If real gladiators fought like this, that wold be a fairly rubbish show.

After a longish interlude, Prometheus Unbound is back with a short episode on the Japanese reception of Euripides’s Medea, featuring Prof. Christina Laffin, and the artistic directors of the Yayoi Theatre Movement, Yayoi Hirano and Peter Hall. The show is on November 7th-9th, 2013 in Vancouver. Go check it out if you can!

Were the ancients on to something about living the good life? This episode features a roundtable discussion with staff writers from the In the Agora site about two major Hellenistic schools of philosophy and the Orphic mystery cult to tackle the question of whether or not we could live our lives in accordance with the principles of an ancient belief system.

Madmen and Ninja Turtles: Cultural Touchstones and Lucan. Today on the podcast, we cover the formation of national and individual identity through cultural touchstones. Commercials from Concerned Children’s Advertisers and Canadian Heritage Minutes help to deconstruct the phenomena of shared moments of cultural memory today, while helping us to consider the ways in which spectacular Neronian literature such as Lucan’s Pharsalia took its cues from peculiarly Roman experiences.

Prometheus Unbound Ep 2

Episode 2 End Notes:

For intro mix sources see episode 1 notes.

The ending clip is from The Giant of Marathon. Dir. Jacques Tourneur. Galatea Film. 1959. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052604/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1)

Selections from Harry Hanrahan’s very funny “160 Greatest Arnold Schwarzenegger quotes” mashup. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDxn0Xfqkgw)

The distinctive voices of the 80s action movie trailer mashups, Hal Douglas and Don LaFontaine, were brought to you by Ryan Perez at FunnyorDie.com. (http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/4781d17ca3/don-lafontaine-tribute-king-of-trailer-voiceover-from-trailermash)

Christian Brady’s podcast series “Prometheus Unbound,” featuring Lucan’s Pharsalia as a gateway into the Roman Empire. We’ll cover everything from political partisanship, war lit, family feuds of epic proportions, intertextuality, the macabre, remakes of Golden Age Latin epics, political resistance through art, atheism and much, much more! All while looking at ways the modern world can help inform us about what was going on with forays into Canadian PSAs and mashups of 80s action movies.

This week, look for episodes 1 and 2, an introduction to Rome and the epic genre!

Intro Prometheus Bound Ep 1

Episode 1 End Notes:

The intro mix was created by Christian Brady with selections from

“Sleep Scape” by Aura Distorter at Sampleswap.org.

Henry V. Dir. Laurence Olivier. Two Cities Films. 1946. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036910/)

The Giant of Marathon. Dir. Jacques Tourneur. Galatea Film. 1959. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052604/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1)

Thor and the Amazon Women. Dir. Antonio Leonviola. Coronet Film. 1963. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054382/)

The audio for excerpts in episode one are from

Julius Caesar. Dir. Joseph Mankiewicz. Perf. Marlon Brando, James Mason. MGM. 1953. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045943/?ref_=sr_2(

Quo Vadis. Dir. Mervyn LeRoy. MGM. 1951. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043949/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1)

You can watch Elizabeth Alexander’s inaugural poem “Praise Song for the Day” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH6fC3W3YvA.

Full text of the poem can be found at the NYTimes site (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/us/politics/20text-poem.html?_r=0).

For more examples of Inaugural/Presidential poetry, see Walt Whitman on Lincoln. The full poem can be found at http://www.bartleby.com/142/192.html.

Good morning, everyone!

Now that we’re all writing up our reports, I wanted to share with you a potentially useful link. As the title suggests, this short post by Jason Priem is about online scholarship. Priem clearly outlines three larger consequences of publishing academic work online: quantity, accountability and community. It may be useful as a way of framing we’ve been doing this term.