18th Annual Leon Levy Lecture

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW.

Registration is required at THIS LINK.

The Leon Levy Lecture is supported by the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation and the Leon Levy Foundation.

The lecture examines what it means to be Celtic in the contemporary world, and how modern Celts relate to peoples of the ancient past who were also called Celts. It discusses both the history of Celticness and what contemporary Celts do with the past -- how they experience, refashion, and use it. Three broad currents of Celtic identity are proposed: Celticism (or Celtic ethnic nationalism), Celtitude (or genealogical affiliation to the Celtic diasporas), and Celticity (or spiritual, aspirational, and recreational forms of Celticness that are decoupled from ethnicity and genealogy). The lecture focuses especially on the history and complex multiple roles that Celtology (the collective set of disciplines that study Celts) have had in forming modern conceptions of Celticness and generating contemporary Celtic identities. Analysis is concentrated on the fields of Linguistics, Biological Anthropology, and Archaeology, each of which has been intimately entangled with the shifting nature of Celticness from the Romantic era to the present.

Michael Dietler (PhD UC Berkeley) is a Professor of Anthropology and affiliated faculty in the Classics Department at the University of Chicago. He has conducted archaeological research on the ancient Celtic-speaking peoples of southern France for over 40 years as well as ethnographic and historical research on modern Celts in Europe and the US. He has also carried out ethnographic research among the Luo people in Kenya in collaboration with Ingrid Herbich. His other research interests include alcohol and food studies and ethnomusicology (including Celtic and African music and the Blues). The lecture is derived from a book nearing completion on contemporary ways of being and becoming Celtic.

The lecture will be followed by a reception.

Please check isaw.nyu.edu for event updates.

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