"Empires of Exception: Fantasies of Authority"

Fourth Annual Howard J. Marblestone Memorial Lecture Professor Kirk Freudenburg’s research interests range widely, with a special focus on literature and culture of the early and high Roman Empire. This lecture will investigate the rhetoric of “decline and fall,” asking why this theme played so well and took on so many forms in the recitation halls of ancient Rome.  Kirk Freudenburg will explore why appeals to the “lost” ways of a past that never existed were, and still are, successful, also among American pundits, many of whom promote notions of America's greatness, and her sad demise, by appealing to a Rome that never existed.