Select Publications

Emotion in Action CoverBook

http://www.brill.com/products/book/emotion-action-thucydides-and-tragic-chorus

Emotion in Action: Thucydides and the Tragic Chorus offers a new approach to the tragic chorus by examining how certain choruses ‘act’ on their shared feelings. Visvardi redefines choral action, analyzes choruses that enact fear and pity, and juxtaposes them to the Athenian dêmos in Thucydides’ History. Considered together, these texts undermine the sharp divide between emotion and reason and address a preoccupation that emerges as central in Athenian life: how to channel the motivational power of collective emotion into judicious action and render it conducive to cohesion and collective prosperity. Through their performance of emotion, tragic choruses raise the question of which collective voices deserve a hearing in the institutions of the polis and suggest diverse ways to envision passionate judgment and action.

 

Articles and Chapters in Edited Volumes

“Emotion in Euripides” 627-660 in Markantonatos, A. (ed.) (2020) Brill’s Companion to Euripides, Brill

“Communities of Production and Consumption” in Wilson, E. (ed.) (2019) A Cultural History of Tragedy in Antiquity, Bloomsbury

“Euripides’ Alcestis” 61-79 in McClure, L. (ed.) (2017) A Companion to Euripides, Wiley Blackwell.

“Collective Emotion in Thucydides” CHS Research Bulletin 1.1 (2012): http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hlnc.essay:VisvardiE.Collective_Emotion_in_Thucydides.2012

“Pity and Panhellenic Politics: Choral Emotion in Euripides’ Hecuba and Trojan Women” 269-291 in Carter, D. (ed.) (2011) Why Athens? A Reappraisal of Tragic Politics. Oxford University Press

Book Reviews

R.S. Liebert, Tragic Pleasure from Homer to Plato, Cambridge in: American Journal of Philology (2019) 140.1: 167-171.

Reginald Gibbons and Charles Segal (eds.) (2007) Sophocles. Antigone. (Oxford University Press), NECJ 35.3 (2008) 201-204

Academic Blog-Posts

“On Sublimating the Emotions: Fear in Aeschylus’ Eumenides”: pdf

http://wp.chs.harvard.edu/chs-fellows/2013/01/02/on-sublimating-the-emotions-fear-in-aeschylus-eumenides-2/

“Minimizing the Distance: On Pity and Emotional Detachment”: pdf

http://wp.chs.harvard.edu/chs-fellows/2012/12/04/minimizing-the-distance-on-pity-and-emotional-detachment-2/

“Feeling Together: Collective Emotion and Its Discontents”: pdf

http://wp.chs.harvard.edu/chs-fellows/2012/11/08/feeling-together-collective-emotion-and-its-discontents/