Events Calendar – British School at Athens

Artemis holding two long torches, 4^th century B.C., Megara. National Archaeological Museum of Athens. NM 4540. Photo by George E. Koronaios (22 July 2018) via Wikimedia Commons, shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence.

Visiting Fellow Lecture

Dr Theodora Jim (University of Nottingham), “Thinking through Greek and Chinese gods from a comparative perspective”

Abstract: Contrary to the tendency to study ancient Mediterranean religions in isolation from religions in the Far East, this talk brings together for the first time two world polytheistic systems: ancient Greece and premodern China. It embraces Marcel Detienne’s call to ‘compare the incomparable’. In this seminar I will think through the key features of the Greek and Chinese deities from a comparative perspective. The central question is: how did worshippers in two major polytheistic traditions imagine, experience, and represent the gods as they confronted the unknown and unknowable? I will look at the wide-ranging power of the gods in the Greek and Chinese pantheons on the one hand, and worshippers’ religious beliefs, practices and experience of worshippers on the other. I hope also to shed light on the Greek and Chinese religious worldviews and perceptions of their gods, and ultimately to open up new questions for the study of both fields.

Bio: Theodora Jim is an Associate Professor in Ancient Greek History at the University of Nottingham in the UK. An ancient historian specializing in the religion and culture of ancient Greece, she is interested in worshippers’ religious beliefs and lived experience and the comparative study of different polytheistic systems. As Visiting Fellow at the BSA in 2024/2025, she is conducting research for a book on comparing Greek and Chinese polytheism. Her work makes extensive use of epigraphic and literary evidence, and engages with anthropological approaches. She is the author of Saviour Gods and Soteria in Ancient Greece (Oxford, 2022) and Sharing with the Gods: Aparchai and Dekatai in Ancient Greece (Oxford, 2014). She is the Principal Investigator of a Leverhulme-funded project comparing Greek and Chinese polytheism and a holder of the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Classics 2021.

In-person only lecture.

To attend in-person in Athens, please REGISTER here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/theodora-jim-visiting-fellow-lecture-tickets-1235512283499?aff=oddtdtcreator