Each year the Classical Association of Canada/Société canadienne des études classiques selects three distinguished colleagues as its Distinguished Annual Touring Lecturers in the Maritimes, the West and Central Canada. On Monday Oct. 23, York University will welcome this year’s Central Canada Lecturer, Professor Peter Toohey of the Department of Classics and Religion at the University of Calgary.
Peter Toohey
His talk Mental Illness in Ancient Rome very much ties in with his general research interests in the history of emotion, work that is grounded in classical antiquity, but very much located in how people cope with these emotions today and sometimes even turn them to their own advantage.
"Ancient Rome has fascinated humanity for aeons and affords us unique perspectives on the present," said Professor Jonathan Edmondson, coordinator of Classical Studies at York. "Professor Toohey is a very well respected Classicist, focusing in the main on Latin literature, but his recent work bridges the usually disconnected areas of ancient cultural history, mental health and emotion, as indicated by his critically acclaimed books on jealousy, boredom, melancholy, love and time."
After initial studies in his native Australia at Melbourne’s Monash University, Toohey took his PhD at the University of Toronto in Classics before returning to Australia to teach Classics at the University of New England at Armidale. He then moved to Canada to take up the position of Head of what was then the Department of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Calgary.
Above: Peter Toohey is the author of Jealousy (Yale UP, 2014), Boredom: A Lively History (Yale UP, 2011)
Toohey is the author of several major books on emotions: Jealousy (Yale UP, 2014), Boredom: A Lively History (Yale UP, 2011), Melancholy, Love and Time (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2004). He also co-edited A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Classical World (Bloomsbury, 2012). For further details, visit http://www.petertoohey.ca.
The event begins at 5pm with refreshments, and the lecture commences at 5:30pm in room 519 Kaneff Tower. All are welcome!