MCLLC ~ Bluegrass Classics Lectures 

Prof. Dr. Anja Bettenworth

Professorin für Klassische Philologie
Universität zu Köln
​Conception of space and reception of antiquity in Abdelaziz Ferrah's novel Moi, Saint Augustin

• Prof. Bettenworth is Professor of Latin at the University of Cologne. She specializes in Roman Elegy, Greek-Roman Epic, Curtius Rufus, andthe Reception of the Antiquity, especially in modern Maghreb. Her current project examines the reception of antiquity in modern literature and film of the Maghreb. The focus is on the role that ancient figures play in the post-colonial societies of North Africa, especially for the Berber population.

Dr. Ridha Moumni
Tunisia Postdoctoral Fellow
THE CENTER FOR MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES | HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Ottoman Carthage: the reception of antiquities by Tunisian ruling class (19th cent.)

• Dr. Ridha Moumni is currently an Aga Khan Fellow at the Department of Art History of Harvard University. He is conducting research at Harvard’s Center of Middle Eastern Studies on the collection of Muhammad Khaznadar, the first Tunisian dignitary to excavate the ancient site of Carthage. A second project explores the role of the arts in nation building in Postcolonial Tunisia. Dr Moumni recently published a book on Tunisian visual artists from the 19th century to the Revolution. He is currently at work on a book project on the collections of Bardo National Museum.

Prof. Nisrine Slitine El Mghari
Assistant Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, and French and Francophone Studies | ​Modern and Classical Languages Literatures and Cultures | University of Kentucky
The Moroccan Imperial City of Fez : A Quest for Collective Memory

• Professor Slitine El Mghari's research focuses on representations of the city in 20th- and 21st-century Francophone and Arabophone Moroccan literature. More specifically, her work concerns itself with the different social, historical, and political forces that contribute to the construction of urban spaces, and draws on various critical and theoretical fields, including colonial and postcolonial studies, cultural memory studies, gender studies, and literary studies, while at the same time considering different contemporary Moroccan urban structures from a spatio-temporal perspective. Currently, she explores forms of popular culture, ranging from grafitti, the graphic novel, to new-age journalism, as well as texts written in dārija (the Moroccan dialect). Her interest in cinema studies includes more contemporary genres like the various web series produced by young North African artists and examining social, cultural, and political realities. Her research areas are also in Maghrebi Francophone and Arabophone literature and civilization, Sub-Saharan Francophone fiction, and French Antillian literature and culture. 

Prof. Paolo Visonà Associate Professor Adjunct | School of Art and Visual Studies | University of Kentucky

Ancient Coins in Motion: Numismatic Finds in Tunisia from the 16th to the Early 20th Centuries

• Paolo Visonà is a classical archaeologist who has been the principal investigator on several long-term excavation projects in Italy that were supported by the Mamertion Foundation, and later by the Foundation for Calabrian Archaeology.  His publications include studies in archaeology, art history and numismatics.  At the University of Kentucky, he has taught classes on classical mythology, Greek and Roman art, and a seminar on ancient coins.

Dunstan is the NCSU Assistant Director of the Office of Assessment. Her research examines dialect as an element of diversity that shapes the college experience, particularly for speakers of non-standardized dialects of English. Dunstan and Jaeger (2015) found that students from rural, Southern Appalachia felt that their use of a regional dialect put them at a disadvantage in the college classroom. The students interviewed by Dunstan reported that “they had been hesitant to speak in class, felt singled out, dreaded oral presentations, tried to change the way they talked, and felt that they had to work harder to earn the respect of faculty and peers”. In addition to speaking about her work with Appalachian college students, Dunstan would accompany members of the Department of Linguistics to a meeting with the UK office of Academic and Student Affairs to discuss how to meet the needs of all UK students, regardless of linguistic background.

This talk is made possible by generous support from our friends in Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures; English; Gender and Women’s studies; Sociology; Writing, Rhetoric and Digital Studies; African American and Africana Studies; and the College of Arts and Sciences.

Heartbreak and HIstory: Mourning the Devastation of Notre-Dame

Monday, April 22nd, 12:30 to 2:00, Room 330D, Gatton Student Center

On Monday, April 22nd, UK faculty, students, and community members are invited to join us for a public forum to share our sorrow and concern about the devastation caused to one of the world's great religious and cultural monuments, the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, France.  Presentations will discuss the religious and artistic significance of Notre-Dame, the challenges involved in its restoration, and campus community members' personal memories of the cathedral.

Sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, Departments of HIstory, Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures, and Department of Historic Preservation.

For more information, contact Professor Jeremy Popkin, Department of History, popkin@uky.edu

Virgil, Wordsworth and the anxieties of translation:  literalism, lake poetry and lyric revision

Stephen Hinds (University of Washington, Seattle)

In his current book project, Poetry across Languages: Studies in Transliteral and Transcultural Latin, Stephen Hinds moves between periods to explore the cross-linguistic and intercultural relations of poetic writing in Latin within antiquity, between antiquity and modernity, and even within modernity.  Throughout, he is concerned to treat the ‘classical tradition’ as process rather than as product, involving many micro-negotiations of authors and readers across language and culture.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850), who in his fifties began and then abandoned a translation of the Aeneid, had a long and sometimes anxious history of engagement with the classical tradition.  The ebb and flow of that engagement can be dramatized by sampling (via the monumental Cornell edition of Wordsworth) the poet’s own first drafts, revisions and deletions, and the editorial and commentatorial interventions of friends and family.  After a look at some moments in Wordsworth’s Aeneid (vigorously criticized by his great contemporary Samuel Taylor Coleridge), this paper focusses on the post-Virgilian Laodamia and, more briefly, on the Greek-inspired Dion (grounded in one of Plutarch’s Lives).  Trace-elements of Wordsworth’s distinctive poetic of lake and landscape will come into play at different points throughout.