Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Classicism and Other Phobias

Classicism and Other Phobias

Padilla Peralta, Dan-El

Hardcover

Literary Criticism

ISBN10: 0691266182
ISBN13: 9780691266183
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: Jul 15 2025
Pages: 216
Weight: 1.30
Height: 1.10 Width: 5.60 Depth: 8.50
Language: English

A provocative case for why immortalizing Greek and Roman culture as classical marginalizes and devalues Black life

Greek and Roman antiquity has been enshrined in disciplines and curricula at all levels of education, perpetuating what the historian of political thought J.G.A. Pocock has called a conceptual dictatorship on the rest of the planet. Classicism and Other Phobias shows how the concept of classicism lacks the capacity to affirm the aesthetic value of Black life and asks whether a different kind of classicism--one of insurgence, fugitivity, and emancipation--is possible.

Engaging with the work of Sylvia Wynter and other trailblazers in Black studies while drawing on his own experiences as a Black classicist, Dan-el Padilla Peralta situates the history of the classics in the racial and settler-colonialist settings of early modern and modern Europe and North America. He argues that immortalizing ancient Greek and Roman authors as the classical comes at the cost of devaluing Black forms of expression. Is a newfound emphasis on Black classicism the most effective counter to this phobia? In search of answers, Padilla Peralta ranges from the poetry of Juan de Castellanos to the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois and paintings by contemporary artists Kehinde Wiley and Harmonia Rosales.

Based on the prestigious W.E.B. Du Bois Lectures delivered at Harvard University, Classicism and Other Phobias draws necessary attention to the inability of the classics as a field of study to fully cope with Blackness and Black people.

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