Monday Seminar:
Susan Lape
Solmsen Fellow (2010-2011)
Classics, University of Southern California
This paper is an overview of a larger biographical and historical study of the Athenian orator Demosthenes (384-322BCE). It discusses Demosthenes’ inheritance dispute, his political theory, and his role in shaping Athenian resistance to Philip II of Macedon. Throughout, it considers the value of the biographical approach for historical research in the specific case of fourth-century Athens.
Susan Lape is an Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include ancient drama, law, and cultural history. She is the author of Reproducing Athens: Menander’s Comedy, Democratic Culture, and the Hellenistic City, (2004), and Race and Citizen Identity in the Classical Athenian Democracy (2010). Lape has received a Junior Faculty Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Studies, a Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellowship from the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University, a Junior Faculty Fellowship from the Society of Scholars, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington and the Solmsen Fellowship at the Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin.