Robert S. J. Garland, the Roy D. and Margaret B. Wooster Professor of the Classics at Colgate University, will give the Winslow Classics Lecture at Hamilton College on Thursday, March 31, at 4:10 p.m. in the Red Pit, Kirner-Johnson Building. His lecture, titled "From Media Tarts to Tabloid Queens: Attention-Seeking in Antiquity," is free and open to the public.
Garland holds a B.A. from Manchester University, an M.A. from McMaster University, and a Ph.D in Ancient History from University College London. His books include Julius Caesar (2004), Surviving Greek Tragedy (2004), The Daily Life of the Greeks (1998), and The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World (1995); he is also the author of numerous articles and reviews.
Professor Garland notes that when we consider the limited means of achieving public acclaim and recognition in the pre-modern era, we might doubt that anything equivalent to celebrity status existed in antiquity. The fact is, however, that relentless attention seeking has always been an ineradicable aspect of the human personality. It certainly had its arch exponents in antiquity, among them Alcibiades, Augustus, Cleopatra, and Theodora. His talk will focus upon the types of achievement that made certain people into celebrities, the mechanisms by which celebrity was promulgated, and the public response to the phenomenon of celebrity.
