Faculty Lunch and Lecture: 'Aristophanes: Wasps'

The Lisska Center is pleased to invite you to its next Faculty Lunch and Lecture, featuring Craig Jendza, who will talk about his new book, “Aristophanes: Wasps” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025). 

This is the first book-length study dedicated to Aristophanes’ Wasps (422 BCE), which is arguably one of his most hilarious and inventive comedies. At the heart of Wasps is a comic conflict between an Athenian father named Philocleon and his son Bdelycleon; at stake are issues of political discourse, the judicial system, social class and mental illness. Alongside Aristophanes’ striking scenes involving a chorus of citizen wasps, a dog trial, and a concluding dance-off between tragedy and comedy, the reader is shown the theatrical genius of the playwright which is able to find the humor in the political, social and generational problems of his time. 

Jendza is associate professor of Ancient Greek and Roman Studies at Denison University. His primary research interests are Greek drama, Greek humor and horror, Greek mythology, magic, and religion, and Indo-European linguistics. He is also the author of Paracomedy: Appropriations of Comedy in Greek Tragedy (2020) and his research has appeared in Classical Quarterly, American Journal of Philology, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte, and Journal of Indo-European Studies.

Lunch will be available for registrants at 11:30 a.m. and the lecture will begin at 11:45 a.m. Register here by Tuesday, Oct 7. 

Open to DU community—faculty, staff, and students.