Out of Athens

The New Ancient Greeks

Page duBois

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9780674064072
  9780674035584
• eBook ISBN:
  9780674053762
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Greek Ancient History
• Index: History

The iconoclast of Classics, Page duBois refuses to act as border patrol for a sometimes fiercely protected traditional discipline. Instead, she incorporates insights from postcolonial, psychoanalytic, and postmodern theories into her nuanced close readings of ancient Greek texts. Contemporary theory and ancient texts are mutually transformed in the process. Out of Athens sets ancient Greek culture next to the global ancient world of Vedic India, the Han dynasty in China, and the empires that survived Alexander the Great. DuBois also extends the range of classical studies through illuminating transhistorical juxtapositions—ancients brush elbows with Colette as she performs as a mummy at the Moulin Rouge, or with Kirk Douglas as he appears on the silver screen as Spartacus. She reads the poetry of Sappho, the tattooed body of the sage Epimenides, as well as Athenian tragedy, Buddhist texts set in a post-Alexandrian Bactria, alongside the work of Judith Butler and Alain Badiou. Page duBois establishes a daring agenda for the next generation of Classicists and, for both the intimate friend of Greek texts and the freshly arrived reader, makes ancient Greeks new.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. Prologue
• Chapter 2. Spartacus
• Chapter 3. Sappho between Africa and Asia
• Chapter 4. The Tattoos of Epimenides
• Chapter 5. Slaves in the Tragic City
• Chapter 6. Alexandrias
• Chapter 7. Histories of the Impossible
• Chapter 8. Jesus and Other Jews
• Chapter 9. The Per sis tence of Oedipus
• Chapter 10. Twenty- first- Century High Theory and the Classics
• Notes
• Index