Jiani Fan

I am a graduate student in the Department of Comparative Literature in Princeton. Mainly trained as a modernist and early modernist, I have studied modern continental literature and philosophy systematically. In addition, before coming to Princeton, I studied classical culture comprehensively, including vases, Roman wall paintings, sculptures as well as Antiquarian collections; several semesters of close reading of Greek tragedies, comedies (as well as visual arts concerning performance, such as skēnē) and lyric poetry as well as ancient philosophy from Pre-Socratic to postclassical philosophy for more than four years in different institutions.

Besides these broad interests concerning ancient culture and modern culture, I am also intrigued by the representation and reception of ancient culture from the Renaissance until now, including the visual arts as well as ut pictura poesis. In my PhD program in Princeton University, as a fellow of the Seeger Center for the Hellenic Studies, I devoted a lot of my time to the Classics departments’ and ancient philosophy program seminars, talks and conferences. I have delivered a dozen of speeches in conferences and published several articles in different European languages on ancient culture and modern culture, half of them are related to the postclassicisms and classics: an encyclopedia entry on La Rochefoucauld for The Literary Encyclopedia, highlighting the influence of Seneca the Younger on La Rochefoucauld; “Redeemed from Skepticism” — Nietzsche’s revaluation of ancient Skeptics’ truth investigation (zētein) and philosophy of life (ataraxia)”, Comparative and Continental Philosophy, Taylor& Francis Publisher; “Augustine and the Speech Acts” will be published in Studia Patristica. I have also organized some workshops and conferences related to classical reception.