtre Poisson(2022) Epp, MarlaChristine Montalbetti’s novel Mon ancêtre Poisson (2019) is teeming with descriptions of living things, perhaps not surprisingly given its subject, the life of her great-great-grandfather, the botanist Jules Poisson. In this essay, I argue that the focus on living beings becomes a way of fleshing out her account of this distant ancestor, whose life story she can only piece together from archival documents. As I demonstrate, the narrator, a version of Montalbetti, turns to shared experiences of the physical world as a way of imagining her great-great-grandfather, picturing them walking in the same garden and experiencing similar physiological sensations. The narrator draws attention to the corporeality of both herself and Jules, emphasizing their physicality and carefully positioning them as breathing bodies, part of a complex network of living beings. Ultimately, I show that, for the narrator, the world of living things is a source of both joy and melancholy. Her research into her great-great-grandfather becomes part of a larger process of reconciling the joy of engaging with the abundance of living and growing things around her with the sorrow of accepting the fundamental and inescapable fragility of living bodies, be they animal, plant, or human.Item Absent animals in Patrick Deville's Kampuchéa(2023) Epp, MarlaThis article focuses on the ways in which encounters with animals, a frequent trope in travel literature, are reworked in Patrick Deville's Kampuchéa (2011) to reflect the current dire ecological situation. Deville's narrator is in South East Asia following the path of French naturalist Henri Mouhot, whose diary of his travels was published in 1868. Although the travel routes are similar and the basic components of a travel narrative remain, Mouhot's literary style is reconfigured to reflect the twenty-first-century traveller's awareness of the violent past of the region and anxiety over the future of the planet. If animals abound in Mouhot's diary, they are remarkable in Kampuchéa primarily through their absence. Deville does not, however, occlude them from his narrative, but rather writes about them in absentia. This article studies the implications of Deville's writing about animals without any meaningful face-to-face encounters. It further considers the repercussions of these lost moments of exchange and argues that Deville's commitment to writing about animals, even those who are absent, works to keep their looming extinction at the forefront of readers' minds.Item La monstruosidad como discurso ideológico en El laberinto del fauno y La forma del agua de Guillermo del Toro(2023) Ruiz Serrano, CristinaPartiendo de la base del monstruo como construcción cultural, en este capítulo se analiza la significación del monstruo y la monstruosidad ‘normalizada’ en dos películas del director mexicano Guillermo del Toro, El laberinto del fauno (2006) y La forma del agua (2017). El análisis se centra en el uso del ‘monstruo posmoderno’ y la manera en que este permite reivindicar la agencia del sujeto femenino y la solidaridad como estrategias para subvertir las estructuras hegemónicas de poder.