Lecture: The Greeks on Beauty and Ugliness, March 10

New College of Florida will host a guest lecture on Wednesday, March 10, at 6:00 pm in the Teaching Auditorium (5920 General Dougher Place) on the College’s East Campus.  Dr. Ralph Rosen will give a talk entitled “The Greeks on Beauty and Ugliness.” Rosen is the Rose Family Endowed Term Professor of Classical Studies and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. The talk is sponsored by the Division of Humanities.  The event is free and open to the public.  Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.

Dr. Ralph Rosen’s scholarly interests lie broadly in Greek and Roman literature and intellectual history, with particular focus on ancient comic and satirical poetic genres.  He has published widely on archaic and classical Greek poetry and has recently completed a book about ancient poetic mockery and satire, Making Mockery: The Poetics of Ancient Satire.

“The Greeks on Beauty and Ugliness”

We have inherited various notions of “classical” beauty, whether in the visual or literary arts, many of which reflect the tastes of later centuries as much as those of antiquity. In this talk, Rosen will discuss how the ancient Greeks themselves theorized about beauty, and how, in particular, their contrasting notions of ugliness help us better understand classical aesthetics.  The talk will demonstrate that Greek ideas about beauty were every bit as varied and nuanced as our own, and often became matters of great political and philosophical controversy in their day.

For more information on this lecture, please contact Dr. Carl Shaw at [email protected].