Alan Shapiro to Speak at Wabash College

Alan Shapiro

Crawfordsville, IN —The Wabash College Lecture Committee announces the visit of Dr. Alan Shapiro, professor and chair of the Classics Department at Johns Hopkins University. His lecture will take place on Thursday, October 2 at 8:00 p.m. in Korb Classroom in the Fine Arts Center. Shapiro will speak on the topic of “Heroine or Whore? Helen of Troy’s Changing Image in Ancient Greece.”

Shapiro is a classical archaeologist with a particular interest in Greek art, myth, and religion in the Archaic and Classical periods. He has written numerous studies of Greek vase iconography, including Personifications in Greek Art (1993) and Myth into Art: Poet and Painter in Classical Greece (1994). His interest in the interrelationship among art, religion, and politics is best represented in his book Art and Cult under the Tyrants in Athens (1989; Supplement, 1995). He is currently working on a study of hero cults in fifth-century Athens.

Professor Shapiro has organized exhibitions of Greek vases, including Greek Vases from Southern Collections (New Orleans, 1981) and (with Beth Cohen) Mother City and Colony: Classical Athenian and South Italian Vases in New Zealand and Australia (Christchurch, 1995). He is also co-editor of Greek Vases in the San Antonio Museum of Art (1996).

Before coming to Johns Hopkins in 1997, Professor Shapiro taught at numerous universities, including Columbia, Tulane, Stevens Tech, and Canterbury (New Zealand). As a visiting professor, he has taught at Princeton and Munich universities, and in 1992-93 was Whitehead Professor at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

Shapiro’s talk is free and open the public.