Media release

Professor François Lissarrague was awarded his Licence de Lettres classiques from the Sorbonne, Paris, in 1968. He immediately went on to take out his Maîtrise de Lettres classiques, with a thesis on the interpretation of mythological subjects on certain vases from the Louvre under the direction of P. Devambez and P. Demargne, followed by his CAPES Lettres classiques. After a period of teaching secondary students, Lissarrague continued his research with CNRS at the Centre de Recherches Comparées sur les Sociétés Anciennes, Paris. During this time Lissarrague was awarded his doctorate from d'Etudes à l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales with a dissertation entitled Archers, peltastes, cavaliers dans l'imagerie attique, under the direction of P. Vidal-Naquet. In 1987 he began work at the Centre Louis Gernet, Paris, and in 1996 became Director of Studies (Anthropology and Image: the Greek Experience) at EHESS. Since 2002 he has been Director of the Centre Louis Gernet (CNRS/EHESS).

A specialist in iconography, Lissarrague's main area of interest is the interpretation of Attic imagery: of the symposium, sport, warriors, heroes and the gods. He deals also with questions of gender and is interested in sociological and structuralist approaches to the ancient world. He is the author of many seminal books and articles. Those books translated into English include the City of Images (1989), The Aesthetics of  the Greek Banquet (1990), Heroes and Gods of Antiquity (with Irene Aghion and Claire Barbillon) (1996) and the Athenians and Their Images (2000).

Over the course of his career, Professor Lissarrague has held positions as a visiting lecturer, fellow and conference convenor at many institutions, including the Universities of Pisa, Lausanne, Picardie, Berne, Lund, Sienna, Modena and Fribourg,  Oxford, Ann Arbor, Cornell University, the Getty Villa, l'Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis in Ljubljana, and the Ecole du Louvre in Bayonne, Nice, Marseille and Rouen.

From July 25 to September 5, 2008, François Lissarrague tours Australia as the AAIA Visiting Professor. He is to give a series of seminars and public lectures in Sydney, Armidale, Newcastle, Brisbane, Melbourne, Canberra, Hobart, Adelaide and Perth.

Public Lectures

Images and Ritual in Ancient Greece
How do rituals use images, and what do images reveal of a given ritual? This lecture discusses three aspects of a larger problem: votive reliefs and pinakes, wedding vases and funerary vases in relation to these rituals.

Body and Arms: the Heroic Warrior
Epic heroes, Achilles more than any other, are strongly characterised by their weapons. Attic vase-painters often stressed the importance and the beauty of their bodies as well as of their arms. This lecture examines some aspects of such aesthetics of war.

The Greek symposion: Words and Pictures
This lecture explores the imagery of the symposion and how vase painters have reflected - on vases for the symposion - many aspects of this social practice, including music, song, poetry and games.

 *The 2008 Visiting Professorship is generously sponsored by various Governors of the AAIA and the Thyne Reid Foundation