Roman Emperors and the Control of Laughter

Mary Beard, distinguished Classicist and Roman cultural historian, is delivering this fall’s Sather Lectures at UC Berkeley. Their topic is “Roman Laughter: What made the Romans laugh?” Was Rome a world of practical jokes, Bakhtinian, carnival and hearty chuckles? Or (for the elite, at least) was it a carefully regulated culture in which the uncontrollable excess of laughter was a force to fear — a world of wit, irony and knowing smiles? Prof. Beard comes to UCSB to deliver the third lecture in the series, which focuses on how laughter mediates power: Roman emperors and the control of laughter. Mary Beard is a fellow of Newnham College and Professor of Classics at Cambridge University, where she earned her doctorate in 1982. She is the author or co- author of over sixty articles and nine books on topics ranging from Greek and Roman religion, epigraphy, art history, social history, and literature, to the history of the museum and the reception of Classics in the modern world.
Sponsored by the Departments of Classics, History, and Religious Studies, and by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group.

jwil 11.xi.2008