Talk
Democracy, Random Choice, and the Ancient Athenian Kleroterion
When
· 12:00 PM MDT
Shown in the venue’s time zone (America/Denver), not yours.
Where
Boulder, CO
Tickets
No on-sale date recorded
This event came from a public calendar feed. Calendar feeds publish when a show happens, not when its tickets go on sale — so this is genuinely unknown rather than zero, and rather than “already on sale”.
What the source said
When: Thursday, September 24, 2026 Time: 12:00–1:30 pm Where: British & Irish Studies Room (Norlin Library M549, 5th Floor) RSVP here About the Event The kleroterion was a device—a machine, a mechanical computer—for randomly choosing jurors in ancient Athens, notably in the age of Demosthenes (384–322 b.c.). Though Aristotle gives us some information about it, and archeology has uncovered some fragments of such machines, their full functionality has not been entirely determined. But the humanist scholar and patent-holding technologist Justin Blessinger has now reconstructed the mechanical device, bringing his creation to CU to demonstrate how it worked and the accuracy of randomized results it produced. Building on Dr. Blessinger’s demonstration, the Benson Center’s visiting scholar, Joseph Bottum, will speak on the political theory of sortition and random selection—a theory revived in recent decades. About the Speaker Justin Blessinger is a professor of English at Dakota State University, combining humanistic inquiry with experimental reconstruction, fabrication, and technological design. He holds the patent for the Power Block device for powered wheelchairs, and he directs research for Dakota State’s AdapT Lab. Among Blessinger’s recent scholarly interests is the working of the kleroterion—a mechanical randomizing device for jury selection in ancient Athens. His recent publications include essays on Robert McAlmon and Literary Modernism in Middle West Review and a study of the abolitionist soldier and educator, Gen. William H.H. Beadle, in The Plains Political Tradition.