![Image of Scene from Antigone](https://www.college.columbia.edu/alumni/sites/default/files/styles/100_width/public/antigone.png?itok=mbjKjBD3)
Antigone Now! Conscience versus Law in Contemporary Culture | Matthew Hart, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature
In Literature Humanities, students study classic literature for its own sake—and for what it teaches them about our world. Sophokles’ Antigone exemplifies the way contemporary artists can continue to learn from classical authors.
Antigone asks what we should do when the state demands one thing but family, morality, or religion demands another? Our class, led by Matthew Hart, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, will begin by studying Antigone alongside famous philosophical essays in which it is a test case for conflicts between individual conscience and the law. In class two, we'll read The Island (1973) by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona—a play in which South African political prisoners perform Antigone in jail. And in our third class, we'll bring things up to date, discussing how, in her novel Home Fire (2017), Kamila Shamsie reworks Sophokles’ tragedy via the story of a British Muslim family’s entanglement in radical Islamist politics.
Join us for this invigorating series that marries the classic and the contemporary in the tradition of the Core Curriculum.
Professor Hart specializes in modern and contemporary literature and regularly teaches Literature Humanities. He is the Co-Founder of Columbia University Press’ book series, Literature Now and the Vice President of the Modernist Studies Association.
Spaces are Limited
PRICING
Tickets: $160 for three evenings
($100 for Young Alumni in class years 2009-2018)
DATES & TIMES
Wednesday, October 3
Wednesday, October 17
Wednesday, October 31
6:30 - 8:30 p.m.
LOCATION
Address to be confirmed upon registration