‘Wayward' Mythography: Zora Neale Hurston and Ancient Greece

Join us for the Natalie Boymel Kampen Memorial Lecture with Justine McConnell, McMillan-Stewart Fellow at Harvard University and Reader in Comparative Literature and Classical Reception at King’s College London.

McConnell will present a lecture titled “‘Wayward’ Mythography: Zora Neale Hurston and Ancient Greece,” followed by a conversation co-moderated by Monica Miller (Africana Studies, Barnard) and Rosa Andújar (Classics, Barnard).

Named in honor of Natalie Boymel Kampen—pioneering feminist scholar and beloved professor of Art History and Women’s Studies who passed away in 2012—this annual lecture celebrates research in women’s history and feminist scholarship. Also presented as part of Barnard’s ongoing centennial celebration of Zora Neal Hurston, McConnell’s work examines how women of the Harlem Renaissance interwove ancient Greek and Roman mythmaking into their own modern narratives.
Additional information is available on the BCRW event page.
Co-Sponsored by the Barnard Classics department.

Accessibility

This event is free and open to the public. ASL interpretation will be provided. Registration is required. A light reception will follow the conversation.

Justine McConnell is Reader in Comparative Literature and Classical Reception at King’s College London. With the support of fellowships at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies (Fall 2025) and Hutchins Center for African and African American Research (Spring 2026), her current research examines the ways in which the women of the Harlem Renaissance engaged with Graeco-Roman antiquity. Justine is the author of Black Odysseys: The Homeric Odyssey in the African Diaspora since 1939 (OUP, 2013), Performing Epic or Telling Tales (co-authored with Fiona Macintosh; OUP, 2020), and Derek Walcott and the Creation of a Classical Caribbean (Bloomsbury, 2023). She has also co-edited four volumes on the reception of the ancient Mediterranean.

Monica L. Miller is Chair and Professor of Africana Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. A leading voice in Black fashion and dress studies, Professor Miller also teaches and writes about Black literature, art, performance, and contemporary Black European culture. She was the Guest Curator of Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, the 2025 Costume Institute exhibition at The Met, which was inspired by her book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity. Professor Miller is also one of the coordinators for Barnard’s celebration of Zora Neale Hurston ‘28 and 100 Years of Black Students at Barnard. Miller’s work has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Institute for Citizens and Scholars; she is a frequent commentator in the media and arts worlds.

Rosa Andújar is Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient Studies at Barnard. Her research addresses ancient Greek drama and its modern global reception, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean as well as among Latinx communities in the US. She is the author of Playing the Chorus in Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 2025) and the editor of The Greek Trilogy of Luis Alfaro (Methuen Drama, 2020), which won the 2020 London Hellenic Prize. She has also co-edited Paths of Song: The Lyric Dimension of Greek Tragedy (De Gruyter, 2018), Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage (Bloomsbury, 2020), and The Cambridge Companion to Classics and Race (Cambridge, 2026). She is currently completing a second monograph entitled Tragedy and Revolución: Ancient Greek Drama as Political Theater in the Hispanic Caribbean, which is under contract with Yale University Press. Her numerous honors and awards include a 2023 British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, a 2024 Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship, and the 2025 Pedro Henríquez Ureña Chair (Cátedra Pedro Henríquez Ureña) hosted by the Dominican National Library in Santo Domingo. Since 2024 she is also the Editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Philology. She joined Barnard in January 2026 after fourteen years of teaching in the United Kingdom, where she served on the faculty of University College London and King’s College London.
Image credit: Carl Van Vechten Papers Relating to African American Arts and Letters. James Weldon Johnson Collection in the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

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