Online seminar
If interested, please follow the minutes of the seminar here, and feel free to write with inquiries!
Each meeting will consist of one focused presentation and discussion
Schedule : Friday, 9 AM Chicago / 4 PM Besançon-Paris
Seminar schedule 2020-2021
27 November : Arnaud Macé (Besançon) – “Anaximander, the bark of the tree and the growth of the universe”’
18 December : Máté Herner (Fribourg) – Vegetal life in the cosmobiologies of Empedocles and the Hippocratic De Victu
29 January : Aldo Bottino (Harvard) – “Laertes’ trees and the poetics of Odysseus’ nostos”
26 February : Alessandro Buccheri (Harvard/Paris) – “Blooming deities in Hesiod’s Theogony”
19 March : Gottfried Heinemann (Kassel) – “Imitation of Nature” in Heraclitus (?), De victu, and Aristotle
16 April : Mark Usher (Vermont) – “A City for Pigs: The Plant-based Diet of Republic 369b-376e”
21 May : Claudia Zatta (Athens) – “Welcoming the Gods: Figs, Grapes and the Origin of Fruit Plants in Classical Myth”
PREVIOUS SEMINARS
Seminar schedule 2019-2020
13 December : Tom Davies ‘Robert Boyle, Simplicius, and Philoponus on Aristotle’s account of nature.’
10 January : Anne-Laure Therme ‘A zoogony of silt: the democritean biotope of the beginnings of life.’
14 February : Orestis Karatzoglou ‘Plato on the Human Plant.’
13 March : Máté Herner ‘Plants As Living Beings in Plato’s Timaeus.’
3 April : Nadine Le Meur ‘Φυτεύω : What did ancient Greek poets plant?’
15 May : Leopoldo Iribarren ‘From bios to phusis: plowing and cosmology in archaic Greek thought.’
19 June : Claudia Zatta (Postponed until Winter 2020) ‘Welcoming Demeter: Fruit Plants and Rituals in Ancient Greece.’
In lieu of Claudia Zatta’s presentation, Leon Wash will present on the topic of “Three Empedoclean Compounds and Empedocles’ Evergreen Authority.”
Seminar schedule 2018-2019
November 19th — Karin Mackowiak, Université de Franche-Comté « Des hommes-plantes ? Phusis et autochtonie dans le mythe des Spartes thébains» (“Can plants be men ? Phusis and autochthony in the myth of the Theban Spartoi”)
December 17th — Jenny Strauss Clay (University of Virginia) “The Name of Moly and the Nomos/Physis Opposition”
January 14th — Alessandro Buccheri (LabEx HASTEC, Paris – Centre Jean Pépin) “Φύω, φύσις and the Vocabulary of Vegetal Growth in Homer”
February 18th — Claudia Zatta (University of Siena and the ASCSA) “Plants, Life, and the Soul in Early Greek Philosophy and Myth.”
March 18th — Gottfried Heinemann (Universität Kassel) “Earth’s offspring: Of plants, fishes, and puppies. With a note on leaves and hairs, trees and horns”
April 15th — Nadine Le Meur–Weissman (Université Paris Nanterre) “ΦΥΤΕΥΩ : What grows in Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry ?”
May 20th — Máté Herner (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) “If the elements are roots, are we plants?” : The “Metaphysics of Life” in Empedocles’ Physical Theory
Conferences
I. 18-19 June 2019, Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris.
II. 2020, University of Chicago (TBD)
