Elizabeth Colomba is a classically trained contemporary artist whose paintings recreate mythological stories, especially those of Ovid, presenting the main characters as Black women. Focusing on Colomba’s painting Daphne, this talk considers how Colomba puts ancient myth in dialogue with her own world, especially with contemporary discourse about literary and artistic canons, gender, and race. Colomba, like Ovid before her, shows that being in the canon requires one to expose its shortcomings, to subvert it, and to reimagine it.

Stephanie McCarter is a professor of Classics at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. Her current work focuses on the modern translation and reception of Latin poetry. Her translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses was published last year by Penguin to worldwide acclaim.