Classics for Whom?: A Pedagogy of Reception

This presentation employs three case studies to demonstrate the value and versatility of teaching about the reception of classical antiquity in modern media. The first case study explores the pairing of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and Spike Lee’s adaptation thereof, Chi-Raq (2015), in a first-year undergraduate seminar to show how reception studies can be taught to non-majors. Because I take as an underlying premise that the depiction of antiquity in modern media says more about the present than it does about antiquity, my approach enables students with minimal exposure to classical studies to still assess a narrative’s message and to move their discussion beyond the standard laundry list of observed inconcinnities that are inherent to any adaptation. The second study, a pairing of Noam Murro’s 300: Rise of an Empire (2014) and Aeschylus’ Persians, serves as an example of the depth and breadth an upper-level course can reach with reception work. Multiple avenues of engagement open up: the politicization of historical narratives; the contrast between American and Athenian xenophobia; the minimization of women’s voices in modern American cinema. The subject of the third study is an examination of an upper-level erotic Roman poetry course in which students read Ovid’s Ars Amatoria and Donna Zuckerberg’s account of the online pick-up artist community's usage of that very text. This empowers students to grapple with the (often horrific) ends to which classical material is deployed and invites careful reflection on the state of the field and the social/ethical responsibilities now borne by classical scholars.