The United States’ founders looked to Rome as an ideal for their republican aspirations: institutions that tempered the excesses of the populus, statesmen like Cicero, and stories of strangers fleeing home to carve out a new community from the wilderness. But America also inherited another aspect of Rome that grew out of its rugged, founding stories: the physically imposing, violent, anti-intellectual, and brash gladiatorial body. This talk by Dr. Dean Hammer (Franklin and Marshall College) enters the worlds of gladiators and bare-knuckle boxers to understand their allure as images of the citizen body.
Join us on Thursday, September 17, at 5:00 PM in Room 125 of the Kelsey Museum’s Newberry Hall. This lecture is being presented in connection with the Kelsey Museum’s temporary US Semiquincentennial exhibition and the University of Michigan’s Democracy Week. It is supported by a grant from the U-M Initiative for Democracy and Civic Empowerment.
