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Garrett Fagan to Discuss Infamous Roman Games in W&L Lecture

Garrett G. Fagan, associate professor of classics, history and ancient Mediterranean studies at The Pennsylvania State University, will give a lecture at Washington and Lee University on Monday, Oct. 31, at 6:30 p.m. in Northen Auditorium in Leyburn Library.

The title of the talk, which is free and open to the public, is “Watching the Fighters: Exploring the Roman Fascination with Violent Spectacle.” It is presented by W&L’s History Department.

Sarah Bond, the Junior Faculty Fellow in Classics and History, at W&L, said, “In this talk, Fagan will draw on his recent book “The Lure of the Arena” to explore the psychological processes at work among the arena crowd, and so offers a new perspective on the infamous Roman games.”

Fagan also has co-written “From Augustus to Nero: An Intermediate Latin Reader,” edited “Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public” and has published numerous articles in international journals. He has an extensive research record in Roman history, Latin epigraphy and method in archaeology.

Fagan has held a prestigious Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship at the University of Cologne. He received his B.A. and M.Litt. from Trinity College, Dublin, and his Ph.D. from McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario.