Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi

 How do cultural or natural stimuli appeal to the senses and what kind of synergies do they prompt among sensory, emotional, and cognitive processes? I am interested in this key question in the field of aesthetics and in the different ways in which it has been handled and answered by ancient and modern thinkers. How aesthetic experience is shaped or manipulated in different historical and cultural environments is a collateral question that is also central in my work. I discussed relevant issues in Frontiers of Pleasure: Models of Aesthetic Response in Archaic and Classical Greek Thought  (Oxford University Press).

Over the last few years I have been especially interested in the idea that aesthetic experience is not insulated or secluded, as it is usually understood, but on the contrary, porous, dispersed throughout one’s existence. Several of my publications and talks examine different aspects of this main idea in ancient literary and philosophical texts that I often discuss along with modern theories. Such issues come up, for example, in “Against Aesthetic Distance: Ovid, Proust, and the Hedonic Impulse” (2018), “Lived Aesthetics and the Inner Narrative” (2020), “Sappho and the Ethereal: A Reading of Sappho fr. 2” (2024).  

Plato as a cultural thinker (for instance, ed. Performance and Culture in Plato's Laws, Cambridge UP) and dance in antiquity have been two continuing interests over my career and they now intersect in my forthcoming book Plato Choreographer, under contract with Oxford University Press.

For PDFs of select publications: https://aesthetic.sites.stanford.edu/articles-and-book-chapters

Graduate seminars : 

Aesthetics and Politics of Dance in Greece (Spring 2003, as a visiting Professor) ; Choral Poetry and Performance (2005 and 2008) ; Criticism, Interpretation and Reception in Antiquity (2006); Mimesis in Poetry and Philosophy (with Andrea Nightingale, 2007) ; Pleasure in Greek Thought ( 2009) ; Sappho, Plato, Proust (both undergraduate and graduate, 2010) ; The Relationship between the Verbal and the Visual in Greek Culture ( 2010) ; Mousike in Theory and Performance (with Reviel Netz, 2010) ; Introduction to Greek Aesthetics (2012) ; Literary and Art Criticism in Greece (2013); Aristotle's Poetics(2014) ; Ekphrasis in Antiquity ( with Reviel Netz, 2015) ;  Rethinking the History of Lyric I : Geography, Politics, and the Lyric Imaginary ( Winter, 2017) ; Rethinking the History of Lyric II : Selfhood ( Spring, 2017); Pantomime Dance in the Greco-Roman World ( Fall, 2017); Classical Aesthetics and the Shaping of Modern Aesthetic Thought ( Winter 2019); Philodemus: an Epicurean Thinker on Poetry and Music ( Spring 2019) ; Ekphrasis in Antiquity and Beyond (with Reviel Netz, Spring 2020) ; On the Sublime: Longinus and Beyond ( with John Tennant, Spring 2021); Introduction to Ancient Aesthetics (Spring 2023); Philosophy of Culture and Politics in the 4th c. BCE ( Spring 2024); Song and Lyric in Greece and China ( with Harry Carter, Winter 2025); Mousike in Theory and Practice ( with Reviel Netz, Spring 2025)