Greenwood’s Monday afternoon talk, “Overthrowing Deadly Metaphors,” kicked off the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics’ week of Black Study Intensive sessions. The event featured Greenwood presenting her unpublished paper on the language of Aristotle, as well as discussion with Greenwood moderated by Dan Kubis, senior English literature lecturer.

Race relations in the United States are rapidly returning to the foreground of the public’s consciousness. It seems nowhere is immune from the rising tensions — not even the study of classical antiquity. At...