"Socio-Economic Relations in Classical Poetry"

Neil Coffee, Assistant Professor

Department of Classics

March 18, 2009

The Rhetoric of Economics in Classical Rome

Social historians have demonstrated that the economic systems of ancient Greece and Rome differed qualitatively from the modern marketplace: a whole picture of the ancient economy must include not just financial transactions, but also the social relationships through which they were articulated.  This book project examines how a range of literary and visual artists of the late Roman Republic and early empire responded to these systems by testing and shaping elite economic ideology while defining their own roles within it. After an introduction setting out the theoretical background, I offer studies on Cicero's use of the elder Cato as economic model; Vergil's departures in the Eclogues and Georgics from the norms of contemporary agricultural writers; the rhythms of giving and receiving in Pliny's letters; and the imagery of abundance and corruption in early Imperial visual arts.

Neil Coffee teaches and publishes in the areas of Epic poetry, Roman imperial literature and culture, Hellenistic philosophy, classical tradition, and conversational Latin . He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Chicago.

"Migration, diversification, contact, and ideology (among other things): Towards an areal grammar of Lower Fungom."

Jeffrey Good, Assistant Professor

Department of Linguistics

February 11, 2009

Towards an Areal Grammar of Lower Fungom

In Lower Fungom, a region of Cameroon not much larger than the city of  Buffalo, one finds at least seven indigenous languages, five of which  are not spoken elsewhere. None of these languages are well described,  and the largest has, perhaps, a few thousand speakers. Lower Fungom is  interesting not only from a sociocultural perspective, due to the  presence of such extensive diversity in such a small area, but also  from a historical perspective since the region is located in the  putative Proto-Bantu homeland, from which Bantu speakers spread out  some 5000 years ago, ultimately reaching the southern coast of Africa.  This project will examine data collected on the languages of the Lower  Fungom over the last four years with the aim of preparing a lexical  and comparative database which will serve as the foundation of a  linguistic description covering not only the grammars of individual  languages but also the social dynamics that have led to such a high  concentration of languages in such a small area.

Jeffrey Good teaches and publishes in the areas of Syntax, Morphology, Historical Linguistics, Typology, Niger-Congo Languages, Computer-assisted Linguistics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley .

September 24

4:00 PM

830 Clemens Hall

"Dogs, Witches, and Other Unreliable Narrators: A Cervantine Twist on Fantasy and Exemplarity"

David Castillo, Romance Literatures and Languages

University at Buffalo

HI Faculty Fellows' Lectures

February 11

4:00 PM

830 Clemens Hall

"Migration, diversification, contact, and ideology (among other things): Towards an areal grammar of Lower Fungom"

Jeffrey Good, Linguistics

University at Buffalo

HI Faculty Fellows' Lectures

March 18

4:00 PM

830 Clemens Hall

"Socio-Economic Relations in Classical Poetry"

Neil Coffee, Classics

University at Buffalo

HI Faculty Fellows' Lectures