Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins and historian François Hartog will deliver free public lectures at Cornell this month as part of the University Lectures series.

Sahlins, the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago, will speak on "Depending on the Kingness of Strangers; Or, Elementary Forms of Political Life," March 12 at 4:30 p.m. in 165 McGraw Hall. His lecture will deal with political and historical significance of the "stranger-king" -- the story of a traveler who defeats the reigning leader and assumes his throne, a narrative common in cultures around the world.

His lecture is co-sponsored by the University Lectures Committee, Society for the Humanities, Department of Anthropology and the Southeast Asia Program.

Hartog, director of studies at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, is known internationally for his work as a historian and a scholar of historiography, the study of the interpretation and representation of historical events. His lecture, March 14 at 4:30 p.m. in the A.D. White House, is titled "Polybius and the First Universal History." Hartog also will speak March 12 at 4:30 p.m. in Kaufmann Auditorium of Goldwin Smith Hall on "The Fate of the Classics," and March 15 at 4:30 p.m. in the A.D. White House in a lecture presented in French, titled "Anciens et Modernes: Du Parallèle à la Comparaison."

Hartog is the author of "The Mirror of Herodotus," co-author of "Memories of Odysseus: Frontier Tales From Ancient Greece" and a frequent lecturer at American institutions. Hartog's lectures are sponsored by the University Lectures Committee, Institute of European Studies, Classics department, Bowmar Funds and the French Studies Program.