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  Subject: Events

  Location: James Room, 4th Floor Barnard Hall Barnard College 3009 Broadway New York, NY 10027

  Start Date: March 10, 2026

  End Date: March 10, 2026

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Wayward Mythography Zora Neale Hurston and Ancient Greece

Join us for BCRW's Natalie Boymel Kampen Lecture in Women's History with Justine McConnell. Join us for the Natalie Boymel Kampen Memorial Lecture with Justine McConnell, McMillan-Stewart Fellow at Harvard University and Reader in Comparative Literature and Classical Reception at King’s College London. McConnell will present a lecture titled “‘Wayward’ Mythography: Zora Neale Hurston and Ancient Greece,” followed by a conversation co-moderated by Monica Miller (Africana Studies, Barnard) and Rosa Andújar (Classics, Barnard). Named in honor of Natalie Boymel Kampen—pioneering feminist scholar and beloved professor of Art History and Women’s Studies who passed away in 2012—this annual lecture celebrates research in women’s history and feminist scholarship. Also presented as part of Barnard’s ongoing centennial celebration of Zora Neale Hurston, McConnell’s work examines how women of the Harlem Renaissance interwove ancient Greek and Roman mythmaking into their own modern narratives. Additional information is available on the BCRW event page. Co-Sponsored by the Barnard Classics department. Accessibility This event is free and open to the public. ASL interpretation will be provided. Registration is required. A light reception will follow the conversation. Justine McConnell is Reader in Comparative Literature and Classical Reception at King’s College London. With the support of fellowships at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies (Fall 2025) and Hutchins Center for African and African American Research (Spring 2026), her current research examines the ways in which the women of the Harlem Renaissance engaged with Graeco-Roman antiquity. Justine is the author of Black Odysseys: The Homeric Odyssey in the African Diaspora since 1939 (OUP, 2013), Performing Epic or Telling Tales (co-authored with Fiona Macintosh; OUP, 2020), and Derek Walcott and the Creation of a Cl