The Classics Department Presents The Annual David H. Porter Classical World Lecture
鈥淗ow CICERO Influenced W. E. B. Du BOIS鈥� Writings on Civil-Rights Activism, 2000 Years Later鈥�
Lecture by Matthias Hanses, Associate Professor Classics, Mediterranean, African, and African American Studies, Penn State University
Tuesday, April 2, 6 p.m.
Davis Auditorium
In The Souls of Black Folk (1903), W.E.B. Du Bois famously describes his advocacy for granting Black students
access to a college education as putting "Cicero pro Archia Poeta into the simplest English with local applications." This paper examines the implications
of this allusion to a Roman orator on the part of one of history's most important
civil rights activists. Du Bois presented himself as a new Cicero on more than one
occasion, and the implication that the Roman orator can serve as an ally in antiracist
efforts is attractive to the modern-day classicist. At the same time, it also involves
significant distortions of Cicero's actual views of who does, and who does not, benefit
from an education. Reading Du Bois and Cicero together and against each other will
cast fresh light on both of their works and draw conclusions for the study of "The
Classics" in the 21st century.