BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//UCLA Humanities - ECPv6.17.5//NONSGML v1.0//EN
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://humanities.ucla.edu
X-WR-CALDESC:Events for UCLA Humanities
REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H
X-Robots-Tag:noindex
X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:America/Los_Angeles
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:-0800
TZOFFSETTO:-0700
TZNAME:PDT
DTSTART:20260308T100000
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:-0700
TZOFFSETTO:-0800
TZNAME:PST
DTSTART:20261101T090000
END:STANDARD
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:-0800
TZOFFSETTO:-0700
TZNAME:PDT
DTSTART:20270314T100000
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:-0700
TZOFFSETTO:-0800
TZNAME:PST
DTSTART:20271107T090000
END:STANDARD
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:-0800
TZOFFSETTO:-0700
TZNAME:PDT
DTSTART:20280312T100000
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:-0700
TZOFFSETTO:-0800
TZNAME:PST
DTSTART:20281105T090000
END:STANDARD
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20270127T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20270127T180000
DTSTAMP:20261029T231915Z
CREATED:20261029T231915Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261029T231915Z
UID:2463220-1801065600-1801072800@humanities.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Pourdavoud Lecture Series: John Hyland
DESCRIPTION:Persia’s Greek Campaigns: Approaches to Historical Reconstruction and Political Myth\nJohn Hyland\n(Christopher Newport University)\nWednesday January 27\, 2027 at 4:00 pm Pacific Time\nRoyce Hall 306 and Via Zoom \nRegistration Link: https://forms.gle/PEZw9xf3oFGjXzZk8\nJoin Livestream Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/95846831926 \nAchaemenid Persia’s expeditions against the Greek city-states in the early 5th century BCE are the most (in)famous events in the empire’s history\, crucial to Greco-Roman stereotypes of the “Barbarian” and misleading narratives of Persian decadence and decline. In the absence of Achaemenid narratives to counter the Greek source tradition\, the so-called “Persian Wars” are widely perceived as failures of an over-extended empire against outnumbered\, but militarily superior Greek defenders. Modern receptions have transformed the memory of these events into a powerful political myth\, which represents Greek victories over Persia as origin points for European civilization and symbols of liberty’s ability to overcome imperial despotism. France\, Britain\, the United States\, and other world powers\, not to mention modern Greece\, have vied to represent themselves as heirs to this ancient Greek heroic tradition\, while depicting their enemies as heirs to Xerxes’ Persia and its ultimate failure. Modern Iran\, in turn\, has grappled repeatedly with problems of external perception rooted in hostile Persian War myth. The current war adds particular urgency to the challenge of disentangling the complex ancient history from its modern ideological representations. \nFortunately\, disciplinary progress and emerging evidence now permits more critical historical approaches to Achaemenid contexts and perspectives on Persian-Greek conflicts. Drawing on the speaker’s recent book\, Persia’s Greek Campaigns (Oxford\, 2025)\, this talk will demonstrate the possibilities for historical reconstruction. Examining Xerxes’ effective use of campaign “spectacles” to project imperial power\, problematizing the sources’ depictions of Greek military superiority\, and highlighting iconographic evidence that the Achaemenids represented their Greek campaigns as victories\, the talk will offer a more complex picture of imperial frontier interactions that challenges the modern uses and abuses of the Persian War tradition. \n  \nAbout the Speaker\nJohn Hyland is a Professor in the Department of History at Christopher Newport University. He holds a Ph.D. from the Committee on the Ancient Mediterranean World at the University of Chicago (2005)\, and has written or co-edited three books\, including Brill’s Companion to War in the Ancient Iranian Empires (Brill\, 2025) and Persia’s Greek Campaigns: Kingship\, War\, and Spectacle on the Achaemenid Frontier (Oxford\, 2025). His next project will explore the modern afterlife of the Persian Wars as a contested political symbol between the United States\, Britain\, France\, Greece\, and Iran.
URL:https://humanities.ucla.edu/event/pourdavoud-lecture-series-john-hyland/
LOCATION:Royce 306\, 10745 Dickson Ct\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States
CATEGORIES:Iranian,Pourdavoud Institute
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://humanities.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2027-01-27_Hyland-web-image-fRWJEz.jpg
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR