Kim Johnson (English); Cynthia Finlayson (Anthropology); Girolamo F. De Simone (Classics); and moderator Roger Macfarlane (Classics)
Despite Europe’s rich cultural heritage, journalists, politicians, and professors routinely stop at 1789, 1914, or 1945 when placing the contemporary world in historical context. By delving more deeply into the continent’s past, however, we come away with more nuanced and sophisticated understandings of regional customs, ethnic and religious fault lines, and what, if anything, makes one “European.” At this month’s Café CSE, a translator of Virgil, an excavator of Greco-Roman ruins, and two experts on the Vesuvius disaster will reflect on the wonders of ancient Europe and what lessons the continent’s deep past might offer our age.