Caitlin Hines is an Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Cincinnati. She specializes in Latin poetry of the Augustan era, especially the works of Ovic, with focus on body metaphor, sexual and fertility politics, intertextuality, and metapoetics. She will present her talk "Ovid Arachne and the Metamorphic Grammar of Divine Impersonation" on March 31, 2025 on 6pm.

Talk abstract: In Book 6 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the gifted weaver Arachne challenges the goddess Minerva to an artistic contest and is ultimately transformed into a spider. Ovid’s Arachne has long been read as a symbol of resistance and her weaving as an affirmation of the power of art to critique hierarchies of power. In this talk, Hines argues that Arachne’s defiance is not restricted to the visual iconography of her tapestry—it is also embedded into the language she uses to address Minerva before the contest ever begins. By boldly appropriating the language of divine impersonation (via the recognizable grammatical and phonetic pattern me mihi), Hines demonstrates, Arachne weaves critique of the gods’ cruel patterns of deception into her words as well as her art.