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The City and Its Gods: Seeking the Go(o)ds of the City, from Aristotle to Activism

It is a commonplace of urban history to assert that the cities of antiquity belonged to their gods, and that those gods belonged to their cities. Athens belonged to Athena, and Athena to Athens, just as Babylon belonged to Marduk, and Marduk to Babylon. The city’s architecture reinforced those claims. But what of the modern city? Who are its tutelary deities, and where are its temples?

In this two-part lecture series, Kyle Dugdale (Columbia and Yale) will explore how a city’s architecture reflects and shapes its ultimate concerns, setting the familiar realities of our contemporary urban environment against the backdrop of a longer historical narrative.

Schedule

Earlier Event: March 2
The French Revolution, the Birth of Left and Right: Thomas Paine vs. Edmund Burke
Later Event: March 6
Reading Group of James Hankins, Virtue Politics II