Dabis Lecture: Professor Elena Isayev

The Value of a Body out of Place in the Ancient World (Prof. Elena Isayev), Exeter University)

The exploration will investigate how people who are considered in diverse ways ‘out of place’ – of rights, belonging and protection – become central to the discourse of power and jurisdiction. It draws on a number of ancient liminal settings, including ransom, exile and asylum, with such protagonists as Alexander the Great and Caesarius the Bishop of Arles, as well as mythical suppliants created by the tragedians Aeschylus and Euripides. Thus, it seeks to investigate the unique role of people in states of liminality in articulating inter- and intra-community relationships and the space between civil rights and human rights.