Western Classics professor Charles Stocking will deliver the 2014 Ioannides Address, How to Kill an Athlete: The Use and Abuse of Training Science in Antiquity, at 4:40 p.m. Thursday in HSB 236. The event is sponsored by Western’s International Centre for Olympic Studies.
Stocking’s research and teaching focus primarily on ritual, politics and the body in Archaic and Classical Greek literature and culture. In addition to his work in Classics, he was a professional athletic performance coach at the University of California Los Angeles from 2004-8, where he coached multiple national, world and Olympic champions in several different sports. In his research, he makes use of his knowledge and expertise in kinesiology and competitive athletics in order to better understand the science and sociology of ancient sport.
Currently, Stocking is preparing a translation and commentary of an obscure but extremely valuable text – Philostratus’ Gymnasticus, our only complete, extant text on athletic training from the ancient Mediterranean world. He has published several articles related to the Gymnasticus, from the topic of generational decline in athletic performance to the role of Greco-Roman idealized sculpture in the formation of modern physical culture.
Western Classical Studies professor Nigel Crowther delivered the initial Ioannides Address in 1986; Rutgers Classics professor T. Cory Brennan delivered the last address in 2010.
