Free Public Lecture: Ars Erotica: Pornography Then and Now
Dr. Erin Darby (UT Religious Studies) and Robert Darby (UT School of Art)
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
UC Shiloh Room
3:30-4:30

The age of the internet has ushered in both unprecedented access to erotic imagery and renewed attempts to censor the cultural inroads of such images, as indicated by the proliferation of cryptic acronyms meant to protect society from NSFW/NC-17/AO imagery. With widespread viewing of pornographic materials, modern people may assume that their definition of pornography applies to any image of human nudity or sexuality, without realizing that this classification depends on cultural context and time period. This seminar will explore a series of “erotic images” from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Israel, Greece, and Rome and compare them with modern notions of pornography in order to explore the ways erotic images are defined, not by a set of timeless taboos, but by their social context.