Diversity in Imperial Rome: Contexts, Questions, Comparisons

Image of a 3rd-century mosaic depicting a procession of men, women, and animals (including tigers, an elephant, and a giraffe) with a cloven and horned man holding the tigers and a black woman by chains. — Image: Third-century CE mosaic depicting a Dionysian procession. Setif, Algeria. Image Copyright: Dr. Sophie Hay

Monday Seminar:

Nandini B. Pandey

Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity Fellow (2019-2020)

Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies (CANES), UW-Madison

Rome was one of the longest-lasting and most ethnically heterogeneous empires the world has ever seen. How did the Romans think about diversity? How did they conceptualize their own multiculturalism and pluralism? How was their valuation of difference related to imperialism and consumerism, and what might we learn from their example? This talk explores racial and cultural difference in the ancient Mediterranean with a particular focus on civic, domestic, and literary spaces where Romans experienced and negotiated difference during the heyday of their empire, with some thought toward contemporary implications.

Nandini B. Pandey is an associate professor of classics (CANES) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her first book, The Poetics of Power in Augustan Rome: Latin Poetic Responses to Early Imperial Iconography, came out in 2018 with Cambridge University Press. She is now working on a second book project on Roman diversity thanks to support from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and a Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity fellowship from the IRH.