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Robert Garland Residency

There are days in history stretching back 2,500 years that we can reconstruct almost on an hour-by-hour basis – days, too, when history turned on a dime and momentous events happened. Each lecture in the series highlights a specific day when the world altered course and brought us to where we are today.

Each lecture also raises the tantalizing question: What if? What if the Greeks had lost the battle of Salamis and the Persians had gone on to conquer all of Greece? Would western civilization have gone under? What if the Archduke Francis Ferdinand’s driver hadn’t taken a wrong turn and his assassin hadn’t been sitting in a café and hadn’t seen this happening, after a previous failed attempt the same day to assassinate him? Would the first World War have been averted?

Returning to Erie and the JES stage, back by popular demand, Dr. Robert Garland presents, “A Day in History,” a week-long residency that looks at five days that changed the course of history and human existence as we know it.

Garland, the Roy D. and Margaret B. Wooster Emeritus Professor of the Classics at Colgate University, first presented at the JES during 2023’s Global Summit. He returned in July 2024 for the JES’s first-ever week-long summer residency.

Garland is also the author of many books including but not limited to: “The Greek Way of Death,” “The Eye of the Beholder,” “Athens Burning: The Persian Invasion of Greece and the Evacuation of Attica (Witness to Ancient History),” and the recently released “What to Expect When You’re Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife,” which will be available for purchase before and during his 2025 residency.