USC College Department of Comparative Literature

Vincent Farenga

Professor of Classics & Comparative Literature

Contact Information
E-mail: farenga@usc.edu
Phone: (213) 740-0106
Office: THH 256R

Education

B.A. English, Fordham University, 1969
M.A. Comparative Literature, Cornell University, 1972
Ph.D. Comparative Literature, Cornell University, 1973

Academic Appointment, Affiliation, and Employment History

Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature, University of Southern California, 01/31/2009-
Assistant Professor of Classics & Comparative Literature, University of Southern California, 09/01/1973-06/30/1979

Description of Research

Summary Statement of Research Interests

Professor Farenga has been teaching Classics and Comparative Literature at USC since 1973. In the 1970s he explored ways contemporary literary theories (post-structuralism, theories of myth and ritual) could alter our understanding of topics in ancient Greek culture like tyranny and the origins of rhetoric. In the 1980s he adopted more anthropological and sociological approaches that led me to topics like the link between early Greek state authority and the origins of coinage. By the 90s his interests broadened to include political anthropology and theories of early state formation in the Near East and Mediterranean.

In recent years he has been approaching the Greeks (and in more limited way the Romans) with the goal of understanding how they speak to us about some of the fundamental questions with which we struggle in today’s multicultural societies--questions about: our personal and community identities; justice in national and international societies; effective forms of political and moral leadership; and the link between our democratic and republican ideologies and those of the Greeks and Romans. This has prompted him to investigate contemporary political and moral philosophies, ideologies like liberalism, communitarianism, and deliberative democracy, theories of identity, and "the politics of recognition." His 2006 book, Citizen and Self in Ancient Greece: Individuals Performing Justice and the Law, discusses a good number of these topics. In 2007 he created the Literature and Justice Project as a faculty-student research group designed to compare the different ways writers and political philosophers understand experiences of injustice in today's world. The group examines narratives that foreground what it means to acquire a sense of injustice and to self-identify as a victim, including slave narratives, testimonial novels, and autobiography and fiction about genocide, religious persecution, exile and immigration. The group examines political and philosophical models of injustice based on redistribution, recognition, and psychic wounding (trauma).

In both teaching and research Prof. Farenga now applies these fields to a broad range of Greek history and politics from the Dark Age to Alexander. He examines texts like Homeric epic, lyric poetry, Athenian tragedy and comedy, Thucydides, the sophists, forensic oratory, Socratic dialogues, and historians of Alexander. His interest in the Romans extends to the Republic's history, ideology and leadership and to imperial leadership in the early principate. In General Education, he teaches courses like “The Greeks and the West" (CLAS 150g) on ways the Greeks provided the prototypes for Western models of power (including warfare) and cultural values; and “Masters of Power: 10 Ancient Lives” (ARLT 100g) on the ancient and modern meanings of ten remarkable individuals in Greco-Roman antiquity. At a more advanced level he teaches “Alexander the Great: Personality, Leadership and World Conquest." (CLAS 375); "Democracies Ancient and Modern" (CLAS 470), a course on the workings of the Athenian democracy and Roman republic and the significance these have for us; and “Leaders and Communities: Classical Models” (CLAS 370), which examines military, political, and moral leaders in Greek city-states Alexander’s empire, the Roman Republic, and Empire.

In Comparative Literature he explores these issues through a new course, COLT 385 (Literature and Justice), and also through COLT 346 (Fictions of the First Person).

Research Specialties

Greek History, Literature and Politics

Conferences and Other Presentations

Conference Presentations

""Literature and the Philosophy of Justice: Contemporary Voices and Models"", International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities, Talk/Oral Presentation, , American University, Paris, Common Ground, 07/20/2007

Publications

Book

Farenga, V. Literature and Justice in Multicultural Societies. Literature and Justice in Multicultural Societies.
Farenga, V. A. (2006). Citizen and Self in Ancient Greece: Individuals Performing Justice and the Law. Cambridge, UK: Citizen and Self in Ancient Greece: Individuals Performing Justice and the Law/Cambridge University Press.

Encyclopedia Article

Farenga, V. (2008). "Greek Democracy". (Stanley Burstein and Michael Gagarin, Ed.). New York, NY and Oxford: Oxford Enccyclopedia of Greece and Rome.

Other

Farenga, V. A. Narrative and Community in Dark Age Greece: A communicative and Cognitive Approach to Early Greek Citizenship, Arethusa 31, 179-206, 1998 .

New Courses Developed

Literature and Justice, Comparative Literature, Examines writers of fiction and autobiography (ca. 1950-2000) who raise questions of justice in multicultural societies. These writers describe individual and collective experiences of injustice due to racism, ethnicity, economic and gender exploitation, and immigration, in societies such as Cuba, France, Guatemala, India, Senegal and the U.S. We will link these literary voices to recent political philosophers who theorize systematically about how to achieve justice in multicultural societies. Their theories focus on two kinds of injustices: (a) those due to the unequal redistribution of wealth and power and (b) those that deny recognition of worth, dignity and authenticity to subaltern individuals and groups. We will link these claims to multiculturalism and issues like human rights, recognition, personhood, gender, the social contract, and contemporary ideologies like liberalism, communitarianism, deliberative democracy, and feminism., Fall 2007
Fictions of the First Person, Comparative Literature, Revision of existing course. Now explores the writing of first-person fiction and autobiography as paths to understanding how the modern self tries to discover or create its own identity. Using texts from the 18th – 21st centuries, we will see how writers use fictionalized forms of self-presentation, including autobiography, novel, slave narrative, diary, notebooks, meditation, and letters, to lay claim to a unique self with a distinctive life history. Authors include Rousseau, Harriet Jacobs, Dostoevsky, Rimbaud, Rilke, Ellison, Tahar Ben Jelloun, and W.G. Sebald. Also examines philosophical history of the modern self’s search for identity. Key moral goals in this search include achieving autonomy, individuation, authenticity, self-affirmation, self-realization, and "recognition" from others through dialogue, storytelling, self-expression, & epiphany., Fall 2006
Masters of Power: 10 Ancient Lives, ARLT (Gen Ed), Examination of the lives of 5 extraordinary Greeks and 5 extraordinary Romans using ancient bibliography and history and modern retellings of these lives in fiction, film and other arts., Spring 2006

Honors and Awards

USC General Education Teaching Award, College of Letters, Arts & Sciences, Fall 1999
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship Recipient, Fellowship for College Teachers, 1984-1985