Classics and the Politics of Migration, with Demetra Kasimis

Abstract

What can reading classical political texts teach us about our own politics? This is the question that Demetra Kasimis, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, is answering with her work, which looks at democracy and its dilemmas in the context of Ancient Greece. Her article ‘Medea the Refugee’ places Medea’s status as an immigrant in the centre of her reading of the play. Shivaike and Demetra discuss the slipperiness of political definitions and terms, both in Ancient Greece and today, and reflect on the desire, constant across space and time, for dominant powers to define political in-groups in relation to a perceived other.

Bibliography

Paywalled

Demetra Kasimis, The Perpetual Immigrant and the Limits of Athenian Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2018)

• ‘Medea the Refugee’, The Review of Politics 82.3 (2020)

Transcript

You can find a full transcript of the episode here.