Joy Connolly, born in Lowell, Massachusetts, USA, in 1970. Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Associate Professor in Classics at New York University.
Fellow (1 February 2012 – 30 June 2012)
COMMON KNOWLEDGE, TASTE, AND POLITICAL JUDGMENT IN ANCIENT ROME
During my spring term in residence at NIAS, I brought the draft of my book on the significance of Roman political thought for contemporary democratic practice, “Reclaiming the Republic: Practices of Citizenship in Roman Thought”, to the final stages of completion: I have arranged to submit the manuscript for review to Princeton University Press in August 2012. I wrote three book reviews, delivered two lectures drawn from the book, participated in two conferences at Leiden University, and drafted a wholly new article on the role of the grotesque and the obscene in establishing the legitimacy and authority of autocratic rule. I also developed new lines of research as a result of conversations with other fellows, out of which I plan two articles: one on the aesthetics of the recuperation of the past, and the other on the presence of Rome in late modern communitarian discourse.