The purpose of this series is to explore the relationship between world and word. Our emphasis will be on ancient texts—above all, Homer, Plato, and the Bible—but we will not shy away from the contemporary scene, in which it is sometimes claimed that both speech and its absence, silence, are violence and in which the use of “the wrong word” can lead to severe social, professional, and sometimes legal consequences.

No, we won’t be discussing the Constitution of the United States as such. But Dr. Katz hopes to demonstrate that the sorts of things that interest historical/comparative linguists when they read (e.g.) Homer’s Iliad are related to larger, and increasingly pressing, issues of how to interpret words and phrases, especially ones that have been pored over for decades, centuries, indeed millennia.

This event is co-sponsored by the Galileo Center at Columbia Law School and will be held in the Law School, room JG105. It is the third in our Fall 2023 lecture series Language Rights and Wrongs.