Dr. Michael Dietler, Professor of Anthropology, University of Chicago
The 18th Annual Leon Levy Lecture, by the NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW). In-person attendance at the NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (15 East 84th Street New York, NY 10028). Registration required.
Abstract
“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.”