This talk will look at how Jews responded to the question of public and private nakedness in and against the tradition of classical culture, with a particular focus on 'grooming' and the body, and how this rhetoric of proper behavior changes repeatedly over time as different cultural norms frame Jewish life in different places and times. The paper asks when and how Jewish regulation either follows or resists the norms of the dominant culture in which they live —and thus opens the idea of Jewish tradition to a new form of analysis.
Simon Goldhill is Professor in Greek Literature and Culture at the University of Cambridge. He is Foreign Secretary and Vice President of the British Academy, fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, member of the Council of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and President of the European Institutes for Advanced Study. He is currently Program Co-Director at the CIFAR's "Humanity's Urban Future" program. He has published more than 20 monographs, including What Is a Jewish Classicist? Essays on the Personal Voice and Disciplinary Politics (2021).
This event is supported by the Diane Cummins Community Education Fund.
Co-sponsored with the Humanities Institute Working Group: Metaphors of Reception, Reception as Metaphor.
