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SUMMARY:Risk and Humanities - Professor Mary Beard\, University of Cambrid
 ge
DTSTART:20100212T173000Z
DTEND:20100212T183000Z
UID:TALK19083@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Janet Gibson
DESCRIPTION:Biography\n\nMary Beard is one of Britain's best-known Classic
 ists - Fellow of Newnham College and a distinguished Professor of Classics
  at the University of Cambridge where she has taught for the last 25 years
 . She has written\nnumerous books on the Ancient World\, including the 200
 8 Wolfson Prize-winner\, 'Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town' which portray
 s a vivid account of life in Pompeii in all its aspects from food to sex t
 o politics.\nPrevious books include 'The Roman Triumph'\, 'Classical Art f
 rom Greece to Rome' and books on the Parthenon and the Colosseum as part o
 f a series on wonders of the world. Her interests range from the social an
 d cultural life of Ancient Greece and Rome to the Victorian understanding 
 of antiquity.\n\nIn addition she is Classics editor of the Times Literary 
 Supplement and writes an engaging\, often provocative\, blog\, A Don's Lif
 e\, a selection of which has recently been published in book form\, 'It's 
 a Don's Life'. \n\nIn 2008 Mary was visiting Sather Professor at the Unive
 rsity of California\, Berkeley\, where she gave a series of lectures on Ro
 man laughter\, one of her\ncurrent research interests. \n\nAbstract\n\nWas
  there risk before modernity? This lecture explores how we might tell the 
 ancient history of risk -- from oracles (an ancient form of risk assessmen
 t) through gambling and agricultural strategies to the parade of Luck and 
 Chance in sculptural form. In Greece and Rome (and other pre modern societ
 ies) is it misleading to think in terms of risk? Is it more helpful to ask
  simply\, "What did people worry about?" -- a question to which we find so
 me surprising answers. At the same time\, there is another agenda underlyi
 ng this lecture: an exploration of the risks facing research and teaching 
 in the Humanities. What do academics need to be worried about today and fo
 r the future?\n\nThe lecture will include the first consultation of the Or
 acles of Astrampsychus for many centuries.\n\n
LOCATION:LMH\, Lady Mitchell Hall
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