Bards and big-men in the Aegean: Ethnographic answers to Homeric questions
Classical Association of Canada Central East Tour
Nov 12, 2025 — 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Join us for a fascinating talk by guest speaker Dr. Emily Varto, Dalhousie University.
Event Details :
How have classicists used ethnographic studies of peoples from around the world to answer fundamental questions about the Homeric epics? This talk will explore how anthropological ethnographies of oral poetry, gift-giving, and leadership have directly influenced how we think about the epics today.
Dr. Emily Varto, Dalhousie University
Cultural historian of ancient Greece and Rome
A cultural historian of ancient Greece and Rome with research interests in kinship and social organization in early Iron Age Greece; comparative state formation and urbanism; ancient historiography and mythography especially genealogies; and disciplinary history, theory, and methodology including the interplay between anthropological, sociological, and archaeological theory and the study of ancient history. Her field is Greek cultural history, but in both her research and her teaching she tries to situate the ancient Greeks and their contemporaries in a wider Mediterranean and Eastern context.