Prof Picks | Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) w/ Princeton Professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta

Our Prof Picks Series continues in April with a comedy chosen by Princeton University Professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta. Peralta will join us in the theater to introduce the screening and lead a Q&A after the film. Tickets are available now at princetongardentheatre.org/specials

𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗼𝘃𝗶𝗲: Brian Cohen is an average Jewish man who happened to be born on the same day as Jesus in a neighboring stable. He spends his life mistakenly and often hilariously mistaken for the messiah. This biblical parody is set during the Roman occupation of Judea and is peppered with the black comedy and absurdist humor that is a signature to the Python crew. Rated R.

𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿: Dan-el Padilla Peralta is a professor of Classics and associated faculty in African American Studies and affiliated faculty in the Programs of Latino Studies and Latin American Studies, at Princeton University. He is the author of Undocumented: A Dominican Boy’s Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League (Penguin 2015) and Divine Institutions: Religions and Community in the Middle Roman Republic (Princeton 2020). His latest book, Classicism and Other Phobias, an expansion of his 2022 W.E.B. Du Bois Lectures at Harvard, will be out with Princeton University Press in spring 2025. He has also co-edited Rome, Empire of Plunder: The Dynamics of Cultural Appropriation (Cambridge 2017) and Making the Middle Republic: New Approaches to Rome and Italy, c. 400 – 200 BCE (Cambridge 2023). Projects in progress include a study of 338 BCE and the origins of Roman imperialism, co-authored with his colleague Denis Feeney (under contract with Harvard University Press); A People’s History of Rome (under contract with Princeton University Press); and a manifesto on race and racism in the disciplinary identity of Classics, to be co-authored with Brown’s Sasha-Mae Eccleston. With Eccleston, he co-founded Racing the Classics, which recently received $1 million in funding from the Mellon Foundation. He is a volume co-editor for The Cambridge History of the African Diaspora and sits on the board of the RaceB4Race collective.

Do you love classic movies? See them on our big screen all year long for less than $10 each when you become a member of our nonprofit theater! Join today for as little as $40 a year at princetongardentheatre.org/membership

You may also like the following events from Princeton Garden Theatre:

• This Sunday, 27th April, 01:30 pm, Art on Screen | Dawn of Impressionism: Paris 1874 (2024) in Princeton
• Next Wednesday, 30th April, 07:00 pm, Whiplash (2014) | Keeping the Score Series in Princeton
• Next Thursday, 1st May, 07:00 pm, The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) | Keeping the Score Series in Princeton

Also check out other Arts events in Princeton, Comedy events in Princeton, Entertainment events in Princeton.