Prof. Grant Parker "Revisiting the Colossus of Rhodes"

This is an Archive of a Past Event

Intergenerational conflict in South Africa recently came to a head with the defacement and removal of a 1934 bronze statue of Cecil Rhodes from the University of Cape Town campus in April 2015. This talk enters the ongoing debate on public history and political symbols via an unexpected comparison: the Colossus of Rhodes in the Aegean (3rd century BCE), one of the so-called wonders of the ancient world.

Grant Parker is currently chair of the Classics Department and faculty affiliate in the Center for African Studies. His publications include The Making of Roman India and more recently he has worked on Egyptian obelisks
in the context of monumentality.  He has the edited forthcoming volume, South Africa, Greece, Rome: classical confrontations.