Description:

In 2019 two Northwestern History Department faculty members published books on imperialism. Daniel Immerwahr’s How to Hide an Empire and Taco Terpstra’s Trade in the Ancient Mediterranean both investigate empires, albeit two very different ones: the American and the Roman respectively. At this event, Profs. Immerwahr and Terpstra will be in conversation to see if beyond the obvious differences there might be similarities between their chosen subjects of inquiry. The organizers hope that the audience will participate with questions and comments, so please join us for this chat between two historians of empire.

A light lunch will be served.

Presented by the Global Antiquities Research Workshop of the Kaplan Humanities Institute.

The Global Antiquities research group brings together Northwestern scholars who specialize in the study of the literatures, histories, and cultures of the ancient world, regardless of discipline or regional specialty. Our interests range from Mesopotamian art to Greek philosophy, from classical Latin poetry to Hindu Brahmin law, and from Tang dynasty China to Syriac and Coptic Christianity. The group (formed in the summer of 2017) gets together once or twice a quarter for colloquia, field trips, or invited talks. The group's goal is to enliven both the scholarship and the teaching of its members, and to offer a fresh and exciting take – interdisciplinary and global in essence – on antiquity more broadly, in order to make a significant contribution to the humanities within the university and beyond it.