“Overthrowing Deadly Metaphors,” featuring Yale scholar Emily Greenwood

Co-sponsored by the Department of English, The Humanities Center, The Year of Creativity (2019/20), the Center for Creativity, the Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series, and the Office of the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies.

Emily Greenwood’s opening talk for Collective Protest and Rebellion: A CAAPP Black Study Intensive, shows us how, without our knowing, the language we take up can have a trail of repression. But, there’s hope. “Overthrowing Deadly Metaphors” takes a single Greek phrase that has a long and difficult entanglement in American racial slavery and that is still very much of our moment, and shows how various black authors give us the tools to dismantle and subvert this phrase. This event is co-presented with the University of Pittsburgh’s Humanities Center and will be moderated by Dan Kubis, Senior Lecturer in the Department of English.

 

A leading figure in her intersecting fields, Emily Greenwood is a Professor of Classics and African American Studies at Yale University. She specializes in ancient Greek literature and responses to ancient Greece and Rome in Black traditions. Her publications include Afro-Greeks: Dialogues Between Anglophone Caribbean Literature and Classics in the Twentieth Century (2010), and Thucydides and the Shaping of History (2006). Her current book project is entitled Black Classicisms and the Expansion of the Classical Tradition.