Month: November 2021

A fascinating international workshop – Proletarian Classics? – took place online during the weekend of 23–24 October, 2021. It was organized by the University of St Andrews, School of Classics in collaboration with Classical Reception Studies Network, University of Ljubljana, and Faculty of “Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw. The workshop, under the direction of Henry Stead, explored the relationship between ancient Greek and Roman culture and world communism from 1917. It constituted a follow-up and further development of three projects, Classics and Class and Brave New Classics conducted by Henry Stead (University of St Andrews) and Edith Hall (King’s College London), and Classics and Communism currently continued by David Movrin (University of Ljubljana) and Elżbieta Olechowska (Faculty of “Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw).

Twenty-five scholars discussed in five panels topics ranging from The Ancient Proletarian Hero, Classics and Communism in and beyond the Soviet Block, Greek Tragedy and the Left, Leftist Ancient History to Animating the Past, Classicising the Future. The workshop ended in a roundtable offering comments and conclusions for future research. Faculty of “Artes Liberales” was represented in the workshop by Hanna Paulouskaya and Elżbieta Olechowska.

See the Workshop programme.

Post by Elżbieta Olechowska, placed by Olga Strycharczyk

Warsaw has its own mythical housing estate! In the Bemowo district, incorporated into Warsaw in 1951, there are small settlements of houses built in the last forty years, encircled with streets named after Hera and Zeus, intersected with streets named after Prometheus, Artemis, Poseidon, Aphrodite and Electra. Four fenced-in multifamily buildings in the middle form the Zeus Housing Estate surrounded by single-family houses. The local housing community named after the Acropolis and the Hera Housing Estate are close by.

Post by Maria Makarewicz and Olga Strycharczyk.