Katharina Volk will provide background and context for Vergil and the Aeneid, from which many high school students will have read selections. This talk will help students cultivate a greater appreciation for the Latin epic and offer them a chance to hear from a prolific scholar.
Prof. Katharina Volk teaches at Columbia University and her research interests are Latin literature of the Late Republic and Early Empire, Roman philosophy, and intellectual history. Professor Volk has published on Roman philosophy, politics, poetry, Ovid, and Vergil. Her latest book, The Roman Republic of Letters: Scholarship, Philosophy, and Politics in the Age of Cicero and Caesar (Princeton 2021) explores the politics and sociology of knowledge in late Republican Rome, focusing on the intellectual activities of such learned senators as Cicero, Caesar, Varro, Nigidius Figulus, Cato, Brutus, and Cassius. The book was awarded the Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit 2022 by the Society for Classical Studies.
This talk is free and open to all.