Eta Sigma Phi and Humanities Department Hosts Guest Lecturer From Brock University

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Katharine T. von Stackelberg will be giving a lecture on "Reality, Virtual Reality, Hyperreality: Approaches to Creating and Recreating Ancient Roman Gardens" at Giffels Auditorium in Old Main at 7 p.m. Oct. 14. The lecture will be followed by a light reception in the Inn at Carnall Hall at Ella's. The lecture is hosted by Eta Sigma Phi, the Honorary Society for Classical Studies, and the Humanities Department at the University of Arkansas.

The lecture addresses advances in garden archaeology, which have produced a wealth of evidence on Roman landscaping and horticulture, providing a valuable insight into the physical appearance of Roman gardens. Yet gardens were conceptual as well as physical spaces, an important part of Roman iconology. Stackelberg will discuss what approaches real and virtual recreations of the gardens at Pompeii and Herculaneum can consider when reproducing this aspect of Roman culture, and why it matters.

Stackelberg is Associate Professor in the Department of Classics at Brock University where she works on the perception and use of the ancient environment as cultural space. She holds a Ph.D. from Trinity College, Dublin and was a Garden and Landscape Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. (2004/2005). She is the author of The Roman Garden: Space, Sense and Society(Routledge 2009) and her most recent work is “Garden Hybrids: Hermaphrodite Images and Gendered Space in the Roman House”,Classical Antiquity 33 (2014). Her current project focuses on the reception of Greco-Roman villa gardens in Europe and America, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She is a 2014/2105 AIA National Lecturer and notorious for her lecture on the erotics of lettuce.