The Center for Hellenic Studies at UC San Diego hosted the Annual Ranglas Lecture virtually on April 29, 2022. The lecture featured Professor Greg Anderson from The Ohio State University.

Leading authorities in a growing number of fields, from anthropology to science studies, now take seriously the idea that humans have always lived in a “pluriverse” of many different worlds, not in a universe of just one. The talk will introduce this radically different way of thinking about the nature of reality and consider some of its wider historical ramifications. How different does a non-modern way of life, like that of the classical Athenians, begin to look when it is studied on its own terms, in its own local world of experience? More generally, how would a pluriversal vision of history change the way we think about relations between the past and the present? How might it help to challenge our common-sense assumptions about our own modern capitalist way of life? And in this time of global existential crisis, how might it help us to imagine more equitable, more ecologically responsible modes of life for the future?

Greg Anderson teaches at The Ohio State University, where he specializes in the histories of the ancient Greeks and other non-modern peoples and in contemporary critical thought. In talks and writings, like "The Realness of Things Past" (Oxford University Press, 2018), he questions the way we think about the nature of reality itself, showing how humans have always lived in a “pluriverse” of many different worlds, not in a universe of just one. This alternative perspective fundamentally changes the way we think about human and non-human life on our planet in the past, present, and future.

Center for Hellenic Studies: https://helleniccenter.ucsd.edu/
Institute of Arts of Humanities: https://iah.ucsd.edu/
Division of Arts and Humanities: https://artsandhumanities.ucsd.edu/