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Dateline: 5/19/2009

GONZAGA UNIVERSITY NEWS RELEASE
Dale Goodwin, Director
Peter Tormey, Associate Director

Harvard's Mitten to Discuss Alexander Great May 22
Harvard University Professor David Mitten will discuss, “Alexander the Great: A Man for All Seasons,” at 6:30 p.m., Friday, May 22 at Gonzaga University’s Jepson Center, Room 17. The free public lecture is sponsored by the Harvard Club of the Inland Northwest and Gonzaga’s classical civilizations department.

The exploits and career of Alexander the Great have continued to fascinate people worldwide for the past 2,300 years since his death. In this talk, Mitten noted he will “outline and discuss some of these richly varied interpretations and legends that have clustered around this person right up to the present day, when he has become a sort of media superhero.”

Mitten is the George M. A. Hanfmann Curator of Ancient Art, Harvard University Art Museums, a full member of Harvard’s department of history of art and architecture, and the associate director of the Sardis Expedition for Harvard. He has spent 17 summers in the field at Sardis, Turkey with the Harvard-Cornell Archaeological Exploration of Sardis.

Interested in all areas of classical antiquity, he has specialized in publishing classical bronzes, including, with S. F. Doeringer, Master Bronzes from the Classical World (1967); Classical Bronzes Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, R.I. (1975); and, with Arielle P. Kozloff, The God’s Delight: The Human Figure in Classical Bronze (1988).

Mitten teaches courses on Greek and Roman archaeology and art history from large-scale surveys to seminars. His course in the Harvard Core Program, Literature and Arts B-21, “The Images of Alexander the Great,” is designed to help undergraduate students explore the uses that rulers throughout history have made of images, especially in the wake of Alexander the Great’s personality and career.

For more information, contact Gonzaga Associate Professor Andrew Goldman, chair of the classical civilizations department, at (509) 313-6691 or via e-mail.