Mark Golden, professor of classics at the University of Winnipeg

MONMOUTH, Ill. — Mark Golden, professor of classics at the University of Winnipeg, will deliver the 21st annual Bernice L. Fox Classics Lecture on March 15 at 7:30 p.m. in the Whiteman-McMillan Highlander Room of Monmouth College’s Stockdale Center.

The lecture, entitled “Olive-Tinted Spectacles: Myths in the History of the Ancient and Modern Olympics,” is free and open to the public.

The 2004 Athens Olympics brought new reminders of the links between the ancient Olympic festival and the modern games, which were conceived by the French baron, Pieere de Coubertin, in 1896. According to Golden, however, many of these links are imaginary or misleading, and the modern games were first conceived and celebrated by Greeks before Coubertin’s birth.

“These facts are well known to specialists but still fail to make any impact on contemporary media or popular culture,” said Golden. “The reason? We use the past mainly to provide lessons or make arguments about the present. The result is not only bad history but a limitation on our choices of action today.”

Golden, who received his bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Toronto, is the author of a number of books on ancient sports, including “Sport and Society in Ancient Greece” (Cambridge, 1998) and “Sports in the Ancient World from A to Z” (Routledge, 2003).

Established in 1985, the lecture honors the late Bernice L. Fox, who taught classics at Monmouth from 1947 until 1981. The goal of this series is to illustrate the continuing importance of classical studies in the modern world and the intersection of the classics with other disciplines in the liberal arts.
 

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