Online Lecture Series with Prof. Amlan Das Gupta | ‘Sites of Disruption: Actions and Consequences in Greek Tragedy’

Amlan Das Gupta, retired Professor of English at Jadavpur University and noted scholar of Classical Studies, English Renaissance literature will offer four online lectures for the NLS community on select texts in Greek tragedy. The series, titled “Sites of Disruption: Actions and Consequences in Greek Tragedy,” will focus on Sophocles’ Antigone, Euripides’ Medea, and Aristotle’s Poetics.

The talks are scheduled on Saturdays, December 6, 13, 20, and 27, from 4 to 5:30 PM.

Please register your interest on this Google Form. Registered participants will receive updates and lecture links closer to the date.

About the Speaker

Prof. Amlan Das Gupta is a former Professor of English at Jadavpur University, where he taught for over two decades and played a central role in developing the university’s pioneering digital humanities and textual scholarship initiatives. A distinguished scholar of Classical and Biblical Studies, English Renaissance literature, and Miltonic thought, his research spans Greek tragedy, humanist traditions, and the intellectual history of the early modern period. He has published widely on Milton and Renaissance poetics, edited volumes on Renaissance culture, and contributed essays to major journals and anthologies. Prof. Das Gupta also headed the School of Cultural Texts and Records for nearly a decade, and founded the Archive of North Indian Classical Music, reflecting his deep engagement with textual, aural, and digital forms of scholarship.

Reading List

Texts

Sophocles, Antigone (Any translation; Richard Jebb, Richmond Lattimore and David Grene, and Robert Fagles are some well-known translators)

Euripides, Medea (Any translation; those by Philip Vellacott and Lattimore and Grene are popular)

Aristotle, The Poetics (Ancient Literary Criticism, ed. D.A. Russell and M. Winterbottom, Oxford, 1972) Chapters 1-15, pp 90-111.

Discussion

Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 1986.  Chapter 3, pp.51-84, Ch 12, particularly pp.373ff.

E.R.Dodds, ‘Euripides the Irrationalist’, The Classical Review, 43 (03), 1929, pp.97-104

The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, Edited by P. E. Easterling, Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Background

Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought, Harper & Row,  2013

J-P. Vernant, The Origins of Greek Thought, Cornell, 1982

Judith Butler, Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death, Columbia University Press 2000