“The Ancient Roots of Modern Scientific Racism”
Rebecca Futo Kennedy, Associate Professor, Department of Classics,
Women’s and Gender Studies, and Environmental Studies at Denison
University and Director of Denison Museum, will present a lecture
entitled “The Ancient Roots of Modern Scientific Racism” on
Thursday, February 27, at The College of Wooster. The event, which is
free and open to the public, will be held in Wishart Hall, Lean Lecture
Room (303 E. University) at 7:30 p.m. Professor Kennedy says that the
lecture will explore “the myriad ways in which
ancient approaches to race and ethnicity, studied in the 19th and
20th century as part of standard classically focused educations, were
recreated and manipulated as a science of man to justify slavery,
eugenics, and white supremacism in the United States.”
Professor Kennedy is the author most recently of Immigrant Women in Athens: Gender, Ethnicity, and Citizenship in the Classical City (Routledge, 2014) and editor of the Handbook to Identity and the Environment in the Classical and
Medieval Worlds (Routledge, 2015). She is a translator and editor of Race and Ethnicity in the Classical World: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Hackett, 2013) and editor of the The Companion to the Reception of Aeschylus (Brill
2017). She is currently writing a book on race and ethnicity in
antiquity and its entanglements in modern white supremacy and is
co-translating a sourcebook of ancient texts on women in ancient Greece
and Rome.
Professor Kennedy’s visit is sponsored by Eta Sigma Phi (the Classical
Studies honorary organization), the Department of Classical Studies, the
Center for Diversity and Inclusion, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Additional information is available by phone
(330-263-2575) or email (jshaya@wooster.edu).
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