Faculty Colloquium: "Why You Need Not Worry that You Don’t Speak Phrygian"
Tuesday, November 5, 2019 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5Bard College Berlin Cafeteria, Waldstr. 70, Berlin - Pankow
A talk by Aaron Tugendhaft (Bard College Berlin)
Egyptian king Psammetichus determined millennia ago that Phrygian is the natural human language. Yet few of us speak it. Has your own inadequacy in this ancient Anatolian tongue made you anxious? Does it worry you that you're at odds with your own nature? Have you contemplated radical political solutions to this unseemly affair? Well, say goodbye to all those sleepless nights! With the help of Herodotus and a couple of goats, this workshop will set your mind at ease. Soon you'll be able to take pride in your Phrygianlessness and hold your head up high.
Aaron Tugendhaft is a scholar of the ancient Middle East and a dedicated humanities teacher focusing on religion, political philosophy, and the arts. He received his PhD from the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University in 2012 and also holds degrees in Art History and Social Thought from the University of Chicago. Before coming to Bard College Berlin, Aaron was a Harper Fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago. He has also held postdoctoral fellowships at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, the W. F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. In 2013, he received the Jonas Greenfield Prize for Younger Semitists from the American Oriental Society. He is the editor, with Josh Ellenbogen, of Idol Anxiety (Stanford 2011) and the author of Baal and the Politics of Poetry (Routledge 2018). His next book, The Idols of ISIS, explores the role of images in politics from ancient Assyria to the Internet today.
Date & time: Tuesday, November 5, 2019, from 12:30pm
Venue: Bard College Berlin Cafeteria
Waldstr. 70, Berlin - Pankow
Email: [email protected]