Campus Announcements

Sasha-Mae Eccleston (Pomona College): Twitter: The Rhetoric of Chatter in the Apuleian Corpus

Friday, February 26, 4:15 PM - 5:30 PM
Psychology 105
This event is open to the public.

This talk places the imagery and design underlying the social media platform, Twitter, into conversation with the work of a 2nd-century Roman North African thinker, author, and public speaker named Apuleius. Famous for writing a raucous and raunchy story about an entitled young man who loses his human form and becomes a donkey, Apuleius also refers to animals in his public speeches and philosophical treatises. Whereas Twitter makes profit from promulgating speech acts, making what we say/type repeatable, easily memorable, and searchable, Apuleius urges human beings to reconsider the purpose of speech in a world crowded with chatter and nonsense. Trying to distinguish himself from rival speakers in the Roman Empire, Apuleius argues that only those like him, men equipped with both philosophical knowledge and philosophical eloquence, offer something worthwhile and that, in Twitter parlance, is #Wisdom.

Sasha-Mae Eccleston is Assistant Professor of Classics at Pomona College.

Sponsored by the Office for Institutional Diversity's New Scholar Series and the Department of Classics.

For more information, contact Sonia Sabnis.

Posted on Feb 8, 2016

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