The Classical Body Revisited

Since the European Renaissance, ideas of the classical Roman or Greek body have helped to shape modern ideals of physical form, norms for the gendered body, in short, our corporeal aesthetics. The classical body has also symbolized in various ways notions of emotion and virtue, furnishing physical correlatives to ethical or affective states, often associated with discipline and restraint. What does contemporary scholarship now tell us about emotionality, bodily comportment, the unruly as well as the disciplined body, concepts of physical pleasure and pain? How do notions like the self or the soul and their relation to the body, to physical decay and suffering, change with the advent of different philosophies and religions? Three scholars will discuss topics ranging from the construction of the body in Ancient Rome to the bodily expression of emotions and the formation of masculinity.

Panelists:

Carlin Barton, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Judith Perkins, Saint Joseph College
Amy Richlin, University of Southern California

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