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2007-2008 Fellows

Giovanna Ceserani

Stanford University
Classics Department

Giovanna Ceserani works on the classical tradition with an emphasis on the intellectual history of classical scholarship, historiography and archaeology from the eighteenth century onwards. Now at Stanford, she has studied and taught in Italy, England and France - the countries on which most of her research focuses.

www.stanford.edu/dept/classics/home/community/faculty/Ceserani.html

 

Project Summary

My project on the history of the study of Magna Graecia – the area of ancient Greek settlement in Southern Italy – throws new light on the turn to ancient Greece crucial to humanism and the production of knowledge in the humanities over the last three centuries. Archaeology – which ranges across fields from aesthetics to material culture, from political diplomacy to institution building – offers a multidisciplinary perspective on the history of Hellenism, while the focus on Magna Graecia – a region at the margins of the modern version of the Classical ideal – questions entrenched progressivist narratives of nationalism and scientific advancement of knowledge.