Brian McPhee
Hymnody, Hero Cult, and Pharaonic Ideology in Apollonius’s Argonautica

In the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt in the third-century BCE, the Greek poet Apollonius of Rhodes made the surprising decision to frame his epic poem, the Argonautica, as a hymn dedicated to its own protagonists, the mythical crew of the Argo. This talk seeks to contextualize Apollonius’s innovative fusion of the genres of epic and hymn in Ptolemaic Alexandria by exploring his poem’s points of contact with the Greek practice of worshiping heroes and the Egyptian practice of worshiping the Pharaoh.

Brian McPhee is the Arthur Ross Rome Prize Fellow in Ancient Studies and a PhD candidate in the Department of Classics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Zeno Baldi
Organic Matter

A multiscale approach to sound, considered as a living organism. Swarms, branches, molds, moraines, and the weight of sounds.

Zeno Baldi is the Marcello Lotti Italian Fellow in Musical Composition and a composer based in Verona, Italy.

The shoptalks will be held in English.