Speaker 

Yelena Baraz specializes in Latin literature, Roman cultural history and the history of ideas. She is interested in how literary texts shape, and are in turn shaped by, social and cultural forces. Her first book, “A Written Republic: The Cultural Politics of Cicero’s Philosophy” (2012), locates the body of philosophical work Cicero produced in the 40s BCE under Caesar’s dictatorship in its historical and cultural context, investigating writing philosophy as a cultural act. Her second book, “Reading Roman Pride” (2020), uses a variety of approaches to investigate the political and literary transformations of the social emotion of pride in Latin texts. 

Baraz iscurrently working on a study of post-Vergilian pastoral, especially Calpurnius Siculus, and pursuing smaller projects on post-Vergilian epic. She has also returned to Cicero and am tackling the challenge of writing a Very Short Introduction to his outsized corpus. 

Registration will be required. More information will be available soon.