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The goat-legged ancient Greek deity Pan might not seem an obvious mascot for the twenty-first century. Yet he is a god of wild spaces and universal nature, whose composite bodily form – half-human, half-animal – makes him an appropriate figurehead for anxieties surrounding the relationship between humanity and the natural world. Even within classical literature, his penchant for terrorising shepherds suggests an uneasy relationship with human attempts to domesticate wild landscapes. It is no surprise that cultural depictions of Pan previously exploded in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, nor that critical attention is returning to the goat-god in the twenty first century, as we confront humanity’s impact upon the planet.

This event asks what it means to look backwards to antiquity in a time of ecological emergency. What can we learn from the classical past in this most contemporary crisis?

The symposium is kindly funded by the Institute of Greece, Rome, and the Classical Tradition; more information about the IGRCT can be found here.

A draft programme, subject to possible change, is attached.

Pan and the Anthropocene Symposium