It has been another amazing day filled with learning and laughing at the Summer Classics Institute.
Thursday was the last meeting of our mini-courses. My morning course with Lorenzo Garcia ocused on Aristophanes' play Lysistrata. In this play Lysistrata and the women devise a strategy for ending the war: they will withhold sex from their husbands until the men agree to end the war! The play, being a comedy, ends with the peace being signed and everyone going to celebrate. Our discussion today focused on the role reversal seen in this play. The Lysistrata concludes our week of looking at comedy through the theme of role reversal, the "underdog" getting ahead and the disenfranchised becoming a part of society. For me, looking at the fact that the women get the immediate outcome that they want (the men agree to a treaty), it may not be all that it seems to be. I also saw this in The Birds with Cloudcookooland. We may have ideas about the ideal state - this utopia to bring in Lorenzo's evening lecture - but we can see the positives and the negatives based on a more careful reading of history and exploration of socio-cultural norms and ideas.
In Thursday's seminar on Thucydides we looked at the Athenian debate and decision to invade Sicily in 415 BCE. I think this is an interesting scene in Thucydides because we see both sides of the argument personified in the two figures of Alcibiades (go to war) and Nicias (we should wait). There were some interesting thoughts and discussion about who was most convincing to the Athenians (Alcibiades)...and to us. I thought it was a great character analysis and a look into the way that Thucydides uses narrative to get the reader to think about these issues.
We had a delicious lunch of cabbage burgers and then headed to our afternoon mini-courses. In Debby's class on the Archaeology of Athens we looked at examples of religious art during the time of the Peloponnesian War. We discussed the cult of Askepios - a healing deity - and the introduction and resurgence of offerings to healing gods after the plague. We also had discussion on the validity that during the periods of War we see these various changes in art and possible hypotheses about these changes.
In the evening all of the participants and instructors went out to a delicious dinner at a downtown Laramie restaurant. It was yummy. Then we were off to a closing evening lecture given by Kurt Raaflab. Kurt discussed the new genre of prose history created by Herodotus and Thucydides. The moment that really connected for me was when Kurt led us through and stated - very elegantly - that Thucydides was a great historian and a great artist. Beautiful!
Friday morning we all had another delicious breakfast! I am so full after so much food this past week. We had our final seminar this morning as well. Phil led us through a continuation of discussion about the debate about invading Sicily and the sucesses and mistakes of the Athenian army in Sicily. There was such a great conversation and so many contributions to the topic. We ended up our discussion by talking about why Thucydides relates what he does and how he uses some amazingly executed literary devices to get to the "deeper" truth of the war.
After we finished our discussion (which really could have gone on for hours), we had a little roundtable discussion on the Institute and filled out our evaluations. The best moment of that discussion was when Kurt said that this was the happiest he had been at an institute and that the truly enjoyed himself. So great! We then said our "see you next year"s and headed home. What an amazing experience and opportunity for us to be taught by experts, interact with others on such an interesting topic and get to have a great time with friends.
Thank you to the Wyoming Humanities Council, the University of Wyoming and Dr. Phil Holt for hosting this amazing institute. Thank you to our instructors: Dr. Phil Holt, Dr. Lorenzo Garcia, Dr. Kurt Raaflab and Deborah Sneed for amazing learning opportunities. Thank you to Sheila and the rest of the Wyoming Humanities Council staff for another amazing week. Finally, thank you to all of the participants at the Institute - I learned so much, I was challenged in my thinking and I have made and cemented life-long friendships that will affect my life in more ways than you can imagine!
