I am pleased to be delivering a keynote lecture at the upcoming international conference "Natales grate numeras?," celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Department of Classical Philology at the University of Zadar, Croatia. I will be speaking on "The Odyssey and the Desires of Traditional Narrative."
The Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar on the Civilizations of Ancient Greece and Rome will kick off its 2016-17 season with a talk by Dr. Mirko Canevaro on "Majority Rule vs. Consensus: The Practice of Deliberation in the Greek Poleis."
I had the pleasure this morning of delivering a paper at the 5th International Seminar on Epic Studies and Oral Tradition Research, organized by the Chinese Academy of Social Science's Institute of Ethnic Literature, This year's seminar explores the challenges associated with the use of databases and digital corpora in research on oral traditions. My paper, "Digitizing the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature: Achievements, Challenges, Aspirations," presented recent digitization work in the Milman Parry Collection and… Read more about 5th IEL International Seminar on Epic Studies and Oral Tradition Research
Following up on our dialogue at the Boston Book Festival in October, Madeline Miller (author of The Song of Achilles) and I will hold a public conversation about the Iliad and its resonance in today's world following a performance the ArtsEmerson production of An Iliad, an award-winning play by Denis O'Hare and Lisa Peterson. The performance will take place at 2:00 pm on Sunday, April 28, at the Paramount Center Mainstage; our discussion will immediately follow.
At the International Summit on Epic Studies recently convened in Beijing by the Institute of Ethnic Literature (a division of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), I had the honor of being elected to the Advisory Board of the newly-formed International Society for Epic Studies. I congratulate Chao Gejin, host of the Summit and the Society's first president, and thank him for his efforts on behalf of the study of world epics.
My Bio
A member of Harvard's Classics faculty since 2007, David Elmer holds a PhD from Harvard's Department of Comparative Literature. He is Associate Curator of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature, a member of the Standing Committee on Degrees in Folklore and Mythology, an an affiliate of the Department of Comparative Literature. He teaches a broad range of courses on the history and interpretation of Greek literature at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Topics of current research include the Homeric poems, the ancient novel, and South Slavic oral epic song. He is the author of The Poetics of Consent: Collective Decision Making and the Iliad (Johns Hopkins, 2013).
