Lecture to focus on Roman origins of liberal arts tradition

Robert Proctor, the Joanne Toor Cummings ?50 Professor of Italian at Connecticut College, will present the 12th annual Classical World Lecture titled ?From Violence to Beauty: Roman Origins of the Liberal Arts Tradition? at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, March 27, in Davis Auditorium of Palamountain Hall. Admission is free and open to the public.

One of Proctor?s great passions is the history of education, especially the history of the humanities and the liberal arts. His book, Education?s Great Amnesia: Reconsidering the Humanities from Petrarch to Freud, received the 1990 Frederic W. Ness Award from the Association of American Colleges as the book that contributed most to liberal learning.

The book was reissued in paperback 1998 with the new title, Defining the Humanities: How Rediscovering a Tradition Can Improve our Schools. He is now writing a book on the Roman origins of the liberal arts tradition. His Skidmore talk will sound themes from that current research project.

Proctor has lectured extensively on the liberal arts tradition and the humanities, including his keynote presentations "Is There a Place for the Studia Humanitatis in American Education?" and "The Relevance of the Humanities in Twentieth-Century America" presented at the 1993 biennial conference of the National Association for Humanities Education, and the 1992 National Italian American Foundation and the Agnelli Foundation conferences, respectively.

Proctor is a former fellow of Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy. He is also a former fellow of the National Humanities Institute at Yale University. In addition, he has led faculty seminars on "The Birth of the Humanities in Renaissance Florence" and "From Tradition to Modernity: Perspectives on Modern Global Society" with grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, respectively.

Skidmore?s Department of Classical Studies is chief sponsor of the lecture. Co-sponsors include the following departments and programs: English, Foreign Languages and Literatures, Government, History, Philosophy and Religion, and Honors Forum.