Conferences
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An archive of conferences and previous calls for papers is available here
November 2024
[ONLINE] THROUGH THE ANIMAL PRISM: SEEING ANCIENT GREECE, ROME, AND THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN THROUGH THEIR ANIMALS, THERIOMORPHIC HYBRIDS AND MONSTERS
Online (from University of Liverpool): (1) November 2-3, 2024; and (2) January 11-12, 2025
Conference Programme and Abstracts: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1y6vQHgFtvCfkJu2wE7wqkEd5OESujl3v
MODERN MASCULINITIES AND THE RECEPTION OF ANCIENT GREEK AND ROMAN MODELS
Campus Am Neuen Palais, House 8, Room 0.58, Potsdam, Germany: November 6-8, 2024
(1) November 6, 6pm: Lecture
On the 6th of November, Alastair Blanshard (The University of Queensland) will give a lecture on 'Muscles, Antiquity, and Queer Fantasy: Examining the Depiction of Greece and Rome in Physique Pictorial Magazine'. The lecture will focus on the work of the publicist Bob Mizer and will also include a showing of the 5-minute film The Emperor's Pleasure which has only recently been restored and digitized and has not been seen in public since its release in the late 1950s.
(2) November 8: Panel Talks & Keynote
Two days later, on the 8th of November, various panel talks with follow-up discussions will take place in the same room from 9 am to 6 pm. The Key Note Lecture will be given by Luis Unceta Gómez (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) on the topic 'Subjugated Bodies. Disciplinaries Regimes and Masculinities in the Reception of Roman Slavery and Gladiatorial Games'.
Program:
9.00 – 10.00 KEYNOTE LECTURE: Luis Unceta Gómez, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid: Subjugated Bodies. Disciplinaries Regimes and Masculinities in the Reception of Roman Slavery and Gladiatorial Games
10.00 – 10.30 COFFEE BREAK
10.30 – 11.30 PANEL 1: Plural Masculinities and Self-Representation
Jette Born, Universität Potsdam
Sebastian Matzner, King’s College London
Daniel Wildmann, Jüdisches Museum Berlin
Chair: Filippo Carlà-Uhink, Universität Potsdam
11.45 – 12.45 PANEL 2: Masculinities and Visual Pop Culture
Tiphaine-Annabelle, Besnard Universitè de Toulouse – Jean Jaurès
Fabien Biévre-Perrin, Université de Lorraine
Anna Chiara Corradino, Università di Roma – Tor Vergata
Chair: Florian Freitag, Universität Duisburg-Essen
13.00 – 15.00 LUNCH
15.00 – 16.00 PANEL 3: Masculinities and Pornography
Alastair Blanshard, The University of Queensland, Australia
Filippo Carlà-Uhink, Universität Potsdam
Florian Freitag, Universität Duisburg Essen
Chair: Anna Chiara Corradino, Università di Roma – Tor Vergata
16.00 – 16.30 COFFEE BREAK
16.30 – 17.30 FINAL DISCUSSION
Chair: Katharina Wesselmann, Universität Potsdam
Information: https://www.uni-potsdam.de/en/hi-altertum/index
Flyer with program (pdf): https://www.uni-potsdam.de/fileadmin/projects/hi-altertum/index/Aktuelles/241011-Modern_Masculinities_Lecture_and_Workshop-Flyer_web.pdf
[ONLINE] ANTIQUITY IN MEDIA STUDIES: 2024 VIRTUAL CONFERENCE
Special Theme: Technology and Technē in Receptions of the Ancient World
Online: Friday, Nov. 8 - Thursday, Nov. 14 (Americas/UK/EU) - Saturday, Nov. 9 - Friday, Nov. 15 (Australasia)
Proposals due August 5, 2024 (extended deadline)
Antiquity in Media Studies (AIMS) seeks proposals for its annual virtual conference on any topic related to the reception of the ancient Mediterranean world in modern media. AIMS has run this annual conference for the past four years, during which we have brought together scholars and creators from various disciplines to discuss their work seeking to uncover the ways that antiquity is reimagined across different media: comics, video games, film, TV, analog games, podcasts, YouTube, music and music videos, among many others.
The conference committee seeks a variety of contribution formats for the presentation of research, pedagogy, and creative responses to the reception of antiquity, including but not limited to: individual 20-minute papers, three-paper panels, roundtables, workshops, poster sessions, lightning sessions, play-throughs, live multiplayer games, technical demonstrations, creative showcases, creator interviews, and other activities that can fit within a 60-90-minute time slot and be delivered remotely at this online conference. The conference will also host a special live Pedagogy Potluck event, sponsored by the AIMS Professional Development committee, on the topic of gender and intersectionality in ancient culture and modern media. Presenters may present at the Pedagogy Potluck in addition to a regular conference event (follow this link to learn more about the special conference Pedagogy Potluck).
This year we are also encouraging proposals on our special conference theme reflecting on the role of technology in and around receptions of the ancient Mediterranean world. Technology and progress have been in tension since antiquity. In ancient epic, humanity’s generational evolution is described in terms of its material innovation (Hesiod, Works and Days 106-201 and Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.89-150): from the Golden Age humans living a utopian existence, to lesser generations of Silver, followed by Bronze, a generation of non-metallic Heroes (although Ovid omits this), and finally a generation of Iron which is the most corrupt of all. The evolution from precious metals to lesser metallic alloys narrates humanity’s journey toward innovative technological advancement, while also suggesting that corruption of humanity’s moral character results from this innovation. Our core concepts of technology have evolved since antiquity, from the broad scope and meaning of the Greek word technē (craft, skill, or art) to today’s popular association of technology with scientific and digital materials.
AIMS seeks proposals that engage in any of these lines of inquiry about technology and technē in and around the receptions of antiquity. Here are some additional questions to stimulate further exploration:
* How does technology (both ancient, modern, and their blending) feature in receptions of the ancient world?
* What technologies, or technological components of media, are used to facilitate reinterpretations of the ancient world?
* How can emerging technologies (such as generative AI and LLMs) help us engage with antiquity?
* How are ancient concepts of technē (art, craft, skill) foregrounded in receptions of the ancient world?
* How have ancient concepts of technē evolved in later time periods?
* What is humanity’s shifting relationship with technology, from antiquity to today, and how do modern receptions of antiquity reimagine technology’s relationship with marginalized groups?
* To what extent is modern technology gendered, and can we locate the power structures that govern sexual dynamics emerging in new technologies within ancient sources?
* How are current ideas of technology, innovation, and progress forecasted (or interpreted as having been forecasted) in antiquity? Is progress future-oriented, or can it be regressive in nature?
* How do our current concepts of scientific technology (medicine, engineering, artificial intelligence) influence how we think about the past?
* What is the interplay between art and science in receptions of the ancient world?
* Can study of antiquity help us reflect on current advancements and/or crises in technology?
Proposals for individual papers (on either the special conference theme or any other topic related to the reception of antiquity) should be a maximum of 500 words, not including bibliography. For full three-paper panel proposals, include the abstracts of all three papers and a panel description, for a total of no more than 2000 words, not including bibliography. Do not include any personally identifying information on the proposal. If accepted, presenters of 20-minute papers are required to pre-record their paper presentations and provide captions in advance of the conference.
See timeline and details below on how the AIMS virtual conference flips the traditional conference model in the interests of accommodating as many participants as possible. We particularly invite submissions from early-career scholars, independent scholars, and scholars from marginalized groups.
Submit your proposal (including for general submissions, the special topic, and the Pedagogy Potluck) through the conference online portal, located on the AIMS website here. Proposals for the Pedagogy Potluck can be submitted at the same time as a conference proposal, but you will be prompted to upload a separate file on the submission form. Proposals are due by August 1, 2024.
Conference Timeline
Proposals due: August 5, 2024
Presenters can expect to be notified by: August 30, 2024
[Revised resubmissions due, if requested: September 6, 2024
Pre-recorded video presentations due: Friday, Oct. 11, 2024
Links to video presentations released: Friday, Oct. 25, 2024
Conference: Friday, Nov. 8 - Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024
Call: https://antiquityinmediastudies.wordpress.com/2024-conference-cfp/
Questions? Contact Amy Norgard, AIMS President: presidentaims@antiquityinmediastudies.org
(CFP closed August 5, 2024)
ACADEMIC ELOQUENCE IN EUROPE FROM HUMANISM TO THE ENLIGHTENMENT (15TH-18TH CENTURY)
Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, France: November 14–15, 2024
Organized by Lucie Claire (Université de Picardie Jules Verne – Institut universitaire de France) and Isabella Walser-Bürgler (Department for Classics and Neo-Latin Studies – University of Innsbruck)
The practices surrounding Latin eloquence have always been closely associated with the early modern university and date back to the medieval origins of the institution. A pivotal period in the history of academic rhetoric was the fifteenth century, when the codes of Latin academic eloquence were established in the various centers of Italian humanism. Numerous events inherent in the academic year led to the delivery of Latin speeches by both professors and the top students of the higher faculties. Some of the main events included semester openings, course initiations, professors’ inaugurations, conferrals of the doctoral degree, elections of a rector, religious celebrations, political visits, and funerals of academic staff. The development of these solemn practices eventually washed over the Alps and, from the Renaissance onwards, the entirety of early modern Europe. While a general overview of these practices was recently provided by Clémence Revest in her work "Discours académiques: L’éloquence solennelle à l’université entre scolastique et humanisme" (2020), studying speeches delivered at universities during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, this conference aims to examine the full variety, persistent elements, and transformations of academic oratory within an expanded chronological and geographical framework: that of early modern Europe, from the age of humanism to the age of Enlightenment.
Despite their often conventional and formal nature, Latin academic speeches provide a valuable reflection of pedagogical developments, course curricula, debates on stores of knowledge, and, more broadly, the perception of an institution or a professor. Presentations might deal with individual speeches or larger sets of texts, which will help identify the characteristics of academic rhetoric concerning professors, professorships, certain universities, specific disciplines, or different genres of speech (prolusions, funeral orations, inaugural orations, etc.) over a shorter or longer period of time. In addition, questions might also be addressed related to the issue of oratorical performance (where were speeches delivered, and in front of what audience?), the rhetorical mode used by a speaker (how were stylistic features interlinked with an orator’s mission?), the content of these texts (which were not always solely dedicated to academic matters but to broader current issues of political, religious, or scientific dimension), the transmission of orations (how were they preserved and distributed: in manuscripts, prints, pamphlets, anthologies?), and the names and designations of different oratorical genres. Finally, what consequences could the changes of the early modern world, such as the emergence of new disciplines, the advancement of vernacular languages, or certain historical upheavals (religious conflicts, political debates...), have had on the rhetorical practices and codes, infused with references to Greco-Latin culture? These avenues of inquiry are, of course, not exhaustive. However, we will exclude disputationes from the field of investigation, as they follow a different set of rules compared to other oratorical practices in the academic world and have already been the subject of extensive research in the recent past.
The conference will take place at the University of Picardie Jules Verne in Amiens on Thursday to Friday, 14–15 November 2024. Accommodation and meals on-site will be provided for speakers whose paper proposals are accepted. Travel costs will have to be taken care of individually by the speakers.
Paper proposals should comprise an overview of the intended contribution (200-300 words), along with a title and a short biographical note. They should be submitted to both organizers by 31 January, 2024, in one of the four languages accepted for the conference: English, French, German, and Italian. The publication (peer-review) of the conference proceedings is planned.
Contacts:
lucie.claire@u-picardie.fr
isabella.walser-buergler@uibk.ac.at
Call: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;f98f580.ex
(CFP closed January 31, 2024)
VIII YOUNG RESEARCHERS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ANIWEH-X SHRA: RECEPTIONS OF ANTIQUITY FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD / VIII JORNADA INTERNACIONAL DE JÓVENES INVESTIGADORES ANIHO – X SHRA: LA RECEPCIÓN DE LA ANTIGÜEDAD DESDE EL MEDIEVO HASTA EL MUNDO CONTEMPORÁNEO
University of the Basque Country/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV-EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz, Basque Country, Spain: November 14-15, 2024
We are pleased to announce the opening of the Call for Papers for the VIII Young Researchers International Conference ANIWEH –X SHRA, which will take place on November 14-15 at the Faculty of Letters of the University of the Basque Country/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea. The event is planned as a meeting forum for research that analyzes examples of reception from the classical world, as well as from other ancient cultures (Egyptian, Near Eastern, protohistoric, etc.), throughout history.
Participation is open to new researchers who are doing their postgraduate, doctoral or postdoctoral studies, and will consist of a 15-20 minute communication. Communications will be accepted in English, Italian, French, Spanish or any of the co-official languages in Spain (Catalan, Basque or Galician). Communication proposals will be sent by following the form in our website before 26 September by email to the contact address (shla.aniho@gmail.com). The Organizing Committee will communicate via e-mail the acceptance or rejection of the proposals before 30th September.
The detailed program and additional information is available on our website: https://aniho.hypotheses.org/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anihoproject/
X: @anihoproject
Call: https://aniho.hypotheses.org/4200
(CFP closed September 26, 2024)
[HYBRID] TEXTKRITIK, METRIK UND PALÄOGRAPHIE IM LEBEN UND WERK VON PAUL MAAS
Hybrid/University of Göttingen: November 19, 2024
On occasion of the 60th year since Paul Maas's death, this conference aims to ponder his work and delve into his academic and personal relationships.
You can download the programme with all of the necessary information through the following link [pdf]: https://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/document/download/6b21f4499ae7ca521042c3eebcd34ad7.pdf/TAGUNG%20Textkritik,%20Metrik%20und%20Pal%C3%A4ographie%20im%20Leben%20und%20Werk%20von%20Paul%20Maas%20(1880%E2%80%931964)%20-%20FLYER.pdf
[HYBRID] ANNUAL MEETING OF POSTGRADUATES IN RECEPTION OF THE ANCIENT WORLD (AMPRAW)
Location & dates: Hybrid/Malta: November 21-23, 2024
The Malta Classics Association and the University of Malta’s Department of Classics and Archaeology are honoured to be hosting this year’s international Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in the Reception of the Ancient World in Malta later on this year. To promote accessibility, the conference is being organised in hybrid format, and will be taking place in Valletta, Malta (and online via Zoom) on 21 to 23 November 2024.
The theme of the conference is Rebirth and Renewal and we would like to invite proposals of presentations exploring how the ancient world and elements of the ancient world are repackaged, redefined and represented to new or established audiences.
By way of example, we would like to propose the following possible topic groupings:
– How the ancient world has been used, abused or presented for later political or economic ends;
– How ancient art and material culture has influenced or inspired later artistic or cultural movements;
– The representation of the ancient world in later media, ranging from written literature to film and gaming;
– Ongoing efforts to present the ancient world to new audiences;
– Reflections on how the personal background of researchers and scholars has historically and presently influenced the way they have interpreted and represented the ancient world to their audiences.
Interested parties are asked to fill in the application downloadable at the link below and to submit it via email to info@classicsmalta.org by the end of June 2024. We would also like to inform interested speakers that there will be an opportunity to publish their work as proceedings in the MCA’s own academic journal, the Melita Classica.
Link to application form: https://classicsmalta.org/annual-meeting-of-postgraduates-in-the-reception-of-the-ancient-world-2024/
(CFP closed June 30, 2024)
Previous AMPRAW conferences:
2023: Superiore Meridionale, Naples, Italy: November 30-December 2, 2023. Theme: Cultures in fragments - Multifaceted approaches to the knowledge of Mediterranean antiquity through partial remains - Program.
2022: Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA: November 3-5, 2022 (hybrid). Theme: Islands - Program.
2021: Columbia Uni, New York: November 11-13, 2021 (hybrid). https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/ampraw. Twitter: @AMPRAW2021.
2020: cancelled/postponed due to COVID-19 (intended venue: Columbia University, New York).
2019: Radboud University, Nijmegen (The Netherlands): November 28-30, 2019. https://www.ru.nl/hlcs/conferences/ampraw-2019/ampraw-2019/
2018: University of Coimbra, Portugal: November 8-10 2018. https://ampraw2018.wixsite.com/home/.
2017: University of Edinburgh: 23-24 November 2017 - https://ampraw.wixsite.com/ampraw2017. Twitter: @ampraw2017
2016: University of Oxford: 12-13 December 2016 - https://amprawoxford.wordpress.com/
2015: University of Nottingham: 14-15 December 2015 - ampraw2015.wordpress.com/ - Twitter: @AMPRAW2015
2014: University of London: 24-25 November 2014 - ampraw2014.wordpress.com/.
2013: University of Exeter.
2012: University of Birmingham.
2011: University College London.
PHILOLOGIA & RELIGIO. CLASSICAL SCHOLARSHIP IN THE LOW COUNTRIES AND ITALY BETWEEN CALVINISM AND CATHOLICISM (16TH & 17TH CENTURIES)
University of Naples Federico II, Italy: November 28-19, 2024
We are pleased to announce the international conference "Philologia & Religio. Classical Scholarship in the Low Countries and Italy between Calvinism and Catholicism (16th and 17th century)", which will be held in Naples, at the Fondazione Banco di Napoli (via dei Tribunali, 213) and the Biblioteca di Area Umanistica (BRAU, Piazza Bellini, 60) of the University of Naples Federico II on 28th and 29th November 2024.
Those wishing to attend the conference remotely may do so via Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/23peu2uk (28.11.2024) / https://tinyurl.com/3bmnf7c4 (29.11.2024).
For any further information, please write at: philologiaetreligio@gmail.com (Filomena Bernardo - Domenico Graziano).
Abstract: According to a well-established tradition of studies, a migration of classical studies took place in Europe between the end of the sixteenth and the first half of the eighteenth century. After leaving Italy, the home of Humanism, the classical studies would have headed towards northern Europe and the countries where the Reformation had prevailed. The conference, attended by international scholars from different disciplines, will try to verify, through some episodes concerning the Reformed and Catholic worlds, whether this assumption in the history of Classical Philology can still be considered valid.
Programme:
THURSDAY 28th NOVEMBER, FONDAZIONE BANCO DI NAPOLI
(Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/23peu2uk)
14.00 Saluti istituzionali
Giancarlo ABBAMONTE – Giovanni BENEDETTO
Le ragioni di un convegno
PRIMA SESSIONE
Presiede
Florian SCHAFFENRATH (Universität Innsbruck)
14.30 Giacomo CARDINALI (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)
Gli studi classici a Roma nel corso del Cinquecento: appunti e prime considerazioni
15.00 Franco PARIS (Università di Napoli L’Orientale)
I drammi di Vondel tra controversie religiose e attualità politica
15.30 Discussione e Pausa
16.00 Natasha CONSTANTINIDOU (Πανεπιστήμιο Κύπρου – University of Cyprus)
Between Philology and Religion: the Greek Editions of the Leiden Branch of the Officina Plantiniana, ca. 1572-1613
16.30 Gennaro CELATO (Università della Campania L. Vanvitelli)
Questioni religiose nel De philologia liber di G. J. Vossius
17.00 Discussione
17.30 Visita al Museo della Fondazione Banco di Napoli
FRIDAY 29th NOVEMBER, BIBLIOTECA DI AREA UMANISTICA
(Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/3bmnf7c4)
SECONDA SESSIONE
Presiede
Franco PARIS (Università di Napoli L’Orientale)
9.00 Giovanni BENEDETTO – Olivia MONTEPAONE
Commentare Callimaco nella Res publica litterarum del XVII secolo
– Giovanni BENEDETTO (Università di Milano)
E. Spanheim e l'edizione Graeviana del 1697
– Olivia MONTEPAONE (Università di Milano)
Resti di un inedito commentario in greco di Leone Allacci agli Inni callimachei
10.00 Emanuele FIUME (Roma)
Erasmo e l’Europa al sinodo di Dordrecht (1618-1619)
10.30 Discussione e pausa
Presiede
Giovanni BENEDETTO (Università di Milano)
11.00 Han LAMERS (Universitetet i Oslo – University of Oslo)
Greek Etymology and Religious Critique: An Unstudied Manuscript from Paris in Its Intellectual Context (c. 1700)
11.30 Luciano CANFORA (Università di Bari Aldo Moro)
Fozio all’indice
12.30 Discussione e pausa
TERZA SESSIONE – Biblioteca di Area Umanistica
Presiede
Gaetano SABATINI (Università Roma Tre, CNR – ISEM)
14.00 Floris VERHAART (University of Exeter)
Religion and Philology in the Letters and Scholarship of Johann Friedrich Gronovius
14.30 Giancarlo ABBAMONTE (Università di Napoli Federico II)
Idealizzare un umanista riformato: l’orazione funebre di Petrus Bertius in memoria di Janus Dousa
15.00 Discussione e pausa
15.30 Tavola rotonda e chiusura dei lavori.
Intervengono:
Roberto DELLE DONNE (Università di Napoli Federico II)
Fabrizio LOMONACO (Università di Napoli Federico II)
Giovanni MUTO (Università di Napoli Federico II)
Gaetano SABATINI (Università di Roma Tre, CNR – ISEM)
Oreste TRABUCCO (Università di Bergamo)
Source: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;b8eee73c.ex
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December 2024
QUOTING, EDITING, REWRITING: RECEPTION AND REPRESENTATION OF FRAGMENTARY LATIN POETRY / CITER, ÉDITER, RÉÉCRIRE: RÉCEPTION ET REPRÉSENTATION DE LA POÉSIE LATINE FRAGMENTAIRE
Grenoble Alpes University (UMR 5316 Litt&Arts): December 4-6, 2024
The way in which our access to fully extant texts is mediated by subsequent reception is now well established. In the case of fragmentary works of Latin poetry, this mediation is even more direct and material: because we depend on secondary transmission for our access, the corpus of early Roman poetry is composed exclusively of the elements that ensured its reception (quotation, testimonia, etc.). The creation of Roman "literature" therefore appears to be primarily an act of reception, carried out by Roman society, mainly the elite, over the course of Rome's history (GOLDBERG 2005). The long established practice of obscuring this important fact (mainly in fragment editions) is now being replaced by the recognition that the study of early Roman poetry, like other fragmentary works, is essentially a study of reception: what we are able to study are the filters through which this poetry passed, and it is only through these indirect means that we can legitimately speak of fragmentary works. Thus, as Jackie Elliott points out, "The study of now fragmentary works is in this sense akin to the study of black holes: the objects of our interest are not themselves manifest, and what remains to be observed are their effects on surrounding phenomena" (ELLIOTT 2022: 84).
It is often the case that studies of the reception of fragmentary authors tell us more about the later receiving authors and their aims than about the earlier authors and works to which they refer. And yet, when it comes to the reception of early Roman poets, there are a variety of arguments that can tell us something about fragmentary literature in the first place. In particular, they can focus on operations of selection and citation of the source text, ranging from the microscopic (the citation of a single line by an earlier poet in the text of a later author) to the macroscopic (rewritings or responses to entire works or figures of poets). But we can also look at the way in which editorial procedures have helped to shape the reading and reception of fragmentary authors and works over the centuries (the order of fragments, the presentation of fragmentary material, the editor's discourse in the paratextual space, etc.), and at the way in which modern writings, particularly neo-Latin ones, have been able to seize on ancient representations in order to depict or rewrite fragmentary authors and/or works.
This symposium is therefore less concerned with the content of Latin fragmentary poetry than with its literary and editorial development. At the crossroads of the research carried out within the FragmAnt project, which focuses on the reception of Latin fragmentary poetry and the digital treatment of quotation, and the Translatio research centre (UMR 5316 Litt&Arts), which is interested in the transmission, translation and reception of ancient and medieval texts and the cultural transfers in which they are embedded, this symposium proposes to reflect on, but not limit itself to, the following themes:
· Citation and transmission of fragments: what selection processes were used to transmit fragments of Latin poetry? In what ways (quotation, paraphrase, rewriting, reference, etc.) and for what purposes (ornament, model, instrument of proof, etc.) were the fragments transmitted? What representations of the fragmentary Latin poets did these operations and methods help to forge?
· Publishing and representation: how did the various editions of fragmentary poetry help to shape the reading and reception of the fragmentary poets and/or their works?
· Reminiscences and rewritings: how did later poets (Latin or Neo-Latin) take up the legacy left by their now fragmentary predecessors, whether in the form of reminiscences or rewritings? Above all, how do these rewritings inform us about the reception and representation of the Latin fragmentary poets?
Proposals for papers, not exceeding 500 words, should be sent to sarah.gaucher@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr by 31/05/2024.
The conference organisation will cover hotel accommodation, meals and, for young researchers, all or part of their travel costs.
Scientific committee:
Florian Barrière (Professor, UGA)
Sarah Gaucher (Postdoctoral fellow, UGA)
Sarah Orsini (Associate Professor, UGA)
Clémence Pelletier (ATER, UGA)
Indicative bibliography:
Biggs, Thomas. 2020. Poetics of the First Punic War. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Čulík-Baird, Hannah. 2022. Cicero and the Early Latin Poets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Elliott, Jackie. 2022. Early Latin Poetry. Leiden: Brill.
Goldberg, Sander. 2005. Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic. Poetry and its Reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Manuwald, Gesine. 2011. Roman Republican Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Martindale, Charles. 1993. Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Martindale, Charles and Richard Thomas, eds. 2006. Classics and the Uses of Reception. Classical Receptions. Oxford: Blackwell.
Suerbaum, Werner, ed. 2002. Handbuch der Lateinischen Literatur der Antike. Erster Band. Die archaische Literatur: von den Anfängen bis Sullas Tod. Die vorliterarische Periode und die Zeit von 240 bis 78 v. Chr. Munich: Beck (Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft 8.1).
Call: https://fragmant.hypotheses.org/480 (French: https://fragmant.hypotheses.org/452)
(CFP closed May 31, 2024)
LES PERSONNAGES SECONDAIRES DU THÉÂTRE GREC ANTIQUE: ÉLABORATION, RÉCEPTION, RECONFIGURATION, DE L'ANTIQUITÉ À NOS JOURS
Centre International de Conférences Sorbonne Université, Paris, France: December 5-6, 2024
Evénement organisé par Marthe Garzon (ENS Paris), Cassandre Martigny (ENS Lyon / CRLC), Cécile Neeser Hever (Université de Genève)
Membres du comité scientifique : Ezra Baudou (University of Lincoln), Claire Lechevalier (Université de Caen-Normandie), Elodie Paillard (The University of Sydney / HEP Lausanne), Muriel Plana (Université Toulouse-Jean-Jaurès), Marie Saint Martin (Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle), Lucie Thévenet (Université de Nantes)
Longtemps laissés dans l’ombre de protagonistes le plus souvent éponymes, les personnages secondaires du théâtre grec antique font, depuis la fin des années 1960 et sous l’impulsion des théories postcoloniales, féministes, queers, intersectionnelles, l’objet d’un intérêt croissant, tant dans la réception littéraire que dans les études critiques. Ce colloque se propose d’étudier ces phénomènes contemporains, mais aussi d’observer comment, depuis l’Antiquité, les réélaborations littéraires et discours critiques qui se sont intéressés aux personnages secondaires invitent à relire et à réinterpréter les pièces dont ils s’inspirent.
Programme
Jeudi 5 décembre 2024
9h15-9h30 Accueil des participant-e-s
9h30-10h Introduction par les organisatrices
10h-11h : Conférence inaugurale par Elodie Paillard (The University of Sydney / HEP Lausanne) : « Les personnages oubliés de la tragédie grecque »
11h-11h30 Pause
11h30-12h30 Session I : Les personnages secondaires dans le théâtre antique
modératrice : Marthe Garzon
Charles Comminges (Sorbonne Université) : « Le personnage de l' Ὀπτήρ dans l'Ajax de Sophocle »
Thomas Lorson (Université de Lille) : « Hermès, de personnage mineur dans le théâtre classique à figure centrale dans les dialogues de Lucien »
12h30-14h30 : Pause déjeuner
14h30-15h30 Session II : La réévaluation des personnages secondaires du théâtre grec au prisme des études de genre et intersectionnelles
modératrice : Claire Lechevalier
Julie Roussel-Arvanitakis (Université Lyon II) : « Les servantes anonymes dans le théâtre d’Euripide : de simples “faire-valoir” des personnages féminins de haut rang ? »
Arsène Cazé (ENS Paris) : « Des doubles efféminés ? Egisthe dans Agamemnon et Les Choéphores et Ménélas dans Oreste »
15h30-16h : Pause
16h-17h30 Session III : Le devenir des personnages secondaires durant les siècles classiques
modératrice : Lucie Thévenet
Anne Morvan (Nantes Université) : « La doublure d’Apollon : rôle de la Pythie en tragédie, d’Eschyle à Leonardo Dati »
Alexia Dedieu (Université Aix-Marseille) : « Antigone au-delà d’Antigone : les fortunes d'Antigone comme personnage secondaire au xvie siècle »
Cassandre Martigny (ENS de Lyon / chercheuse associée au CRLC) : « Valorisation des personnages secondaires et réévaluation du rôle des mères : Clytemnestre et Jocaste dans les réécritures du xviiie siècle »
19h30 : Dîner du colloque
Vendredi 6 décembre 2024
10h-11h Session IV : Réélaborations contemporaines du théâtre antique : enjeux esthétiques et politiques de la réappropriation des personnages secondaires
modérateur : Ezra Baudou
Sylvie Humbert Mougin (Université de Tours) : « Io sur la scène contemporaine : la conquête d’une identité ? »
Louise Routier Guillemot (ENS Paris) : « Le fils d’Andromaque : enfant-roi, enfant transparent ? »
11h-11h30 : Pause
11h30-12h30 Session V : Expansions diachroniques : réélaboration du personnage secondaire sur la longue durée
modératrice : Cécile Neeser Hever
Marie Saint Martin (chercheuse associée au CEREdI, CPGE Lycée Marcelin Berthelot, Saint-Maur-des-Fossés) : « Reconfigurer le rôle du deutéragoniste dans le duo Électre -Chrysothemis, de la première modernité à la scène contemporaine ? »
Cyril Gendry (chercheur associé au CRLC, CPGE Lycée Marcelin Berthelot, Saint-Maur-des-Fossés) : « En amour comme au théâtre, Patrocle est-il condamné à toujours être le second d'Achille ? »
12h30-14h30 : Pause déjeuner
14h30-15h30 Session VI : Transpositions intermédiales
modératrice : Cassandre Martigny
Marthe Garzon (ENS Paris) : « Giorgio de Chirico : représentations picturales de la secondarité »
Antoine Paris (Université Bordeaux Montaigne) : « Poétique du figurant, poétique du second rôle : Devenirs des personnages secondaires de la tragédie grecque dans Œdipe-Roi et dans Carnet de notes pour une Orestie africaine de Pier Paolo Pasolini »
15h30-15h45 : Pause
15h45-16h15 : Marthe Garzon et Arsène Cazé : Ménélas rencontre Pylade (forme théâtrale courte)
16h15-16h30 : Conclusion
Program: https://www.fabula.org/actualites/122625/les-personnages-secondaires-du-theatre-grec-antique-elaboration-reception.html
PER LIMINA. PRINTED PARATEXTS AND THE INTELLECTUAL NETWORKS OF HUMANISM (15TH-18TH C.)
University of Innsbruck, Austria: December 6-7, 2024
In his influential work Seuils (1987), Gérard Genette emphasised the role of paratexts in the production and communication of meaning. Since then, the paratextual apparatus of works from different areas and periods has been the object of fruitful research testing the hermeneutical potential of the ‘thresholds of meaning’, e.g. title pages, prefaces, commentaries, epilogues, and indexes. In this context, the study of Humanist paratextual production closely linked to the advent of the printed book has seen a particular success in recent years. A rich and yet understudied element of Humanist literature (15th-18th c.), the paratexts we wish to discuss are peritextual compositions that stand at the material threshold (limen) of printed works and play an important role in shaping their reception. They hold the promise of providing invaluable information about Early modern reading and writing cultures – especially if one takes into account the value of paratexts both by the author or the editor of the main text and by other Humanists. Most recently, the advent of modern digital tools and methodologies has greatly facilitated a systematic study of these texts – ultimately promising, due to improved quantitative and analytical capabilities, a more comprehensive understanding of the intellectual networks and cultural phenomena of that period.
In light of these recent developments, the aim of this interdisciplinary workshop is to bring together scholars to explore the innovative potential of the “liminal” spaces shaped by paratexts in Humanist prints. We are looking for contributions that focus on the literary, historical, and material elements of printed peritexts (i.e. elements which surround the main text they refer to, like prefaces, dedications, introductory poems and letters, commentaries and marginalia, or epilogues), written in Latin and Greek, both in prose and verse, authorial and non-authorial, in books produced from the 15th to the 18th century. For our event, we propose to approach these texts from different perspectives: 1) as sources for social and intellectual history; 2) as works of literature; 3) as material objects and – sometimes overlooked – elements of editorial practice.
With this call, we invite contributions for 30-minute papers (in English, German, or Italian) that address – but are not limited to – the following questions:
* What new insights can paratexts as historical sources offer into Humanist academic and social networks (Res publica litterarum) and historical literate cultures?
* How do paratexts interact with the works that they refer to and with each other and to which effect?
* In which ways does the ‘paratextual infrastructure’ of a book (cf. Tholen 2021) prefigure a particular image of a text or limit the possible ways in which an audience might engage with it?
* What authority do paratexts have over the experience of reception or the Nachleben of a work (e.g. the impact of a paratextual apparatus of an influential edition on other works and later editions)?
* Which forms, contents, and rhetorical structures characterise Humanist paratexts?
* How do paratextual genres like the epistula lectori and the scholarly preface to authors of Graeco-Roman antiquity evolve over time?
* What role do paratexts play in the production and circulation of a work (e.g. with regard to phenomena of accumulation, recontextualisation, and canonisation)?
* What happens when a paratext develops an independent tradition and starts circulating on its own, shifting from a peritextual to an epitextual status or becoming a standalone text altogether?
* What new approaches can digital editing offer us to better understand and present Humanist paratexts?
* What tools are appropriate for collecting, structuring, and representing such texts in a digital environment in order to make them findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR)?
Papers on individual works/editions as well as more general approaches to the topic are welcome. We are keen to bring together academics at different stages of their career – from postgraduates and early career researchers to established scholars. If you are interested in participating, please send a title, an abstract (up to 250 words), and a brief academic biography (including name, academic email, current affiliation, and a list of publications if applicable) by 10 May 2024 to perlimina2024@gmail.com. Acceptance of contributions will be notified by 10 June 2024. Travel and accommodation expenses as well as the conference dinner on 6 December will be covered.
In the meantime, if you have questions regarding any aspect of the event, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are looking forward to reading your proposals!
Papers due: 10.05.2024 (notification of acceptance: 10.06.2024)
Contact: perlimina2024@gmail.com
Organisers:
Domenico Graziano, MA (University of Naples Federico II – University of Innsbruck)
Dr. Lukas Spielhofer (Heidelberg University)
With the support of:
Prof. Dr. Giancarlo Abbamonte (University of Naples Federico II)
Prof. Dr. Florian Schaffenrath (University of Innsbruck – Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies)
Selected Bibliography:
Abbamonte, G./Laureys, M./Miletti, L. (eds.): I paratesti nelle edizioni a stampa dei classici greci e latini (XV-XVIII sec.), Pisa, 2020.
Ajouri, P.D.P./Kundert, P.D.U./Rohde, P.D.C.: Rahmungen: Präsentationsformen und Kanoneffekte, Berlin 2017 (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 16).
Eisenstein, E.: The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, 1983.
Enenkel, K. A. E.: Die Stiftung von Autorschaft in der neulateinischen Literatur (ca. 1350–ca. 1650). Zur autorisierenden und wissensvermittelnden Funktion von Widmungen, Vorworttexten, Autorporträts und Dedikationsbildern, Leiden/Boston, 2015.
Furlan, F./Schön, K.-M./Wulfram, H. (eds.): “La tradizione della dedica nel mondo neolatino / Die Tradition der Widmung in der neulateinischen Welt / The Tradition of Dedication in the Neo-Latin World”, Humanistica 15 (n.s. 9), 1/2, 2020.
Genette, G.: Seuils, Paris, 1987.
Hotson, H./Wallnig, T. (eds.): Reassembling the Republic of Letters in the Digital Age. Standards, Systems, Scholarship, Göttingen, 2019 (URL: https://univerlag.uni-goettingen.de/handle/3/isbn-978-3-86395-403-1).
Paoli, M.: La dedica. Storia di una strategia editoriale, Lucca, 2009.
Santoro, M.: Libri edizioni biblioteche tra Cinque e Seicento. Con un percorso bibliografico, Manziana, 2002 (“Appunti su caratteristiche e funzioni del paratesto nel libro antico”, 51-92).
Sanzotta, V./Walser-Bürgler, I./Wulfram, H. (eds.): “La tradizione della dedica nel mondo neolatino / Die Tradition der Widmung in der neulateinischen Welt / The Tradition of Dedication in the Neo-Latin World”, Humanistica 12 (n.s. 6), 1/2, 2017.
Smith, H./Wilson, L. (eds.): Renaissance Paratexts, Cambridge, 2011.
Terzoli, M. A. (ed.): I margini del libro. Indagine teorica e storica sui testi di dedica. Atti del convegno (Basilea, 21-23 novembre 2002), Roma/Padova, 2004.
Tholen, J.: Producing Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the Early Modern Low Countries. Paratexts, Publishers, Editors, Readers, Leiden/Boston 2021.
Van Dam, H.-J.: “Poems on the Threshold: Neo-Latin ‘carmina liminaria’, in: Steiner-Weber, A./Enenkel, K. A. E. (eds.): Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Monasteriensis, Leiden/Boston, 2015, 50-81.
Edit (2/11/2024) - Program:
Friday, 6 December 2024, University of Innsbruck (Aula – Main Building, Innrain 52, 1st floor)
13.30 Come together
14.00 Domenico Graziano (Naples Federico II/Innsbruck), Lukas Spielhofer (Heidelberg):
Welcome and introduction
1) Shaping and Reshaping Paratexts
14.30 Irina Tautschnig (York):
(Not) My Paratext: Making, Unmaking, and Remaking the Threshold of the Book after Publication
15.15 Luca Hollenborg (Zurich):
Paratexts in Joachim Vadianus’ Hortulus editions (Vienna 1510 and Nuremberg 1512)
16.00 Discussion and coffee break
2) Paratexts between Tradition and Transformation
16.30 Ambra Marzocchi (Brown):
Is there Poliziano’s Watermark in Erasmus’ Preface to the Praise of Folly ? The alba linea between furtum and Homage in the Humanists’ respublica
17.15 Jenni Glaser (Bryn Mawr):
Plus arte quam Marte: Lucianic Ecphrasis, Illustration, and Paratextual Reinterpretation in Jean Baudoin’s 1613 Edition
18.00 Discussion and coffee break
3) Keynote
18.30 Ann Blair (Harvard):
The Varied Purposes of Paratexts in Print: Erasmus and Conrad Gessner
20.00 Dinner
Saturday, 7 December 2024 (Seminarraum 13 – Ágnes-Heller-Haus, Innrain 52a, 1st floor)
4) Paratexts as Philological Fingerprints
10.30 Federica Rossetti (Innsbruck):
Textual Criticism in the 16th-century Printed Editions of Seneca. Paratextual Mechanisms for the Sake of Philology
11.15 Matías Fernandez Robbio (Cuyo):
Paratexts and Paratextual Information in the Printed Tradition of the Greek Anthology
12.00 Discussion and lunch break
5) Paratexts as a Medium of Self-fashioning
13.30 Ingrid De Smet (Warwick):
Friends, Patrons, and Printers: the Paratextual World of Franciscus Modius Revisited
14.15 Alessandro Bonvini (Leuven):
Shaping the Self through Paratexts: Federigo Nomi’s Liber Satyrarum sexdecim (1703)
15.00 Sara Miglietti (Warburg Institute, London):
The “Self-translator Function”: Claims of Self-translation in Early Modern Paratext and their Purposes
15.45 Discussion and coffee break
6) Frames of Reception: Audience and Authority
16.15 Johanna Luggin (Innsbruck):
Introducing a Women’s Book: Maria Cunitz’ Urania Propitia (1650) between Self-translation, Intellectual Networks and Male Power
17.00 Benjamin Driver (Brown):
Encomium, Apotheosis, and Classical Allusion in the Paratexts of the Copernican Revolution
17.45 Nicoletta Bruno (Basel/Liverpool):
The New World for Europe and Latin for the New World. Antonio Nebrija’s Preface to Peter Martyr D'Anghiera’s De Orbe Novo Decades
18.30 Final discussion and closing remarks
If you are interested in attending – either in person or online – please pre-register via perlimina2024@gmail.com.
Website: https://neolatin.lbg.ac.at/events/per-limina-conference/
Call: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;6143550c.ex
(CFP closed May 10, 2024)
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January 2025
[SCS] [PANELS] SOCIETY FOR CLASSICAL STUDIES 156TH ANNUAL MEETING
Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Philadelphia, PA: January 2-5, 2025
ANTIQUITY IN ASIA AND THE MEDITERRANEAN
Organizer-refereed panel by Lorraine Abagatnan and Chris Waldo
Call: http://tinyurl.com/aaacc2025
Deadline: March 8, 2024
BETWEEN, BEYOND, BYGONE, BEHIND: QUEER TIME IN THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN
Organizer-refereed panel by Cassandra Tran and T. H. M. Gellar-Goad
Call: https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/between-beyond-bygone-behind-queer-time-ancient-mediterranean-organizer-refereed
Deadline: February 16, 2024
CLASSICAL LEGACIES AND THE IBERO-GLOBAL WORLD
Panel Sponsored by Hesperides: Classics in the Luso-Hispanic World
Call: https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/classical-legacies-and-ibero-global-world-hesperides-classics-luso-hispanic-world
Deadline: February 26, 2024
CURRENT RESEARCH IN THE WORLD OF NEO-LATIN STUDIES
Panel sponsored by the American Association for Neo-Latin Studies
Call: https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/current-research-world-neo-latin-studies-american-association-neo-latin-studies
Deadline: February 23, 2024
DANCE AND MYTH: THE RECEPTION OF THE GREEKS BY MARTHA GRAHAM
Panel Organized by Ronnie Ancona (Hunter College/CUNY Graduate Center) & Nina Papathanasopoulou (College Year in Athens/SCS)
Call: https://classicalstudies.org/scs-news/cfp-dance-and-myth-reception-greeks-martha-graham
Deadline: February 2, 2024
EMBODYING WOMEN'S COLONIAL EXPERIENCES [WCC PANEL]
Panel Organized by The Women’s Classical Caucus (WCC)
Call: https://www.wccclassics.org/scs-annual-meeting-upcoming-cfp-scs-2025
Deadline: February 15, 2024
THE HEROIDES AND THEIR TRADITION
Panel Organized by International Ovidian Society
Call: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;99e5e5f7.ex
Deadline: March 1, 2024
MEDICAL MODERNITIES
Panel Sponsored by the Society for Ancient Medicine
Call: https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/medical-modernities-society-ancient-medicine
Deadline: March 15, 2024
MODERN & POPULAR RECEPTIONS OF LATE ANTIQUITY
Panel Sponsored by the Society for Late Antiquity
Call: https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/modern-popular-receptions-late-antiquity-society-late-antiquity
Deadline: March 1, 2024
MYTHOGRAPHY AND CULTURAL IDENTITY IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD
Panel Sponsored by Society for Early Modern Classical Reception (SEMCR)
Call: https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/mythography-and-cultural-identity-early-modern-world-society-early-modern-classical
Deadline: March 15, 2024
READING NETWORKS OF READING: ANT-ISH APPROACHES TO RECEPTION STUDIES
Organized by Erika Valdivieso (Yale) and Jennifer Weintritt (Northwestern)
Call: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;a0c40000.ex
Deadline: March 15, 2024
RE-EVALUATING TURNUS IN VERGIL AND THE VERGILIAN TRADITION
Panel Sponsored by the Vergilian Society
Organized by Randall Ganiban, Department of Classics, Middlebury College
Call: https://www.vergiliansociety.org/call-for-papers-for-scs-panel-re-evaluating-turnus-in-vergil-and-the-vergilian-tradition/
Deadline: March 22, 2024
REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE IN THE ANCIENT AND MODERN WORLDS
A panel organized by the affiliate group Classics and Social Justice
Call: - [published on closed LCC list]
Deadline: March 15, 2024
TRANSLATION AND CREATIVE ADAPTATION
Panel sponsored by the Committee of Translations of Classical Authors
Call: https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/translation-and-creative-adaptation-committee-translations-classical-authors
Deadline: February 15, 2024
[MLA PANEL] WALLACE STEVENS & CLASSICISM
Modern Language Association 2025 (New Orleans, January 9 – 12, 2025)
There’s Jove’s “mythy mind” in “Sunday Morning,” Penelope’s meditative compositions in “The World as Meditation,” “Aeneas” bearing his father “from / The ruins of the past” in the uncollected “Tradition,” and a call-out to “Classical mythology” in general as “The greatest piece of fiction” toward the end of Adagia. Stevens invokes “Plato’s ghost” and “Aristotle’s skeleton” in “Less and Less Human, O Savage Spirit”; he proposes and describes a “platonic person” in “The Pure Good of Theory”; he points to Plato and cites Socrates throughout his essays and letters. We find him freely, knowingly referring to Callimachus, Democritus, Parmenides, Sappho, Xenophon; to Catullus, Cicero, Horace, Lucretius, Ovid. In a wartime note to Henry Church, he counts the writings of Boileau (late-17th-century translator of Longinus’s On the Sublime) as among “the obvious texts.” And then there’s that early imperative to “make a peristyle,” those many pediments, and all the sculpture.
Anticipating a special issue of The Wallace Stevens Journal, we invite 300-to-500-word abstracts for presentations that address Stevens’s engagement with classical poetry and performance, architecture and other art, philosophy, theology, rhetoric, politics, or their later (e.g., Neoclassical) appreciations. We are open to all manner of proposals on the topic.
Please direct all inquiries and submissions (including a brief bio), with “MLA 2025” in the subject line, to Andrew Osborn at aosborn@udallas.edu by Feb. 21, 2024.
Call: https://wallacestevens.com/calls-for-papers
(CFP closed February 21, 2024)
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February 2025
[HYBRID] AUSTRALASIAN SOCIETY FOR CLASSICAL STUDIES (ASCS) 46TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE
Dates: February 3-5, 2025 (opening reception Feb 2).
Location: Australian National University, Canberra, ACT - and HYBRID.
CFP (and panels) deadline: August 23, 2024.
Conference website: TBA.
Call: http://www.ascs.org.au/news/.
(CFP closed August 23, 2024)
FROM MANUSCRIPT TO PRINT: GREEK TRAGEDIES AND THEIR HERITAGE IN THE 15TH AND 16TH CENTURIES
Aix-Marseille Université (Aix-en-Provence, France): February 6-7, 2025
Conference venue: Centre Paul-Albert Février, Laboratoire Textes et Documents de la Méditerranée Antique et Médiévale, UMR 7297, Aix-Marseille Université.
Organisation: Alexia Dedieu
Scientific committee:
Anne Balansard, Professor of ancient Greek, Aix-Marseille Université
Malika Bastin-Hammou, Professor of of ancient Greek, Université Grenoble Alpes
Christian Boudignon, Maitre de Conférences in ancient Greek, Aix-Marseille Université
Aude Cohen-Skalli, Chargée de recherches, Aix-Marseille Université
Flore Kimmel-Clauzet Professor of of ancient Greek, Université Montpellier 3
In the last decades research has been focusing on how Antiquity has been used, transformed and reinvented by the scholars of 15th and 16th centuries. The printed editions of Greek tragedies and their translations first into Latin, then into vernacular have allowed these ancient works to spread widely throughout Western Europe. The multiple paratexts and other liminary texts pervading those printed books are the place where the practical and theoretical thoughts on ancient works and authors were developed. Those texts, far from offering mere literary reflections, often echo the political, socio-cultural, aesthetic and personal concerns of the scholars who wrote them. The scholarly tradition emerging from this vast and understudied corpus has thus durably shaped the reception of ancient Greek tragedies and the characters it portrays, thus imposing certain readings of Greek tragedy and setting up dramatic canons that have changed little or not at all over the course of early modernity.
The turn in the history of Greek tragedy at the beginning of the 16th century is undeniable. However, scholars who tended to the diffusion of those texts were relying on the handwritten heritage composed of manuscripts of various types and origins. The influence of this particular heritage in the later reception of Greek tragedy still deserves to be fully appraised. Indeed, the first printed books frequently imitated the earlier manuscript tradition. Additionally, the many paratexts (hypotheses, Lives, epigrams) that can be found at the beginning, at the end or in the margins of manuscripts were picked up by scholars and can be found in a sometimes slightly altered shape within printed books. The manuscript tradition is thus an essential stage not only in the textual transmission of Greek tragedies, but also in the history of their reception, which deserves to be explored in greater depth.
This two-days conference aims to explore the close or, conversely, distant relationship between printed editions and the manuscript tradition, and to study both the philological practices and their influence on the reception of the ancient Greek tragic corpus.
Papers may focus on:
- Manuscripts of Greek tragedies from the 15th and 16th centuries
- Printed editions from the late 15th and 16th centuries (editions of Greek tragedies, scholia, lectiones or annotationes)
- Translations into Latin or vernacular languages
- Paratexts, poetic treatises and correspondence from the 15th and 16th centuries
From a thematic point of view, papers could, for example, deal with the following points:
Philological practices
Greek tragedies present the editor with numerous challenges that can be scrutinised: how should lyrical parts, dialects, fragments, interpolations of characters be dealt with? Studies may focus on the use that philologists make of manuscripts in their editions of complete tragedies or fragments. Liminary texts and letters illustrate the practices of the scholars who mention or omit the sources of their editions, and thus also offer substantial exploratory paths. Manuscripts used as sources for translations into Latin or the vernacular may be the subject of similar analyses.
History of the book
Papers may also study how printed editions incorporate the editorial practices used by scholars in the manuscripts, and/or on the influence of these practices in the transmission and reception of Greek tragic authors. The ‘discoveries’ of Greek manuscripts by scholars, the resulting printed editions and the discourse of the editors on the subject also raise crucial questions: how are these manuscript sources mentioned, and for what reasons? Conversely, which manuscripts exist but are deliberately ignored by philologists, and why? How does this circulation - or lack thereof - of Greek manuscripts shape the reception of tragic authors?
(Critical) reception of Greek tragedies and the ancient world.
Contributions may focus on the discrepancies between manuscripts, edited texts and translations, and explore their aesthetic, cultural and/or political implications. For instance, the hypotheses of tragedies, the Lives of the Authors and the various liminary epigrams composed in the Byzantine period are taken up, sometimes translated and transformed. How can we understand and analyse these changes? Which reading of the Greek tragic poets do these transformations reveal? How do they alter and/or adapt the reading of the tragic texts for 16th century readers? Finally, the scholarly discourse on tragic authors within printed works devoted to other authors (printed editions, translations or annotationes) can also be of interest. Scholarly works of the 15th and 16th centuries accumulate quotes and other references, and can therefore prove useful in order to study the (critical) reception of several ancient authors and their manuscript sources.
People who are interested in participating in the conference may send an abstract in English, French or Italian (of approximately 250 words) to alexia.dedieu@univ-amu.fr by July 31st. Notifications will be sent by the end of August 2024. Travel and accommodation expenses of the participants will be covered.
Submission deadline : 31 July 2024
Call: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;d3a2274e.ex
(CFP closed July 31, 2024)
ALTERTUMSWISSENSCHAFT AND HISTORICISM
London (Senate House): February 26-28, 2025
Conference Organiser: Aaron Turner (Knapp Foundation/Royal Holloway, University of London)
Confirmed Participants
Jonas Grethlein (University of Heidelberg)
Katherine Harloe (Institute of Classical Studies)
Alexandra Lianeri (University of Thessaloniki)
Neville Morley (University of Exeter)
Glenn Most (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa)
Daniel Whistler (Royal Holloway, University of London)
In 1921, Ulrich Von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf proudly declared, “we have at last passed the farther limit of the 19th century, in which the conquest of the ancient world by science was completed” (1998 [1921], p.47). For Wilamowitz, the potential of Altertumswissenschaft –the unity of classical studies initiated by Winckelmann, Gesner, Heyne, and Wolf (among others) in the 18th Century – had finally been fulfilled. In the same year, Ernst Troeltsch gravely declared “a crisis of historicism”, wherein the word Historismus had become a “dirty word…a discharge of all kinds of complaints against historical burdens, complicated historical thinking and historical education that weakens the power of reasoning” (1922 [1921], p.572-73). For Troeltsch, the events of the First World War had eroded the fundamental historicist notion of an “intellectual progress”, which had produced a “suffering humanity”, while at the same time the principles of historicism were themselves under attack for relativising human values. Despite their (apparently) contrasting fortunes in 1921, historicism and Altertumswissenschaft emerged out of the same ground and their development out of the 18th and throughout the 19th Centuries was deeply collaborative. This conference explores the fundamental connections in the rise of Altertumswissenschaft and historicism in the 18th Century and their development in the first half of the 19th Century.
For both classical studies and history, the compulsion for independence in the 19th Century was driven in part by their liberation from the impulses of rational philosophy in the 18th Century. Wilamowitz places Winckelmann at the beginning of the tradition of classical studies and it was through Winckelmann that aesthetics was emancipated from the rationalist philosophical tradition that emerged in Descartes and Leibniz and expanded through Wolff and Baumgarten. At the same time, the integrity of historical studies was challenged by the proliferation of historical pyrrhonism that emerged out of Cartesian scepticism. Consequently, it was through the methodology underlying Winckelmann’s approach to ancient art that an understanding of a recreative intuition for historical knowledge became possible for German historians in the 18th Century. In particular, Justus Möser, whose work had a profound effect in shaping the development of historicism in Germany, was deeply swayed by Winckelmann’s critique of modernity and rationalism.
Both Winckelmann and Möser exercised a considerable influence over the direction of classical and historical studies at Göttingen, where theology and philosophy took a back seat and historical and literary disciplines predominated. It was here that Gesner made the first attempt to unify the divergent branches of classical studies for the purpose of conceptualising ancient culture as a distinct system. Gesner’s successor, Heyne, a strong advocate of Winckelmann’s classicism, took the next crucial step forward and opened the door for a new hermeneutical tradition of classical philology grounded in Winckelmann’s aesthetics and Ernesti’s use of linguistics for factual interpretation. At the same time, Möser’s historicism became entrenched in the work of the Göttingen historians, Spittler, Pütter, Gatterer, and, most significantly, Schlözer. Arguably, it was through the 18th Century triumvirate of Winckelmann, Möser, and Schlözer that the limits of French and British Enlightenment history could be overcome and the individuality of peoples of past epochs could be elucidated.
In the early 19th Century, Wolf arrived in Berlin and set about systematising classical studies, coining the term Altertumswissenschaft in the process. Strongly influenced by his interactions with von Humboldt, Wolf established the goal of classical philology as the philosophical understanding of “the moral side of humanity” (1833 [1807], p.11). In turn, through Wolf, von Humboldt learned to ground individuality in the unity of language and nationality. Through the aesthetic standpoint of Winckelmann (and later Schlegel), the progress of philology under the direction of Gesner, Heyne, Schlegel, and Wolf, and the historicism of von Humboldt and Herder, the groundwork for a new and decisive hermeneutics was laid and Schleiermacher would be its executor. It was in Schleiermacher’s scientific hermeneutics that the emerging ‘historical school’ of Berlin, whose members included Savigny, Niebuhr, and Eichhorn, grounded itself and sought to emancipate history from the shackles of German Idealism.
After Ranke’s arrival in Berlin in 1825 and following Hegel’s unsuccessful application to join the Academy of Sciences, the stage was set for a reawakening of historical consciousness. Ranke’s critical method, which became the foundation of this new historicism, was deeply inspired by Niebuhr’s philological advances. Following in the footsteps of Wolf, Niebuhr’s Römische Geschichte (1811) opposed the materialistic historiographies of Voltaire, Schlözer, and Gibbon and grounded historical criticism in the sources. At the same time, two of Wolf’s students, Boeckh and Bekker, grew to prominence in Berlin, which had by now replaced Göttingen as the central hub of both historical and classical studies in Germany. Boeckh, a student of both Wolf and Schleiermacher, had the most significant impact in both fields. For Boeckh, philology elucidates “the knowledge of what has been produced by the human spirit” (1877, p.10). Boeckh carried Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics forward, which became the basis for the next phase of historicism initiated through Droysen’s Grundriß der Historik (1868). Following the collapse of German Idealism in the 1840s, the rise of positivism under the direction of Mill and Comte reignited the debate between history and science and Droysen was the first major historical thinker to confront the rising tide of positivism.
The emerging conflict between historicism and positivism signalled the end of this close connection between classical and historical studies that, in many ways, remains severed today. The aim of this conference, therefore, is to explore this relationship between Altertumswissenschaft and historicism from their emergence against the dominant strands of naturalism and rationalism in the 18th Century to the progress of their development in the 19th Century until their eventual estrangement. Today, engagement between classical studies and the philosophy of history is practically non-existent. The ever-increasing and unrelenting specialisation within these disciplines has created a void in a discourse that until the middle of the 19th Century was essential to the survival of both. By retreading the ground that enabled classical and historical studies to emerge in the first place, perhaps a more fruitful discourse might be possible for the future.
If you are interested in presenting a paper that addresses in any way the the core theme of the conference, please send an abstract (350-500 words for presentations lasting 30 minutes) to aaron.turner@knappfoundation.ac.uk by August 30th, 2024. Notifications will be sent out by the end of September.
This conference is supported by the Knapp Foundation and the Humanities and Arts Research Institute (HARI).
Call: https://classicalassociation.org/events/call-for-papers-altertumswissenschaft-and-historicism-senate-house-london/
(CFP closed August 30, 2024)
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March 2025
[PANEL] CLASSICAL QUEERS HERE AND NOW: MYTHMAKING IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Conference
Philadelphia, PA: March 6-9, 2025
This panel, for the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Conference to be held March 6-9, 2025, invites papers that analyze how contemporary queer adaptations or retellings of Classical mythology destabilize the white cisheteronormativity that has characterized the reception of these stories. What can be gained by (re-)queering the Classical canon? How do these queer adaptations use the Classical past to intervene in our present moment?
Literary works, video games, comics, TV shows, films, and podcasts that adapt or retell Classical mythology remain popular. Yet, recent attention on these contemporary stories has focused largely on women and women’s perspectives, while Classical queer identities have been decidedly underexplored or even excluded from feminist scholarship. Works such as Xena: Warrior Princess, BBC/Netflix’s Troy: Fall of a City, Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles, Steven Sherrill’s The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, and Supergiant Games’ Hades and Hades II demonstrate a sustained interest in centering queer bodies and voices within the Classical tradition. Moreover, these works indicate a desire to turn to the Classical past to intervene in the present as part of a larger vision of queer inclusion and social justice. The increasing number of queer Classics stories in the popular sphere remains at odds with mainstream Classics scholarship, which trends towards the conservative insofar as it upholds hierarchies of power based on binary opposition. Beyond the scholarly realm, Classical antiquity has long been held up in the West as the “height of civilization,” and it serves as an important pillar of normative ideologies that oppress and suppress queerness. These contemporary queer adaptations therefore encourage us to question the presumed cisheteronormativity of the original texts themselves, suggesting that Classical mythology is rather queerer than its reception has been.
This panel welcomes papers exploring adaptations and retellings of Classical, or other, mythologies that center queer identities or are otherwise queer in terms of race, embodiment, narrative, form, etc. It suggests using these works to consider how these sources use the Classical past to make meaning in the present.
Abstracts must be uploaded to the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) portal at https://www.nemla.org/. Contact Hannah Steele (hsteele@udel.edu) for more details, questions, or concerns about this panel.
Abstract deadline: September 30, 2024
Conference information: https://www.nemla.org/
Call: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/07/09/classical-queers-here-and-now-mythmaking-in-the-21st-century
(CFP closed September 30, 2024)
RALLYING THE PAST: CLASSICS, PROPAGANDA, AND MANIPULATION IN THE GREEK TOTALITARIAN REGIMES OF THE 20TH CENTURY
Nicosia, Cyprus: March 19-20, 2025
I would like to draw your attention to the following international conference that will take place on 19 and 20 March 2025 in Nicosia, Cyprus. The conference, organized by Professor Kyriakos Demetriou and Dr Andreas Serafim, is entitled "Rallying the Past: Classics, Propaganda, and Manipulation in the Greek Totalitarian Regimes of the 20th Century". Its aim is to present the first comprehensive, cross-thematic, interdisciplinary, and in-depth study of how the Greek military juntas, including the nationalist regimes of Metaxas (1936–1940) and the Colonels (1967–1974), used, misused, and abused Classics, i.e. a variety of aspects of ancient Greek and Latin culture, to propagate their beliefs, maintain their ideological foundations, legitimize their power, and manipulate or construct collective memory in order to control the masses and eradicate popular reactions that would threaten their authority.
Despite the intensive scholarly study of several juntas in modern Greek history, the focus is mostly on analyses and (re)interpretations of the historical circumstances that led to the undemocratic complications, e.g. the historical roots of a strong anti-communist movement, the political unrest in the run-up to the coups, the national and international support the regimes received, their policies and actions, and the reactions of the Greeks at home and abroad. There are few scholarly works on how military regimes attempted to control and manipulate cultural life and set their own cultural agenda (valuable is the book by Gonda Van Steen, Stage of Emergency: Theater and Public Performance Under the Greek Military Dictatorship of 1967–1974, Oxford University Press 2015). There are also some works that mainly revolve around the connection between ethnocentrism, militarism, and religion and the legitimization of power through spectacle (scholarly analyses focus on theatre, music, and sport), and some more general ones that examine the complicated socio-political and cultural processes of using the past to shape the notions of “modern Greek nation” and “national imagination” (the book by Yannis Hamilakis, The Nation and its Ruins. Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece, Oxford University Press 2007, the role of archaeology under dictatorial regimes in Greece).
What is urgently needed in interdisciplinary scholarship (not only in the reception of classical antiquity, but also in disciplines such as political science, history, sociology, and ethnology) is an examination of the ways in which the classical past is used by dictatorial rulers to justify their rule. This conference is distinct in exploring this topic in as much detail as possible. It revolves around the overarching themes that shed light on the intricate mechanisms of manipulating the past to maintain military dictatorships. The conference invites contributions on the following topics: (1) the emphasis on the revival of ancient Greek language and the rejection of modernisms and colloquialisms; (2) the distortion of ancient history to support the construction of bourgeois, ethnocentric, and militaristic myths; (3) how the ancient past was tailored through censorship or overemphasis on ancient dramatic theatre and art; (4) the study of educational reforms, especially with regard to changes in secondary and high school curricula and the control of universities and other research institutions; and (5) the convergences and divergences between Greek military regimes from different periods and between Greek and other European military regimes (e.g. Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, and Franco in Spain). Despite contextual and circumstantial differences, they all drew on the classical past to stabilize their despotic rule. A methodological framework for examining the similarities and differences between the European military regimes of the West and the ways in which they capitalized on Greek antiquity to legitimize and maintain their power is an important challenge for the study of classical reception.
The host institution is Cyprus Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts. The supporting institution is the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King’s College London. The keynote speaker is Professor Gonda Van Steen, King’s College London.
Abstracts of no more than 300 words and short biographical notes (up to 10 lines) should be submitted to Kyriakos Demetriou (k.demetriou@ucy.ac.cy) and Andreas Serafim (serandreas@outlook.com) by Sunday, 15 September 2024. Contact the organizers if you would like additional information or clarification on the conference topics.
Call [pdf]: https://mgsa.org/pdfs/CfPs/RallyingthePast.pdf
(CFP closed September 15, 2024)
[HYBRID] WEARING ANTIQUITY: MODERN FASHION AND THE PAST 2000 BCE - 1000 AD
9th International Conference IMAGINES
Hybrid/Senate House, London: March 19-21, 2025
The past is an alluring place. It has been a long standing influence for artists that not only seek inspiration for their work but also to establish a connection between that past and their own time.
Even fashion has not remained insensitive to the influence of antiquity; its constant process of renewal makes it the ideal means to bring the past to the general public that might have limited access to other ways of interacting with the past. Fashion is also a way of expressing one’s identity, that might be rooted in distant lands and times, as costume parties of the 19th century already showed in a very clear way.
To find antiquities in fashion you only need to look around; one of the fashion trends for Spring 2024 is the use of drapery that brings out “your inner Greek goddess” according to fashion writers. Currently on sale by the firm Jean Paul Gaultier is their Collection “Burn” that features items such as the “Statue draped dress” or the “Statue print pants” made out of material printed with the image of the Venus de Milo. Printed in life size the body of the statue blends with the body of the wearer creating a striking image. This collection is in itself a new reading of Gaultier’s runway collection of Spring 1999 that combined Greek sculpture with Japanese kimonos. A more wearable version of the Statue items was offered by Zara with a tulle dress printed with an image of the Three Graces group by Antonio Canova.
The British department store Liberty released for 2023 Autumn-Winter the Odyssey fabric collection inspired by “the world of ancient myths and legends to explore Liberty’s very own heritage of storytelling”. The collection made extensive use of Greek mythology and architecture but also of artists such as William Morris and Andy Warhol.
However, fashion is much more than clothes and fabric. In Autumn 2023, Lancôme launched its Louvre Collection, designed by the makeup artist Lisa Eldridge. It featured an eyeshadow palette inspired by the XIXth century marble bust of Corinne, the Greek poet of the Vth century BC. and an advertising campaign that with the line “beauty is a living art”, featured the actress Zendaya and the Victory of Samothrace.
Furthermore, the heavy eye liner worn by ancient Egyptians have influenced contemporary make up directly through Egyptian art but mainly through secondary sources such film or music. The Cleopatras of Theda Bara and Elizabeth Taylor have had a long lasting influence in make-up trends and adopted by artists such as Siouxie and subsequently by the general public.
The conference Wearing antiquity aims to bring together scholars and practitioners (fashion designers, pattern cutters, publicists and others) to discuss how and why the past remains such an important influence on modern fashion. Understanding fashion in its broader sense and including also (and not only): jewellery, shoes, makeup, hairstyles, tattoos or publicity.
We aim to have both papers and demonstrations on the following topics (the list is not extensive):
- Fashion projects and designers that have been inspired by antiquity
- Pattern cutting and technology - Fortuny pleating
- The role of antiquity in advertising and fashion discourse
- Archaeological discoveries and fashion
- Body modification - dress reform, tattooing
- Fashion and national identity
Enquiries, proposals (300 words) and short biographies should be sent to Charo Rovira Guardiola (rosario.rovira@sas.ac.uk) no later than the 30th September. The abstract should clearly state the argument of the paper, in keeping with the topic of the conference. The language of the conference is English but we will consider other languages. The conference will be in person and online.
A selection of contributions (in English) will be considered for a volume publication by Bloomsbury in the series ‘Imagines – Classical Receptions in the Visual and Performing Arts’.
For more information on the Imagines Project: https://www.imagines-project.org/
Organising committee:
Charo Rovira Guardiola (Institute of Classical Studies Library)
Marta Garcia Morcillo (Institute of Classical Studies)
Katherine Harloe (Institute of Classical Studies)
Call: https://classicalassociation.org/events/call-for-papers-wearing-antiquity-modern-fashion-and-the-past-2000-bce-1000-ad-institute-of-classical-studies-london/
(CFP closed September 30, 2024)
RENAISSANCE SOCIETY OF AMERICA (RSA)
Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America
Boston MA, USA: March 20-22, 2025
Index of CFP: https://www.rsa.org/page/RSAAnnualMeetingCFPIndex
#CFP RES DIFFICILES 6: CHALLENGES AND PATHWAYS FOR ADDRESSING INEQUITY IN CLASSICS
Online [US Pacific time]: March 21, 2025
Organizers: Hannah Čulík-Baird (UCLA) and Joseph Romero (TAMUC)
Since 2020 Res Difficiles has been a venue for addressing inequities within the field of Classics, examining issues arising out of intersectional vectors of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, class, socio-economic status, and beyond. In our papers and conversations, we explore how people on the margins in our texts and contexts are invited—or pushed further from—the center and explore avenues through which such marginalization might be addressed. Following each conference (Res Diff, 2020; Res Diff 2.0, 2021; Res Diff 3, 2022; Res Diff 4, 2023; Res Diff 5, 2024), recordings of conference presentations were made available online at resdifficiles.com. In preparation for Res Diff 6, we invite papers from all those who study and teach the ancient world. Submissions from individuals, pairs, or organizations are welcome, as are submissions from students (undergraduate or graduate), faculty, and K-12 teachers.
Our keynote speaker will be Sarah Derbew, Assistant Professor of Classics at Stanford University.
The conference will be hosted as a Zoom webinar with a capacity of 500. Please note that the time zone of the conference will be US Pacific.
Abstracts of 350 words should be sent electronically to Ms. Mitzvah Villeda (mvilleda1@leomail.tamuc.edu) by Monday, January 9, 2025. Papers will be 20-25 minutes with coordinated discussion at the end of each session. Any questions regarding abstract submission may be addressed to Professors Romero (Joseph.Romero@tamuc.edu) or Čulík-Baird (culikbaird@humnet.ucla.edu).
Call: https://resdifficiles.com/cfp/
MILESTONES IN ARISTOTLE'S PUBLIC RECEPTION
University of Durham (Centre for Classical Reception; Centre for Ancient and Medieval Philosophy): March 25-26, 2025
Offers are invited of papers to be delivered at a conference entitled 'Milestones in Aristotle’s Public Reception'. It will be convened by the Leverhulme-funded project Aristotle beyond the Academy, based in the Centre for Classical Reception and the Centre for Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at the University of Durham, on March 25th-26th 2025. The project asks how, where and why Aristotle has made cultural appearances in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales since the Restoration (1660): see further https://aristotlebeyond.co.uk/). The project’s three researchers (Edith Hall, Peter Swallow and Arlene Holmes-Henderson) focus primarily on the areas of ethics, law and politics, rhetoric, and natural science. The conference, however, may include contributions on the reception of Aristotle from 1660 to the present day internationally, on any topic, in any medium or genre except specialist academic writing.
Please submit abstracts of up to 400 words by June 30th 2024 to the Principal Investigator, edith.hall@durham.ac.uk
Call: https://aristotlebeyond.co.uk/events/2025/03/26/project-international-conference-durham/
(CFP closed June 30, 2024)
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April 2025
[AAH SESSIONS] WHO OWNS ANTIQUITIES?
Association for Art History - 2025 Annual Conference
University of York, UK: April 9-11, 2025
Session convenor: Dr Erhan Tamur, University of York, erhan.tamur@york.ac.uk
Who owns antiquities? Cultural, legal, economic, and political dimensions of this question continue to inform debates on the restitution and repatriation of antiquities, with immense repercussions for the fields of art history, archaeology and museology. This session invites papers on topics including but not limited to the future of “universal” and “encyclopaedic” museums; restitution-related case studies; the relationship between museology, archaeology and efforts of empire- and nation-building; antiquities and definitions of “decolonisation;” provenance research; indigenous archaeologies; and the antiquities market. We are interested both in critical engagements with the current state of our disciplines as well as informed analyses of future possibilities and challenges. We encourage papers across disciplines, periods, and geographies.
We envision two sessions; each session will include 20-minute research papers, followed by a 20-min-long general discussion/Q&A.
If interested, please email your title and abstract (250 words) to erhan.tamur@york.ac.uk by 1 November 2024.
Call: https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20046129/call-papers-who-owns-antiquities-association-art-history-annual
#CFP [ONLINE] HÖLDERLIN’S HELLENISM
An International Symposium to be held Online
Online: April 24-25, 2025
Conference Organiser: Aaron Turner (Knapp Foundation / Royal Holloway, University of London)
Confirmed Speakers:
Uta Degner (Paris Lodron University of Salzburg)
Oliver Grütter (University of Zurich)
Laurence Hemming (Knapp Foundation / Lancaster University)
David Farrell Krell (DePaul University)
Kathrin Rosenfield (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul)
Thomas Schirren (Paris Lodron University of Salzburg)
This aim of this conference is to open up the fundamental question that Friedrich Hölderlin posed in his engagement with the Greeks: how do we learn what is proper to our own being? In the notes to his own translation of Sophocles’ Antigone, it was precisely a lack of destiny, a “fatelessness” (das Schiksallose), that defined modernity, which strives “to hit upon something, to have destiny” but which it is ultimately ill-fated (das δύσμορον) to possess. The Greeks, Hölderlin says, have a fundamental sense of destiny and so their main tendency was “to be able to come to terms with themselves”, which was their weakness (GSA 5: 269-270). In a letter to his close friend Böhlendorf in December 1801, Hölderlin expands on the distinction between the Germans and the Greeks. Here he writes, "what is proper to one’s own must be learned as well as the foreign (das Fremde), so the Greeks are indispensable to us. Only we will not follow them in our own, our national, because, as I said, the free use of one’s own is the most difficult" (GSA 6.1: 426). While his master’s thesis, “History of the Fine Art among the Greeks”, written at Tübingen in 1790, endorsed Winckelmann’s idea of becoming great, even inimitable, by imitating the Greeks, by 1799 Hölderlin’s engagement with Hellenism had shifted away from the neoclassical-humanist model.
In his essay, “The Perspective From Which We Must Look At Antiquity”, Hölderlin bemoaned modernity’s dream of a “culture” (Bildung) grounded in “originality and independence” (Originalität und Selbstständigkeit), of saying nothing but “new things”, which he attributes to “a kind of mild revenge against the slavery (die Knechtschaft) with which we have been constrained by antiquity (das Altertum)”. For Hölderlin, against neo-classicism and humanism, the mere imitation or appropriation of the Greeks will never bring the German spirit to its own sense of destiny. And yet it is only through an original encounter with the Greeks that “the free use of one’s own” becomes possible. If “what is proper to one’s own must be learned as well as the foreign”, then it is the grounding unity of “one’s own” and “the foreign” that must be enquired into. “Es klingt paradox”, Hölderlin exclaims, but it is through this apparent paradox that Hölderlin’s translations of Greek texts became possible.
Hölderlin’s historical legacy could be characterised by two polarising descriptions of the poet articulated barely 50 years apart. In 1861, Friedrich Nietzsche, only 17 years of age, composed for a school project at Schulpforta a letter, addressed “an meinen Freund”, for whom the young philologist recommended his “Lieblingsdichter”, an obscure poet by the name of Friedrich Hölderlin. Herr Koberstein, his teacher, awarded the ‘letter’ a B- and encouraged Nietzsche to study a “healthier” and “more German” (deutscheren) poet. By contrast, in a lecture delivered in München in 1915, Norbert von Hellingrath called Hölderlin “den deutschesten Dichter”, the most German poet. It was von Hellingrath who, between 1912 and 1914, revived the work of Hölderlin through the compilation of his Sämtliche Werke. Until then, Hölderlin remained an entirely marginal figure.
The assessment of Herr Koberstein was not without precedent. Following the release of Hölderlin’s translation of Sophocles’ Antigone in 1804, Heinrich Voß Jr (the son of the great translator of Homer) wrote a letter to a friend asking, "what do you say to Hölderlin's Sophocles? Is the man mad or is he just pretending? Is his Sophocles a hidden satire on bad translators? The other evening when I was sitting with Schiller at Goethe's, both of them were quite amused with it. Read the fourth Chorus of Antigone - you should have seen Schiller laughing…". In the same year, Schelling wrote in a letter to Hegel that the poverty of Hölderlin’s translation of Sophocles’ Antigone must be attributed to “his degenerative mental state” (GSA 7.2: 296). Such was Hölderlin’s deteriorating health that barely two years later he would be consigned to a tower in Tübingen composing fragmentary poems until his death in 1843.
The revival of Hölderlin through von Hellingrath had profound consequences for post-war Germany in the 1920s, when Hölderlin began to influence new trends in German thought. In 1923, Walter Benjamin published his Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers, wherein the translations of poets such as Hölderlin and Stefan George are contrasted against the translations of the great philologists, such as Voß and Schlegel. For Benjamin, a distinction must be upheld between traditional translators and poets in the act of translation, wherein for the former “the echo of the original (das Echo des Originals) is awakened” but for the poet – and Benjamin means precisely Hölderlin here – the task is to find the path of access to the ground of language itself, which Benjamin takes to be “pure language” (die reine Sprache). In this way, “true translation” (die wahre Übersetzung) allows pure language “as if amplified by its own medium, to fall all the more fully on the original” (GS 4: 9-21). Martin Heidegger, like Benjamin, was deeply influenced by Hölderlin’s approach to language in the 1930s, while Georg Lukács, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Theodor Adorno, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault were also strongly inspired by the poet.
Despite the misappropriation and manipulation of Hölderlin’s poetry by the Nazis, his legacy after the Second World War remained relatively untarnished and by the end of the 20th Century his name had become entrenched in the fields of comparative literature, textual criticism, and literary theory. That being said, the question of Hölderlin’s Hellenism – the possibility of the ground of his engagement with the Greeks – remains obscure. This conference addresses the question of Hölderlin’s Hellenism in three fundamental and connected ways:
1) What is the grounding unity of antiquity and modernity that Hölderlin identifies in the opposition between “one’s own” and “the foreign” that makes the “free use of one’s own” possible? How did Hölderlin bring this unity to bear in his interpretations and translations of the Greeks?
2) What does the reception of Hölderlin in terms of the ridicule he faced by his contemporaries and his renaissance in the 20th Century reveal about Hölderlin’s own historical understanding of destiny? In the same way, to what extent did the historical trajectory of Germany after Hölderlin affirm his assessment of modernity?
3) How do Hölderlin’s interpretations and translations of Greek texts allow us to attend to the question of the unity of antiquity and modernity in the 21st Century?
If you are interested in presenting a paper at the conference that addresses any of the above questions, please send an abstract (350-500 words) to aaron.turner@knappfoundation.ac.uk no later than Friday December 13th. Notifications will be sent out shortly after, Speakers will be allocated a one hour slot and so papers are expected to last between 35 and 45 minutes, allowing 15-25 minutes discussion.
This conference is supported by the Knapp Foundation.
Call: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;2437742b.ex
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May 2025
#CALL VISITING RESEARCHERS - ERC AGRELITA PROJECT "THE RECEPTION OF ANCIENT GREECE IN PRE-MODERN FRENCH LITERATURE AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF MANUSCRIPTS AND PRINTED BOOKS (1320-1550): HOW INVENTED MEMORIES SHAPED THE IDENTITY OF EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES"
University of Caen Normandy, France: between May-early July 2025
The ERC Advanced Grant AGRELITA Project n° 101018777, “The reception of ancient Greece in pre-modern French literature and illustrations of manuscripts and printed books (1320-1550): how invented memories shaped the identity of European communities”, directed by Prof. Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas (Principal Investigator), opens guest researchers residences.
This call for applications is open to anyone, of French or foreign nationality, who holds a PhD in literature, art history, or history, whose work focuses on the history of books, cultural and political history, visual studies, or memory studies, wherein the competence and project are deemed to be complementary to the ones of the AGRELITA team.
These residencies indeed aim to open the reflections carried out by the team, to enhance its scientific activity through interactions with other scholars and other universities. The guest researchers will have the exceptional opportunity to contribute to a major project, to work with a dynamic team that conducts a wide range of activities at the University of Caen Normandie and within the research laboratory CRAHAM where many Antiquity, Medieval and Renaissance times specialists work, as well as to publish in a prestigious setting.
The AGRELITA project is based at the University of Caen Normandie (https://www.unicaen.fr/). Caen is a city in the heart of Normandy, located only 2 hours from Paris by train. Residing in this city offers the chance to discover the rich medieval heritage of Normandy and to carry out research in nearby libraries, museums, and archives, with very rich collections (Caen, Bayeux, Avranches, Rouen…).
The ERC Advanced Grant AGRELITA Project
Until now the reception history of ancient Greece in pre-modern Western Europe has focused almost exclusively on the transmission of Greek texts. Yet well before the revival of Greek teaching, numerous vernacular works, often illustrated, contained elaborate representations of ancient Greece. AGRELITA studies a large corpus of French language literary works (historical, fictional, poetic, didactic ones) produced from 1320 to the 1550s in France and Europe, before the first direct translations from Greek to French, as well as the images of their manuscripts and printed books. These works and their illustrations – exploring texts/images interactions as well as the distinctive impact they have – show representations of ancient Greece we can analyze from a perspective that has never been explored until now: how a new cultural memory was elaborated. AGRELITA thus examines this corpus linked with its political, social, and cultural context, but also with the literary and illustrated works of nearby countries from Europe. Situated at the crossroads of literary studies, book history and art history, visual studies, cultural and political history, and memory studies, AGRELITA’s ambition is to explore how the role played by ancient Greece was reassessed in the processes of shaping the identity of European communities. The project also aims to contribute to a general reflection on the formation of memories, heritages, and identities.
Missions of visiting researchers
The ERC Advanced Grant AGRELITA Project is funded for six years (2021-2027) and has budgetary support available in order to invite researchers at the University of Caen Normandie (France), in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (https://ufr-hss.unicaen.fr/), and attached to the CRAHAM laboratory (Centre Michel-de-Boüard, Research Centre of Ancient and Medieval Archaeological and Historical / CRAHAM – UMR 6273, https://craham.unicaen.fr/), housed in the Campus 1, right in the city centre of Caen, very close to the castle of Caen.
Stays at the University of Caen Normandie may be 4 to 6 weeks length, and during the year 2025 may take place in May/June/early July.
Visiting researchers will work with the Principal Investigator and the AGRELITA team.
Visiting researchers undertake to produce research for the project during their stays in Caen as follows:
* They will write one paper (which must not exceed 50 000 characters, including spaces) published in one of the volumes edited by ERC AGRELITA (Brepols ed.), or in one of the team’s files published in an academic journal;
* They commit to present the topic of the paper or another topic dealing with AGRELITA’s research during a seminar session organized by the team;
* They will contribute to the Hypotheses academic blog.
In 2025, the AGRELITA project will focus on these lines of research:
* “The new lives of Greek divinities (14th-16th centuries)”, “Images of Nature and beings in the reception of Greek myths (14th-16th centuries)”, “The political exploitations of Greek Antiquity (14th-16th centuries)”;
* A broader line of research: “Uses and exploitations of Antiquity memories, from the beginning of our era until the 21th century”.
Conditions for defraying mission expenses
Visiting researchers will receive, in the form of mission expenses, a maximum fixed amount of 2000 euros per month, based on all necessary receipts of the costs of stay in Caen (accommodation, transport in the Normandy region, and meal costs). A further maximum fixed amount is added to cover their travel expenses from their place of residence to Caen (round trip):
Travel from a European country (based on proof of expenses): 400 €
Travel from a country outside Europe (based on proof of expenses): 1200 €
The expenses will be paid following the mission. AGRELITA will not arrange visas.
The MRSH (Maison de la Recherche en sciences humaines, Research House of Human Sciences), located on the Campus 1 of the University of Caen Normandie, offers the rental of two studios for visiting researchers (https://mrsh.unicaen.fr/). Visiting researchers can request this and the AGRELITA team will assist them to complete the reservation, subject to availability.
How to apply
The application file must include the two following documents:
A completed and signed application form, including the dates of the stay (during the period specified above);
A scientific project (2 pages) the candidate will be working on during his stay, dealing with the AGRELITA team’s research, from which the researcher intends to write the required article, due at the end of the stay. The provisional title of the paper is required.
Please send your application in a PDF document to the following addresses: catherine.gaullier-bougassas@unicaen.fr and laure.cebe@unicaen.fr
Application deadline: by February 15th, 2025.
Call (French and English versions) with link to application form: https://agrelita.hypotheses.org/5997
[ICMS PANEL] [ONLINE] GLOBAL OVIDS
International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS)
Hybrid/Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI: May 8-10, 2025
The Societas Ovidiana welcomes proposals for a virtual panel to be held at the International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS) on May 8-10, 2025.
Given the global turn in medieval studies, it is important to reconsider the place of ancient authors beyond the sphere of European reception. This panel invites global perspectives on the medieval reception of Ovid.
Proposals might consider, but are not limited to the topics of:
* Teaching the medieval Ovid across the globe
* Theoretical, methodological, or cultural assessments
* Exile
* Migration
* Translation and language
* (De-)colonisation
* Digitisation and global mapping of Ovidʼs myths, texts, and manuscripts
* Reception of the medieval Ovid beyond Eurocentric approaches
Proposals should be submitted by September 15, 2024 at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call.
If you have any questions, please contact William Little (little.447@osu.edu) and Rebecca Menmuir (rebecca.menmuir@lincoln.ox.ac.uk).
Call: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/07/25/global-ovids-icms-2025
(CFP closed September 15, 2024)
[ICMS PANEL] RE-READING, RE-WRITING, AND RE-PLAYING: VIDEO GAME ADAPTATIONS OF CLASSICAL AND MEDIEVAL MYTHOLOGIES
International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS)
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI: May 8-10, 2025
A Call for Papers has been announced for a session titled “Re-Reading, Re-Writing, and Re-Playing: Video Game Adaptations of Classical and Medieval Mythologies,” at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, to be held May 8-10, 2025 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The sponsoring organization is The Center for Premodern Studies at the University of Minnesota.
The global video game market is set to be an almost $200 billion industry in 2024, and recent years have seen increasing popularity of games adapting classical and medieval mythologies. Exploring how these mythologies are reinterpreted and adapted into interactive gaming narratives such as God of War, Hades, Nioh, and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, amongst many others, can offer insights into contemporary engagement with classical and medieval sources, shed light on the ways in which these mythologies continue to resonate, and allow us to better understand how video games shape current perceptions and misconceptions of the past.
The organizers encourage contributions that employ interdisciplinary methodologies, drawing from fields such as literary studies, cultural studies, classical reception studies, religion and folklore studies, and game studies. Submissions may include analyses of specific games or game franchises, examinations of narrative and ludic elements, consideration of player reception, or any explorations of the intersections between classical/medieval mythologies and contemporary gaming culture.
Contact Karen Soto, soto0031@umn.edu, with any questions.
Please submit proposals to the following link by September 15, 2024: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2025/paper/papers/index.cgi?sessionid=6137
Call: https://antiquityinmediastudies.wordpress.com/2024/09/05/cfp-re-reading-re-writing-and-re-playing-video-game-adaptations-of-classical-and-medieval-mythologies-proposals-due-sept-15-2024/
(CFP closed September 15, 2024)
#CFP [HYBRID] CROSSING CULTURES: ENCOUNTERS, CLASHES AND THEIR RECEPTION IN ANTIQUITY
AMPRAH - Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in Ancient History
Hybrid/Università del Molise, Campobasso, Italy: May 15-16, 2025
The study of cultural encounters between individuals, people and social groups has played a key role in structuring contemporary analyses of social relations in Antiquity. By providing prime examples of points of contact between cultures, the enucleation of positive and opposing encounters has shed light on the dynamics of self-and-other definitions, enabling a deeper understanding of the role of alterity in structuring social relations. From Greco-Roman dialectical definitions of barbarity vs civilization to scriptural strategies of distinction, cross-cultural encounters provide a long-lasting framework to our understanding of the Ancient World and its reception in later periods.
The analysis of cultural encounters in their complexity forces us to develop an open approach towards a wide range of sources from material evidence to literary sources. Blending archaeology, numismatics, epigraphy and literature as points of departure for scholarly investigations, we aim to get beyond the face-value reading of cultural encounters in the Ancient World, inscribing them in a process of long durée. Indeed, the study of later reception and re-interpretation of encounters is a crucial element in analysing the evolutions of the ideological framework in which alterities were encoded and how strategies of distinction/identification were projected on these historical processes.
Among the many possible declinations of encounters in Antiquity, we invite abstracts focusing on the cultural, ideological, social, prosopographical, geographical and narratological dimensions over the usual political and institutional spheres. The aim is to build a stimulating venue for different approaches to encounters in the Ancient World, in order to read under fresh light vexed questions such as the centre-periphery debate, the eminently-military nature of frontiers or the role played by religions in shaping cultural borders and perceptions.
The 2025 edition of the Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in Ancient History will take place in Campobasso (Italy) at the Università del Molise from the 15th to the 16th of May. The conference will have a hybrid format. The call is directed especially to early PhDs and first-years post-docs. We accept papers in English, Italian, Spanish and French.
To submit a paper, please send an abstract up to 250 words to ampahconference@gmail.com by December 16th, stating your name, University, area of research and your attendance preference (online or in person). You will be notified with the committee’s decision by January 31st.
Call: https://ampahconference.wixsite.com/annual-meeting-of-po/programme
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June 2025
[PANEL] SELF & OTHER IN METAL'S (RE)CONSTRUCTIONS OF PREMODERNITY
Organized panel for the 7th biennial research conference of the International Society for Metal Music Studies (ISMMS)
Seville, Spain: June 3-6, 2025
Organizer: Jeremy Swist (Grand Valley State University)
Within the past decade, Metal Studies has devoted increasing attention to the fact that hundreds of Metal bands on every inhabited continent have collectively built a catalog of thousands of songs—including scores of concepts albums—that variously engage with the history, mythology, literature, and art of premodern and precolonial cultures. Multiple aspects of this phenomenon, especially pertaining to civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean and medieval Europe, have been examined in journal articles, edited volumes, conference presentations, and public scholarship. In drawing upon primary and secondary sources, as well as influences and inspirations from popular culture, Metal bands are often seen as reconstructing premodern worlds to function as alternatives to modernity, and as places of fantasy and escape into the mysterious and exotic. This panel, however, will consider how the (re)construction of identities forms bridges between the contemporary world and the mythical or premodern past in Metal music. The delineation of one’s own identity (Self) in association with a figure, group, and/or aesthetic from the premodern past is often in contradistinction to figures or groups that hold contrary characteristics and values (Other). Such identity constructions frequently resonate with contemporary social and political issues, and the artists’ approach to such issues from both ends of the political spectrum.
Papers will address, or will be relevant in scope to, the following questions:
* How do Metal artists project constructions of identity into the premodern past?
* How are Self and Other constructed in reference to premodernity in music, lyrics, artwork, dress, music videos, promotional photography, performance, and/or merchandise?
* How are sociopolitical contexts and concerns reflected in the constructions of Self and Other that Metal artists situate in premodernity?
* What role does Orientalism play in Metal’s constructions of premodernity? How do Metal artists with non-Western backgrounds appropriate and re-/de-construct the premodern West?
* What role does (de)colonialism play in Metal’s constructions of premodernity and/or (pre-)colonization?
* How do Metal artists reconstruct premodernity in order to build bridges between identities?
Please direct any inquiries, and submit abstracts of no more than 600 words, in English or Spanish, to swistj@gvsu.edu by 21 September 2024.
For more information on the ISMMS conference, visit www.ismmsconferencespain.org
Call: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gRFpnZjGYshaiNnGDpCdWIqAVEF7rJSDRb6FhxUSDqI/edit
(CFP closed September 21, 2024)
#CFP THE RECEPTION OF GREEK MYTHS ABOUT NATURE AND THE LIVING WORLD: TEXTS AND IMAGES (14TH-16TH CENTURIES)
University of Caen Normandy, France: June 5-6, 2025
On June 5th and 6th, 2025, the AGRELITA project is organizing an international conference at the University of Caen Normandy entitled “The reception of Greek myths about nature and the living world: Texts and images (14th-16th centuries)”.
The ambition of this international conference is to bring together researchers from a wide range of backgrounds to examine the reception of Greek myths relating to nature and the living world in manuscripts and printed books produced between 1300 and the 1550s. The aim is to investigate the fortune, reinterpretations and new uses of myths that give pride of place to the “natural world” in its broadest sense. Which of them have been reformulated and put into images in Europe between the 14th and 16th centuries? What are their intermediaries and filters? In what kinds of text and image are such reinterpretations to be found? What are their meanings and purposes? From ancient Greece to medieval and Renaissance Europe, how depictions of nature and the living world, of the relationships between the human and the non-human, of divine and nature, offered by these myths, were transmitted and reinterpreted?
Much studied nowadays, the notions of “nature” and “living world” have always been very hard to define, especially as their meanings evolve from one era to the next[1]. This conference does not deal directly with the general question of conceptions/perceptions of nature in antiquity and the pre-modern world, nor with the overall problem of the evolution of the notion of “nature” from antiquity to the 14th-16th centuries. Its topic is the reception of many types of mythical narratives, from Greek and then Roman literature, that offer to nature and the living world a prominent role.
In ancient Greece, “nature” (phusis) was part of a dynamic vision of the world that encompassed terrestrial, celestial and infernal beings. A rich matter of speculation, nature was understood, by example, as a demiurgic and supreme power inextricably linked to divine power. Ancient gods embodied and governed the natural world. Their coming into being was sometimes allowed by the elements: the primordial waters, sown with the blood of the cut sex of Ouranos (Heaven), gave birth to Aphrodite. Likewise, nature’s places –forests, islands, seas, deserts, but also gardens, fields and springs– were populated by both human and divine or fabulous beings who were part of its reign. Such beings interacted with all categories of the living world, also with “inanimate” things: plant and animal species, minerals, celestial bodies and constellations, seasons, mountains and geological formations. Yet the boundaries between these categories remain fragile. The image of an ordered, hierarchical cosmos, in which humankind holds a predominant place, was based on transformations, on ebbs and flows, on golden ages and decadences[2].
Writers and artists of the late Middle Ages and the 16th century often referred to such myths as “fables of the poets”. They were fascinated by these stories, by the literal, historical, as well as physical and allegorical meanings they often attributed to them. By appropriating nature and the living world associated with such myths, to what extent were they renewing them?
The study of reception involves investigating the more or less obvious and significant ways Greek myths, transmitted to Europe, are transformed in the 14th-16th centuries. The new literary and visual forms they take should bring up perspectives in historical, literary, philosophical and scientific domains. Our aim is indeed to explore what myths relating to nature and the living world reveal about the interests and concerns of pre-modern readers. To give an idea, still schematic, of the great variety of texts where these mythical narratives (re)appear, we might mention translations of Latin works (and, at the end of the considered period, of Greek works), sometimes with Latin mediation, mythographic works, chronicles, encyclopedias, moral treatises and other didactic works, scientific treatises, not to mention novels and poetic texts, written in Latin, Greek and vernacular languages. These manuscripts and printed books are often decorated. When textual and visual representations of myths are combined, images are never illustrations of a text, rather its extension. Whether derived from pre-existing models or not, miniatures and vignettes produce meaning, enriches the text, and reinforce the artist’s or his workshop role as inventor of new forms and narrative “montage”.
Then, from the 14th to the mid-16th century, what remains of the mythical thinking about nature and the living world? How did it “survive”? As people’s mentalities in this time were mostly shaped by a Christian way of thinking the natural world, what place is given to such myths in books and book decoration? If, in the Middle Ages, nature and all it contains were thought of within the Christian doctrine –in which “Nature” is an extension of God’s work– Greek myths were also the subject of reinterpretations that, if not reconcile, at least attenuate the divergences between Christian and pagan conceptions. Our purpose is to understand how these stories make sense in Christian societies of pre-modern Europe, and how representations of nature and the living world conveyed by Greek myths are updated and sometimes modified.
Moreover, in mythical thought, technological invention to appropriate, organize, and dominate nature aims as much to overcome its laws as to discover its “secrets”. Pierre Hadot emphasized not dualism but complementarity between a Promethean attitude (of conquest and domination of nature) and an Orphic attitude, which involves a harmonious relationship between humankind and the environment[3]. But what about this complementarity in the reception of Greek myths through texts and images? In historical reality, between the 14th and 16th centuries, the submission of nature transformed into resources by European human communities does not yet correspond to a clear separation between nature and society. Peoples don’t see themselves as being outside nature. The division between nature and culture, defined by Philippe Descola as part of the “naturalist ontology”[4], seems to emerge but is not yet what it will be in later centuries. What do authors and artists retain of the human-nature interactions from Greek myths?
We encourage proposals from a variety of research fields and methodological approaches –history, medieval and modern literature, book history, art history, philosophy, history of science or environmental humanities. Without excluding other perspectives, communications would be focused on:
* Transmissions and rewritings: the literary or scientific contexts in which myths find a new place, its narrative form, the articulation of myth with other sources and materials, pre-modern visual compositions of Greek myths of nature.
* Inside the reception of mythical narratives, evolution of the representations of “Nature” –a supernatural power, polysemic allegory and figure of creation– and of Greek deities who invest or personify different aspects of nature.
* Reception of Greek cosmogonic myths and, outside the context of the world origins, reception of myths about births: tales of childbirth, germination, eruption, spurting, fall, etc.; reception of myths that explain natural phenomena.
* Metamorphosis, a matter for the gods: stories of animal, vegetable, mineral or other metamorphosis, as a mode of expression of deities.
* Reception of myths relating to more or less violent interactions between humans and nature: stories of the exploitation of nature as a resource, of its anthropization or domination; stories depicting mankind’s ability to imitate nature, to defy prohibitions or “natural” laws (healing, resuscitation, immortalization, giving life, magical enchantment); on the contrary, the fragility of men facing natural cataclysms.
* Reception of myths of union and concord between beings, human and non-human, animate and inanimate things: images of unity of different components of the living world; heroes and heroines, deities and hybrid beings who subdue the most primal forces of nature, pacify it, or inspire a harmonious vision of the world; representations of idyllic spaces that give rise to artistic and aesthetic topoi: imaginary or real description of natural loci, variety and significance of the landscape, etc.
* New lives of mythical hybrids and “fabulous” beings depicted in their imagined environments, reception of the mythical “wonders” of nature.
* Creation of new myths about nature and the living world, inspired by Greek myths.
Submission guidelines
To submit your proposal, please send the title and a summary in French or English (maximum 200-300 characters), along with a brief CV, by January 30th, 2025 at the following addresses:
catherine.gaullier-bougassas@unicaen.fr
laure.cebe@unicaen.fr
Notification of acceptance: by early March 2025.
The papers will be published by Brepols publishers, in the “Research on Antiquity Receptions” series (https://www.brepols.net/series/RRA).
Travel and accommodation costs will be covered according to the terms of the University of Caen Normandy.
Organization
Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas, Professor of Medieval French Language and Literature, ERC Agrelita (Principal Investigator), Craham (UMR 6273), University of Caen Normandy
Angèle Tence, Post-doctoral researcher in Art History, ERC Agrelita, Craham (UMR 6273), University of Caen Normandy
Laure Cébe, Project Manager, ERC Agrelita, Craham (UMR 6273), University of Caen Normandy
[1] Pierre Hadot, Le Voile d’Isis: Essai sur l’Histoire de l’Idée de Nature, Paris, Gallimard, 2004 ; Les Confins Incertains de la Nature (XIIe-XVIe siècles), dir. Roberto Poma, Maria Sorokina, Nicolas Weill-Parot, Paris, Vrin, 2021.
[2] Michel Jeanneret, Perpetuum Mobile: Métamorphoses des Corps et des Œuvres de Vinci à Montaigne, Genève, Droz, 2016 (first ed. 1997).
[3] Pierre Hadot, Le Voile d’Isis, op. cit.
[4] Philippe Descola, Par-delà Nature et Culture, Paris, Gallimard, 2005; id., Les Formes du Visible: Une Anthropologie de la Figuration, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 2021.
Call: https://agrelita.hypotheses.org/6216
#CFP ISRAEL SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF CLASSICAL STUDIES - 53RD ANNUAL CONFERENCE
Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel: June 11-12, 2025
The official languages of the conference are Hebrew and English.
In these times of anxiety, we hope that our CfP will be received as a call for peace, mutual respect, pursuit of knowledge, and academic cooperation.
Our keynote speaker this year will be Prof. Walter Ameling (University of Köln).
We welcome papers on a wide range of classical subjects, including, but not limited to, history, philology, philosophy, literature, papyrology, classical reception and archaeology of Greece, Rome and the neighbouring lands. The time limit for each presentation is 20 minutes.
The conference fee is $50. Accommodation at reduced prices will be available at local hotels. Registration forms with a list of prices will be sent to participants in due course.
Proposals, abstracts and other correspondence may be emailed to Dr. Merav Haklai, Secretary of the ISPCS, at haklaime@bgu.ac.il.
All proposals should consist of a one-page abstract (about 250-300 words). Proposals in Hebrew should also be accompanied by a one-page abstract in English to appear in the conference brochure.
All proposals are to reach the Secretary by 6.1.2025. Decisions will be made after the Organizing Committee has duly considered all the proposals. If a decision is required prior to late January, please indicate this in your letter and we will try to accommodate your needs.
Website: https://www.israel-classics.org/conferences-en/
#CFP NEW PERSPECTIVES ON SUETONIUS
Paris Nanterre University, France: June 17-18, 2025
In spite of the developments in Suetonian studies since W. Steidle’s ‘rehabilitation’ of Suetonius in 1951, the last international conference on this author was held in 2008 (‟Suetonius the biographer” in Manchester). Yet new perspectives on his works have been explored in the meantime, about his political thought, the literary dimension of his biographies, his relation to other authors...
Therefore the time has come for a new international conference in order to reassess and discuss such progress. Organized by Pauline Duchêne (Paris Nanterre University), Phoebe Garrett (Australian National University) and Clémence Pelletier (Paris Sorbonne University-Grenoble Alps University), it will take place at Paris Nanterre University on 17-18 June 2025, in person and online.
Call for papers
Scholars are invited to propose 20-minute papers on Suetonius. The following topics are suggested, though other proposals are also welcome: Suetonius’ political thought; narrative effects and constructions; Suetonius and the biographical/historiographical genre; the fragments of Suetonius’ lost works; Suetonius and his predecessors/successors; problems of translation/edition/commentary of Suetonius’ works.
Abstracts should be 150–300 words long, accompanied by 2 or 3 bibliographical references, and indicate whether you will participate in person or online (in which case, please also specify your time zone). About 100 words of biographical information about the speaker, with details about why they are interested in Suetonius, should also be included. Submissions should be sent by email to suetoniusconference2025@gmail.com by 15 November 2024. The decision of the abstract committee will be made known in December 2024.
All papers shall be given in English, so as to facilitate exchanges between the participants, but, for the proceedings, Italian, German, French and Spanish may also be accepted.
Call: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;499b89e3.ex
ANCIENT SEXUALITY REVISITED
King’s College London: June 26-28, 2025
Organised by Jean-Christophe Courtil (Toulouse/Institut Universitaire de France) and Martin Dinter (KCL)
Great battles have been fought in the field of Ancient Sexuality in the past. While not all scores may have been settled, research has moved beyond some debates which have long dominated the field. Ancient Sexuality Revisited invites abstracts of up to 300 words which reflect the recent shift in interest towards engagement with ancient law, ancient science and ancient medicine. We encourage readings which showcase how ancient sexuality permeates Greek and Roman literature and culture and highlight the ramifications of ancient law, science and medicine for the conceptualisation of ancient sexuality.
Invited speakers include:
Sandra Boehringer (Strasbourg)
Jean-Christophe Courtil (Toulouse/Institut Universitaire de France)
Gabriel Alexandre Fernandes Da Silva (Lisbon)
Antoine Pietrobelli (Besancon)
Confirmed respondents include:
Anthony Corbeill (Virginia)
Niall Slater (Emory)
Rebecca Langlands (Exeter)
Daniel Orrells (KCL)
Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to martin.dinter@kcl.ac.uk and jean-christophe.courtil@univ-tlse2.fr by 1st September 2024. We will review the abstracts before 15th Sept. 2024. Presentations should last 30min followed by a 10min discussion.
The event will be co-hosted by KCL’s Classics Department, Centre of Medical Humanities, Centre of Late Antique Studies and Queer at King's and is generously supported by the Institut Universitaire de France. Accommodation will be provided for all speakers as well as contributions to travel costs for early career researchers. We intend to publish select papers.
Call: https://classicalassociation.org/events/call-for-papers-ancient-sexuality-revisited-kings-college-london/
(CFP closed September 1, 2024)
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July 2025
CLASSICS AND/IN AFRICA
King’s College London: July 3-4, 2025
The research group Classics at the Crossroads: Partnership, Mobility, and Exchange Between Ghana, Nigeria, and Canada is pleased to announce the call for papers for a conference on Classics and/in Africa at King’s College London, July 3-4, 2025. This conference has two aims: to explore classical antiquity’s presence in and intersections with Africa, ancient and modern, and to provide a venue for current research in the field of Classics pursued by scholars in African countries.
Recent scholarship in Classics has redirected the exclusive focus on ancient Greece and Rome to study of the broader ancient Mediterranean as a space of diversity and connectivity, and at the same time, traced the transmission of classical antiquity in cultures and regions beyond the West. Such work includes the study of ancient African cultures, representations of Africa by Greco-Roman authors, and African receptions of the Classics. At the same time, classicists working in African countries may or may not choose to thematize an African connection to the Classics. This conference is intended to facilitate a flexible and open-ended dialogue, where Africa is at once the focus of research and the site of current disciplinary praxis—it both invites contributions on Classics and Africa and on lines of research currently pursued in Africa. Scholars at all career stages from around the world are invited to submit abstracts. Topics may include but are not limited to:
· Classical representations of Africa
· Africa in the ancient Mediterranean
· African antiquity
· Comparative antiquities
· African receptions of the Classics, including theatrical adaptations
· The global discipline of Classics
· Post-colonial classical receptions
· Research in any sub-field of Classics, including ancient Philosophy, pursued by scholars working in African countries
Confirmed keynote speaker: Nigerian playwright Femi Osofisan will offer a reading from his classical adaptation Medaayé with introductory remarks.
Papers will be 20 minutes in length. Abstracts of no more than 400 words should be submitted to Luke Roman (romanl@mun.ca) by November 8. We plan to send notifications of acceptance by January 2025.
Organizing Committee: Hasskei Majeed (U. Ghana, Legon); Justine McConnell (KCL); Olakunbi Olasope (U. Ibadan, Nigeria); Daniel Orrells (KCL); Luke Roman (Memorial University, Canada)
Classics at the Crossroads: Partnership, Mobility, and Exchange Between Ghana, Nigeria, and Canada, funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada Partnership Development Grant (Co-directors: Olakunbi Olasope, Hasskei Majeed, and Luke Roman)
Call: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;9db843f6.ex
FIEC 2025: 17TH CONGRESS OF THE FÉDÉRATION INTERNATIONALE DES ASSOCIATIONS D’ÉTUDES CLASSIQUES
University of Wrocław, Poland: July 7-11, 2025
17th Congress of the Fédération internationale des associations d’études classiques, which will be hosted by the Polish Philological Association (PTF – Polskie Towarzystwo Filologiczne, Societas Philologa Polonorum) at the Institute of Classical, Mediterranean and Oriental Studies, University of Wrocław, Poland, from 7th to 11th July 2025.
We cordially invite proposals for panels and posters, as we strive to encompass a wide range of themes that reflect the richness and diversity of classical studies, including Greek and Latin literatures of all periods, linguistics, ancient history, philosophy and religion, art and archaeology, Neo-Latin and Byzantine studies, along with the reception of classical traditions. Moreover, we encourage the submission of scholarly contributions that delve into diverse themes pertaining to the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean basin, the Near East, and Egypt.
Panel sessions, each lasting 90 minutes, will consist of three short papers centred around a common theme. Each paper should not exceed 20 minutes, followed by a 10-minute discussion. We encourage panel proposals to provide a session title, the names and affiliations of all speakers, and abstracts for each paper and the panel as a whole. Abstracts should be no more than 200 words. Kindly note that we are not accepting proposals for individual papers at this time. Furthermore, we are offering the option of presenting six papers in double panels, and interested parties should contact the organizers directly to explore this possibility.
Additionally, we welcome proposals for posters, which offer an excellent opportunity for individuals with projects that may not fit within panels. Poster proposals should include a 150-word description of the topic.
All proposals will undergo a peer-review process, with the Programme Committee aiming to finalize selections by October 2024.
The registration fee for participants is EUR 270, with a reduced rate of EUR 170 for students and PhD candidates. This fee includes conference materials, as well as lunch and coffee breaks. The banquet fee will be collected separately for those interested in attending this special event.
To submit a panel/poster proposal, please refer to our website: http://fiec2025.ptf.edu.pl/ (under the “Call for Panels” tab) and use the Submission Form.
The deadline for submissions is 31st May 2024.
For any further inquiries, questions, or clarifications, please do not hesitate to contact us at the email address: fiec2025@ptf.edu.pl.
You can also follow us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/fiec2025) and Twitter (@fiec2025).
Call: http://fiec2025.ptf.edu.pl/
(CFP closed May 31, 2024)
#CFP [HYBRID] CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION AND THE CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION OF SCOTLAND (#CA2025)
Hybrid/University of St Andrews, Scotland: July 11-13, 2025
We are very pleased to announce initial details, including the Call for Contributions for the 2025 conference of the Classical Association and the Classical Association of Scotland, to be held at St Andrews 11th-13th July next year. Please follow this link Classical Association Conference 2025: https://ca2025.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/.
Call for Contributions: Deadline 5pm, 30 November 2024
Conference themes
We hope to appeal to a wide audience across the conference and we welcome proposals on all topics across classical literature and philosophy, history, art, archaeology, epigraphy and numismatics, linguistics, pedagogy and reception of the classical tradition. We aim to foster a friendly and inclusive environment, in the hope that panels will juxtapose speakers from different backgrounds, so that postgraduates, academics, teachers and non-specialists can all share ideas, challenges, and enthusiasms. If you would like to target your material specifically at school-age or undergraduate students, please make this clear in your proposal. We have identified the following themes as ones we would particularly like to promote, but we welcome other suggestions too:
* Classical reception
* Late Antiquity
* Classics and the environment
* Working Class Classics
* The challenge of interdisciplinarity
* Classics and the heritage sector
* Ancient animals
* Classical pedagogies
* Scottish classics
Website: https://ca2025.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/
[PANELS] IANLS
2025 International Association for Neo-Latin Studies Congress
Aix-en-Provence, France: July 14-20, 2025
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND NEO-LATIN STUDIES
Organizer: Committee for Digital Resources of the IANLS
Call: https://ianls.com/cfp-special-sessions/ / pdf: https://ianls.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Call-for-papers-Aix_Digital-Committee.pdf
Abstract deadline: April 15, 2024
TEACHING NEO-LATIN IN HIGH SCHOOLS AND ON UNIVERSITIES. CHALLENGES, IDEAS, RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
Organizer: IANLS Committee for Teaching of Neo-Latin
Call: https://ianls.com/cfp-special-sessions/
Abstract deadline: April 15, 2024
#CFP 16TH CELTIC CONFERENCE IN CLASSICS
University of Coimbra, Portugal: July 15-18, 2025
The 16th Celtic Conference in Classics will be hosted by the Centre for Classical and Humanistic Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Coimbra, from 15-18 July, 2025. It will be an in-person event.
We would like to draw your attention to the first stage of preparation for one of the world's most popular and diverse scientific meetings in the field of Classical Studies: the Call for Panels (22/07/2024 - 31/10/2024).
For detailed information on how to organise a panel within the framework of the CCC, please see the specific information: https://ucpages.uc.pt/cech/16-ccc/calls/call-for-panels/
For those who have not yet taken part in either of the two editions of the CCC organised by us, we invite you to immerse yourself in this experience by watching the CCC 2023 statistics video and the event’s gallery [see website link below].
The schedule for the next stages of preparation for the 16th CCC has already been announced:
- Deadline for call for panels: 31/10/2024
- Announcement of accepted pannels: 15/11/2024
- Registration: 15/11/2024 - 15/05/2025
- Call for papers: 20/11/2024 - 20/02/2025
- Final programme of the panels: 15/03/2025
Website: https://www.uc.pt/cech/16-ccc/
#CFP THE MARY RENAULT PRIZE
Applications close: July annually.
The deadline for the 2025 Mary Renault Prize competition is: TBA (usually late July).
The Mary Renault Prize is a Classical Reception essay prize for school or college sixth form pupils, awarded by the Principal and Fellows of St Hugh’s College, and funded by the royalties from Mary Renault’s novels.
The Principal and Fellows of St Hugh’s College offer two or more Prizes, worth up to £300 each, for essays on classical reception or influence submitted by pupils who, at the closing date, have been in the Sixth Form of any school or college for a period of not more than two years. The prizes are in memory of the author Mary Renault, who is best known for her historical novels set in ancient Greece, recently reissued by Virago. Renault read English at St Hugh’s in the 1920s and subsequently taught herself ancient Greek. Her novels have inspired many thousands of readers to pursue the study of Classics at University level and beyond. At least one prize will be awarded a pupil who is not studying either Latin or Greek to A-level standard. The winning essay will be published on the College’s website. Teachers wishing to encourage their students to enter the competition can download, display and circulate the competition poster in the ‘related documents’ section.
Essays can be from any discipline and should be on a topic relating to the reception of classical antiquity – including Greek and Roman literature, history, political thought, philosophy, and material remains – in any period to the present; essays on reception within classical antiquity (for instance, receptions of literary or artistic works or of mythical or historical figures) are permitted. Your submission must be accompanied by a completed information cover sheet. Essays should be between two-thousand and four-thousand words and submitted by the candidate as a Microsoft Word document through the form below.
Website: https://www.st-hughs.ox.ac.uk/prospective-students/outreach-at-st-hughs/essay-competitions/the-mary-renault-prize/
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