Jonas Grethlein

What role does antiquity play today, what meaning can it have for us? Greco-Roman antiquity has long since lost the status of the ‘classical’, yet ‘Medea’ and ‘Antigone’ are still performed in the theater and the political realists refer to Thucydides. Is antiquity for us ‘the next foreign thing’, as Uvo Hölscher said? Or does it have to be ‘decolonized’, as the advocates of identity culture are demanding with increasing vehemence? Jonas Grethlein will discuss these questions in his lecture and reflect on how we can fruitfully engage with antiquity today.

Prof. Dr. Jonas Grethlein has held the Chair of Greek Literature at Heidelberg University since 2008. Prior to that, he was Assistant Professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara and conducted research on narrative strategies of ancient historians at Brown University. Ancient literature and narrative theory are among his research interests.
Jonas Grethlein’s most recent publication is The Odyssey. Homer and the Art of Narrative. Many will remember his 2018 event on the new translation of the Iliad with translator Kurt Steinmann and Jan Philipp Reemtsma.