Conferences
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April 2026
[ONLINE] BYZANTIUM AND BLOOMSBURY
Online: April 1, 2026, 10am-5pm (UK)
Organised by The Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies
This one-day online workshop will focus on the interest of members of the Bloomsbury Group in Byzantium, especially Byzantine art. Both Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant demonstrated an interest in Byzantine art, in terms of their aesthetic concerns and their subject matter; in 1912 Vanessa Bell painted a work entitled ‘Byzantine Lady’ and Grant painted a similar work entitled ‘The Countess’, and their Famous Women dinner service, commissioned by Kenneth Clark in 1932, featured the Empress Theodora as one of the twelve queens depicted on the set of fifty plates. But the interest of the Bloomsbury Group in Byzantine art was more fundamental than this. Byzantium had a vital place in Clive Bell’s Art (1914); Clive, art critic and husband of Vanessa, declared ‘since the Byzantine primitives set their mosaics at Ravenna no artist in Europe has created forms of greater significance unless it be Cézanne’. His enthusiasm was shared by Roger Fry, both artist and art critic (and collaborator with Vanessa and Duncan in the Omega Workshop, 1913-1919), who initially labelled Cézanne and Gauguin as ‘proto-Byzantines’ before adopting the term ‘post-Impressionists’. Boris Anrep, who worked in mosaic (e.g. at Westminster Cathedral), knew Fry (Anrep’s wife left him for Fry), Lytton Strachey, Maynard Keynes and Virginia Woolf.
In recent years there has been a growing interest in the work of Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry. In October 2024 there was an exhibition at the MK Gallery on Vanessa Bell, A World of Form and Colour, Charleston (Vanessa and Duncan’s Sussex home) has recently opened an exhibition devoted to Roger Fry (15 November 2025 – 15 March 2026), and in 2026 there will a major exhibition at Tate Britain on Bell and Grant (12 November 2026 – 11 April 2027). Thus this is an opportune moment to turn the spotlight on the interest of the Bloomsbury Group in Byzantium.
The workshop will feature a series of talks by scholars and will also include discussion sessions.
Contributors include:
Elizabeth Berkowitz, “A Modern-made Byzantium”?
Niamh Bhalla, More than a Method? Boris Anrep’s St Patrick Mosaic at Mullingar and the Dialectics of Universalism, Continuity and Irish Particularity
Rowena Loverance, “Degraded and conventional” or “awfully swell”? Roger Fry’s Use and Abuse of Byzantine Art
Christopher Reed, Byzantium in/as Modern Art; or, How to Avoid “A Nasty Wooly Realism about the Sheep”
Jane Williams, “A breath in the modern world.” Boris Anrep’s Mosaics: A Russian Contribution to the Enthusiasm for Byzantium
The workshop is open to members of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies (reduced fee), but also to non-members (full fee). The reduced fees also apply to members of the British School at Athens.
It is organised by Liz James, Rowena Loverance and Shaun Tougher. For expressions of interest/initial queries please contact Shaun Tougher (toughersf@cardiff.ac.uk).
For further information and registration: https://www.byzantium.ac.uk/byzantium-and-bloomsbury-a-one-day-online-workshop-1-april-2026-10am-5pm-organised-by-the-society-for-the-promotion-of-byzantine-studies/
[PANEL] ENVIRONMENTAL APPROACHES TO THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN LANDSCAPE, 1750-1920
Annual Conference of the Association for Art History
University of Cambridge, UK: April 8-10, 2026
For centuries, the territories of the eastern Mediterranean were home to the ethnically, religiously, and culturally diverse communities that comprised the Ottoman Empire. These territories simultaneously served as travel destinations for artists, antiquarians, and archaeologists seeking out the region’s ancient ruins, Biblical heritage, and ‘Orientalist’ exoticism. For insiders and outsiders to the region alike, the land of the eastern Mediterranean itself had long been a site of significance, whether as contested territory in trans-imperial and nationalist conflicts or as the source of valuable commodities, whether antiquities, agricultural products, or geological matter. While scholars have explored travellers’ desire to assimilate the region into sublime or picturesque frameworks, there has been less critical study of how the region’s landscapes have been represented visually, particularly in the case of vernacular image-making traditions. Art and visual culture witness the complex ways that human labour and territorialization shaped the eastern Mediterranean through a broad array of cultural and aesthetic tropes pertaining to land, landscape, and ‘nature’.
We invite papers that approach artistic representations of eastern Mediterranean landscapes through an environmental lens, focusing on the period 1750-1920. The panel welcomes papers on topics including but not limited to: micro-ecologies; animal-human relations; agricultural labour and resistance; agroecological continuity/transformation; infrastructural/industrial impacts on landscape (e.g. railways, urbanisation); intersections of extractive practices (e.g. mining, archaeology); state/private/common land ownership; territories contested by local/national/imperial actors; landscape and tourism; landscapes as sites for mythology and history; (dis)continuities between ancient and modern land use; rivers, coasts, deserts, mountains; and images which conform/subvert pastoral/picturesque/sublime tropes.
To view the listing for this panel on the Association for Art History website, see https://forarthistory.org.uk/environmental-approaches-to-the-eastern-mediterranean-landscape-1750-1920/. To submit your title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 20-minute paper, please follow the link to download the submission form. Once completed, please send it directly to the Session Convenors below by Sunday 2 November 2025:
Dr Sebastian Marshall, University of St Andrews, sam66@st-andrews.ac.uk
Dr Alexandra Solovyev, School of Advanced Study, University of London, alexandra.solovyev@sas.ac.uk
(CFP closed November 2, 2025)
OBJECT LESSONS: KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION AND ANTIQUITY IN INSTITUTIONAL TEACHING COLLECTIONS ACROSS THE LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY (1750-1940)
Rome, Italy: April 8-11, 2026
Co-hosted by University of Texas at Austin, the Swedish Institute of Classical Studies in Rome, and the American Academy in Rome, this conference focuses on the evolution of teaching collections for classical studies and archaeology from about 1750 to 1940. Just as the advent of digital technologies and AI are currently reshaping our academic landscape, scholarship was profoundly reshaped by moments such as J.J. Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums and the formalization of the Ashmolean as an archaeological museum under Arthur Evans. Curiosity cabinets gave way to physical teaching collections consisting of casts of ancient gems or sculpture, coin cabinets, and a wide range of archaeological objects, usually comprising representative type-items of modest quality. Advances in material replication such as photographs, paper squeezes, and rubbings introduced new ways to disseminate knowledge of better-known artworks and artifacts. While supporting instruction in art history and archaeology, these collections also served as models for students in fine arts and architecture. As ideas about how to understand the premodern world changed, the organization, display, and use of these collections changed too, responding to art-historical paradigm shifts like Adolf Furtwängler’s reclassification of Winckelmann’s system for sculpture and gems and to new national and imperial political realities. This conference will bring together scholars from various backgrounds to explore such collections in the context of the broader intellectual history of the period and the epistemological and classificatory transformations it witnessed. We hope the contextualization of these collections will also inspire discussion of their ethical use in the future.
Although our center of focus is the classical world, we welcome contributions that discuss institutional teaching collections related to any aspect of antiquity, the middle ages, or archaeology. Some relevant topics may include:
* Intellectual currents that drove changes in institutional collections and their modes of presentation
* Individuals, collections, or institutions that drove changes at the regional, national, or international level
* Provenance and the social contexts of the acquisition of teaching collections
* How paradigm shifts or inflection points in approaches to antiquity transformed teaching collections
* How important historical or geopolitical events precipitated such paradigm shifts
* A historically informed biography of a specific collection that evolved with the times
* The role played by a new technology or genre in transmitting knowledge in new ways
We especially welcome presentations by Ph.D. students and early-career scholars. We hope to lay the foundations for an international community of practice, seeding collaborations that will raise awareness of these collections at their home institutions while engaging with new technological possibilities for their dissemination and classification. We intend to publish the papers delivered at this conference as an edited volume that will spark a larger conversation about the role of teaching collections for classical art and archaeology in both the past and the future.
This conference is co-sponsored by the Swedish Institute of Classical Studies in Rome, the American Academy in Rome, and the University of Texas at Austin. Sessions will be held both at the American Academy and the Swedish Institute. Speakers are invited to a tour of the American Academy in Rome’s antiquities; we also expect to include a tour of the collections at the French School in Rome. A welcome reception, one or two catered lunches, and a closing dinner will be provided. We are seeking funding to subsidize travel and accommodation costs for participants.
Submission Guidelines:
Abstract length: 200 words
Languages: English and Italian
Deadline for submission: Friday, August 22nd
Presentation format: Roughly 20-minute presentations, followed by discussion; format will be determined more precisely after we have a full roster of speakers
Please submit your abstract along with your name, your affiliation, and the title of your paper to Amber Kearns (akearns@austin.utexas.edu) by Friday, August 22nd.
We hope to inform all applicants by mid-September. For further inquiries, please contact Amber Kearns (email above) or Rabun Taylor (rmtaylor@austin.utexas.edu).
https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;88fbe94b.ex
(CFP closed August 22, 2025)
[ONLINE] MEDITERRANEAN ANTIQUITY IN THE WORK OF H. P. LOVECRAFT
Online (Zoom): April 10-11, 2026
Given the findings of the Pharos Project and other anti-racist scholarly endeavors, it is perhaps not surprising that H. P. Lovecraft, a man as famous for his white supremacy as he is for his cosmic horror, cites Mediterranean antiquity as a personal touchstone. “Few students of mankind, if truly impartial,” he opines, “can fail to select as the greatest of human institutions that mighty and enduring civilisation which, first [appeared] on the banks of the Tiber… If to Greece is due the existence of all modern thought, so to Rome is due its survival and our possession of it” (Lovecraft 2004: 23). So begins Lovecraft’s 1918 essay “The Literature of Rome.” This interest in and dedicated beliefs regarding the superiority of Greco-Roman antiquity threads throughout his work, from the lengthy excursus into the Magna Mater and her rites during “The Rats in the Walls” (1923) to Lovecraft’s collaboration with Sonia Greene on an adaptation of Euripides’ Alcestis (see Jenzen-Jones and Romano 2024 on the Alcestis and e.g. Joshi 2010, Quinn 2011, Salonia 2011, Norris 2016 and 2017, and Krämer 2017 on Lovecraft’s greater engagement with Mediterranean antiquity). This is not to say that Lovecraft limited himself to Greece and Rome within the ancient Mediterranean, however, as even the single example of his short story “Under the Pyramids” (1924) attests, or the realm of writing; as he once recorded: “I have in literal truth built altars to Pan, Apollo, Diana, and Athena, and have watched for dryads and satyrs in the woods and fields at dusk” (cited in Krämer 2017: 94).
Contributions to this virtual conference (which will be held over Zoom on April 10-11, 2026) aim to elucidate the multifarious ways that Lovecraft manipulates the ancient Mediterranean in his criticism and fiction, and particularly, how he maneuvers ancient Greece, Rome, and/or other civilizations in support of his bigotry. Lovecraft’s fascination with Mediterranean antiquity persisted from childhood, and so informed his development as a writer and thinker. Further still, the uses to which he put that fascination, as Robinson Peter Krämer (2017: 116) observes, don’t cohere to “a specific order or system.” This diversity of engagement raises important questions regarding how Lovecraft makes use of different cultures of Mediterranean antiquity at different moments within his philosophy and literature, and how consistent these uses are with each other.
Such an investigation will offer a timely opportunity to further ongoing work on the horrors of Mediterranean antiquity (e.g. Cueva 2024, Kazantzidis and Thumiger, eds. 2025). At the same time, it will contribute to recent investigations into how these cultures themselves have proved to offer fecund material across various genres of speculative and popular fiction (e.g. Rogers and Stevens, eds. 2015, Rogers and Stevens, eds. 2017, Weiner, Stevens, and Rogers, eds. 2018, and Rogers and Stevens, eds. 2019). This is also a valuable time to consider Lovecraft more fully in particular, both due to the renewed publication of his works engaging with Greco-Roman antiquity (e.g. Jenzen-Jones, ed. 2024) and recent discourse on how exactly Lovecraft’s fraught legacy should be navigated (e.g., Flood 2015). The example set by, for instance, the television series Lovecraft Country (HBO, 2020) and its reception might be informative for us as classicists as we reckon with the likewise fraught legacy of our own discipline (see Umachandran and Ward, eds. 2023 for a particularly recent example).
Each session of the workshop will include a paper of between 25-30 minutes accompanied by a response of 5-10 minutes, prepared in advance by an invited respondent, before general Q&A. Abstracts of no more than 500 words are due by November 26 and decisions will be sent out by December 5. A draft of the paper will then be requested by March 10 to allow the respondents time to prepare.
Please find the full CFP, bibliography, and instructions for submitting abstracts on the event website: https://www.carmanromanophd.com/lovecraftconference
If you have any questions or would like any further information, please contact Carman Romano (cromano1@brynmawr.edu) or Kathleen Cruz (kancruz@ucdavis.edu).
Edit - Program:
FRIDAY, APRIL 10th
Session 1: Situating the Conference and H. P . Lovecraft
8:00-8:05am PT Opening Remarks
Carman Romano, Bryn Mawr College and Kathleen Cruz, UC Davis
8:05-8:35am PT Comments by Curtis Dozier, Vassar College
8:45-9:45am PT “H. P . Lovecraft and the Dark Side of Antiquity”
Michael Schaper, Universität Ausburg
Response from N. R. Jenzen-Jones, Nottingham Trent University
Session 2: Lovecraft and Mythology, Ancient and Modern
10:00-11:00am PT “On Myth and Reclamation: Lovecraft, Tolkien, and the Afterlives of Modern Myths in the Wake of White Nationalism”
Hunter Mueller, Blinn College
Response from Brett Rogers, University of Puget Sound
11:00am-12:00pm PT “Cthulhu and Polyphemus”
William Brockliss, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Response from Sean Moreland, University of Ottawa
12:00-1:00pm PT “From ‘Cosmic Race’ to ‘Cosmic Horror’: Classical, Eugenic, and ovecraftian Mythologies in Mexican Gothic”
Kendall Lovely, UC Santa Barbara
Response from Jesse Weiner, Hamilton College
SATURDAY , APRIL 11th
Session 3: Shaping and Crafting Histories
10:00-11:00am PT “‘Malitia Vetus’: Re-evaluating Roman Hispania and the Vascones in the Epistolary Variations of H. P . Lovecraft’s ‘The Very Old Folk’”
Pablo Ozcáriz, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
Response from Kathleen Cruz, UC Davis
11:00am-12:00pm PT “Civilization, Decline, and Hybridizations: Trajectories of ‘Decadence’ in Greco-Roman Cultures and Lovecraft’s Fiction”
Michele Campopiano, Università di Catania
Response from Carman Romano, Bryn Mawr College
12:00-1:00pm PT “Roman History Through the Lens of Lovecraft?”
Hamish Cameron, Victoria University of Wellington
Response from Benjamin Eldon Stevens, Bryn Mawr College
Website: https://www.carmanromanophd.com/lovecraftconference
Zoom registration: https://brynmawr-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/q0IMMyhkQaysDVf8ZopIaQ#/registration
(CFP closed November 26, 2025)
[HYBRID] THE CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION - ANNUAL CONFERENCE
Hybrid/Manchester Metropolitan University & University of Manchester: April 10-12, 2026
Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Manchester will host the Classical Association Conference on 10-12 April 2026. Academic events will take place at the Business School of Manchester Metropolitan University, with other events taking place across the venues of the two Universities. Delegates will be supported to make their own arrangements for off-campus accommodation in the local area. More detailed information about practical issues will be distributed when the programme is finalised.
The programme will feature keynote addresses, one of which will be delivered by the CA’s Honorary President, the historian and broadcaster Michael Wood, Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester. You can also look forward to a variety of classically-themed entertainment, receptions, the CA Prizegivings, and much more to still be revealed!
We’re inviting academics, postgraduates, teachers, early-stage researchers, and anyone with an interest alike to submit your ideas for individual papers, panels, lightning talks, workshops, posters, and digital stories. See further below for details on the various formats designed to encourage participation from a wide range of speakers.
Conference themes
We propose the following themes as likely to inspire interdisciplinary and comparativist approaches but encourage other suggestions too. We welcome proposals on all topics across ancient literature and philosophy, ancient history, classical art, archaeology, epigraphy and numismatics, linguistics, critical approaches, popular culture and the 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, and teachers can all share ideas, challenges, and enthusiasms.
The Conference will have a range of delegates: if you would like to target your material specifically at school-age or undergraduate students, please make this clear in your proposal.
* Africa (including, but not restricted to, Egypt) and the Classical World;
* Ancient Political Philosophy;
* Classical Heritage and Global Conflict;
* Classics in North West England;
* Commemorating the Dead;
* Environment, Resources and the Ancient World;
* Inscriptions and their Audiences;
* Papyrology;
* Pedagogy (particularly justice- and access-centred pedagogies);
* Queer Classics;
* The Near East and the Classical World
Types of Session
Anyone can submit a proposal. Please consider which of the following you would like to do:
* present an individual paper
* give a lightning talk
* share a printed poster
* share a digital story
* form a panel of papers
* organise or contribute to a workshop
Please see website for our descriptions of each of these types of sessions.
Please also see website for Speaker Information and details of in-person and online participation.
What to do next
Please submit your proposals to ca2026submissions@gmail.com by 23:59 BST on 15 September 2025. No late submissions will be accepted.
To assist with scheduling, when submitting your email, please let us know if you will NOT be able to attend a particular day of the Conference (e.g. Friday, Saturday or Sunday) and/or if you are expecting to only be able to participate remotely.
Your email must include an attachment in MS Word or PDF format containing the following details, depending upon the type of session you are proposing. The attached document filename must be clearly labelled with your surname and an abstract title (not just ‘CA 2026 Proposal’!). Please make absolutely clear which format you are proposing.
Please see website linked above for details of what to include in your proposal for each of the types of session, including word-limits, abstracts, and presenter details.
We look forward to receiving your ideas at ca2026submissions@gmail.com
To assist with scheduling, when submitting your email, please let us know if you will NOT be able to attend a particular day of the Conference (e.g. Friday, Saturday or Sunday).
Manchester Organising Committee: Jenny Bryan, Peter Liddel, April Pudsey
Website: https://classicalassociation.org/conference/
(CFP closed September 15, 2025)
SYMPATHEIA – SYMPOSIUM OF ANCIENT THEATRE INITIATIVES IN ACADEMIA
University of Lisbon, Portugal: April 13-14, 2026
The Centre for Classical Studies of the University of Lisbon is pleased to launch the call for papers for the first edition of Sympatheia – SYMPosium of Ancient THEatre Initiatives in Academia. The event, organized in collaboration with Theatron-Teatro Antico alla Sapienza (Sapienza Università di Roma) and the APGRD (University of Oxford), will be held at the University of Lisbon, on 13 and 14 April 2026. Sympatheia will be an occasion for projects based in universities and focusing on the practical side of Greek and Roman Drama (performance and/or outreach) to showcase their work, goals and mission. The idea is to allow classical theatre groups in Academia to get to know each other and create a network for future collaborations.
Each selected project can be represented by one or two participants: these can be undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral students, as well as faculty members. They will have 20 minutes to present their activity and – if they wish – an additional 10 minutes to perform a live scene (keeping in mind the two-person limit) or show a recording (or pictures) of a performance or event. To participate in the selection process, please send an abstract (in pdf format) to tommaso.suaria@edu.ulisboa.pt by Friday 19th December 2025. The abstract should contain the following information:
• Name of the project.
• Names and number of project members who will participate in the symposium.
• Whether you opt for a 20-minute slot (presentation only) or a 30-minute slot (presentation + performance).
• A title for your presentation.
• A summary of the contents.
• A short biography of the participant(s).
The entire document should not exceed 500 words. Accepted languages for the abstract and presentations are English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, and German. Performances may be in any language (including no language). We should be able to notify everyone about the outcome of their application by the end of December 2025.
The Symposium will host two Keynote Sessions: a Theatron round table and a lecture by Prof Emmanuela Bakola (University of Warwick – Warwick Ancient Drama Festival). Participants will be asked to contribute with a 50€ participation fee, which includes meals (two lunches and one dinner) and coffee breaks.
This activity is financed with National Funds through FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology), through the project UID/00019, Centro de Estudos Clássicos (https://doi.org/10.54499/UIDB/00019/2020).
Call: https://centroclassicos.letras.ulisboa.pt/event/oo/
(CFP closed December 19, 2025)
[HYBRID] GLOBAL THUCYDIDES II. EDITORS, READERS, TRANSLATORS (1848-2024)
Hybrid/University of Parma (Palazzo Centrale, Strada Università 12, Aula Bandiera): April 15-17, 2026
We are glad to announce the international conference GLOBAL THUCYDIDES II. EDITORS, READERS, TRANSLATORS (1848-2024) which will take place at the University of Parma on 15-17 April 2026 (Palazzo Centrale, Strada Università 12, Aula Bandiera). The conference is organized by Luca Iori (University of Parma / Turin Academy of Sciences) and Ivan Matijašić (University of Messina).
For the link to attend the conference online, please contact luca.iori@unipr.it
Conference programme
15 April 2026
Introduction (14:30-15.00)
Luca Iori (University of Parma / Turin Academy of Sciences)
Session I – Before and after the British Empire (15.00-18.00)
Chair: Chiara Rolli (University of Parma)
Tim Rood (University of Oxford)
Thucydides between Toronto and Oxford: Charles Cochrane and his Contemporaries
Vittorio Saldutti (Napoli Federico II)
Thucydides in the Land of Omeros: C.L.R. James and Eric Williams on Democracy and Slavery in the Caribbean
Obert Bernard Mlambo (Rhodes University, South Africa)
Towards A Zimbabwean Pericles? Robert Mugabe and the Postcolonial African State Project
Lorna Hardwick (Open University)
The ‘Thucydides Trap’ and Southern African Politics
16 April 2026
Session II – Global Thucydides. The Database (9.30-10.30)
Luca Iori (University of Parma / Turin Academy of Sciences), Ivan Matijašić (University of Messina), Michele Saccomanno (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
Session III – European perspectives (11.00-13.00)
Chair: Ivan Matijašić (University of Messina)
Alexandra Lianeri (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)
Thucydides in Global Translation: Castoriadis’s Dēmokratia through the Funeral Oration
Jakub Filonik (University of Silesia in Katowice)
The Polish Reception of Thucydides: Exile, Censorship, and Political Imagination
Ágoston Keisz (ELTE Trefort Ágoston Practising High School)
Thucydides in Hungary: Translations, Reception and the Melian Dialogue as a Parable of Hungarian History
Session III – European perspectives (15.00-18.00)
Chair: Pavel Nývlt (Czech Academy of Sciences)
Adam Schwartz (University of Copenhagen)
Thucydides Scandinavicus
Christa Steinby (University of Helsinki)
Thucydides in Finnish
Alexander A. Sinitsyn (The Dostoevsky Russian Christian Academy for the Humanities, Saint Petersburg, Russia)
The Russian Thucydides: Translations and Studies in Russian Pre-Revolution, Soviet, and Post-Soviet historiography
Alexandra Bivolaru (Université Côte d’Azur), Ivan Matijašić (University of Messina)
The Translation of Thucydides in Communist Romania
17 April 2026
Session IV – From the Near to the Far East (9.30-13.00)
Chair: Luca Iori (University of Parma / Turin Academy of Sciences)
Nazım Can Serbest (Yale University)
Translating Thucydides during the Democratization Process of Turkey
Gohar Muradyan, Aram Topchyan (Matenadaran, Institute of Ancient Manuscripts in Yerevan)
Two Approaches, One Text: Comparing a New Armenian Translation of Thucydides with the 1887 Edition
Daniela Dueck (Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan)
From Athens to Jerusalem: The Hebrew Reception of Thucydides
Arturo Monaco (Sapienza University of Rome)
The Arabic Reception of Thucydides between 19th and 21st century: Texts and Contexts
Chiara Ghidini (University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’)
Translating Antiquity into Korean: Ch’ŏn Pyŏng-hŭi’s History of the Peloponnesian War and the Making of Classical Studies
Session V – Thucydides in the USA (15.00-18.00)
Chair: Ivan Matijašić (University of Messina)
David van Schoor (Emory University)
Classicism in the New World: the Case of Thucydides in 19th Century North America
Jeffrey Rusten (Cornell University)
Pathos as Data: Three Lists in Thucydides
Mark Fisher (Georgetown University)
The Contemporaneity of Thucydides: Perspectives on the ‘Everlasting Possession’ from American Political Science
Seth Jaffe (Luiss Guido Carli University, Rome)
The Thucydides Trope: Assessing Graham Allison on Inevitable War
Discussion and conclusions
Source: https://www.unipr.it/node/111405#:~:text=Global%20Thucydides%20II.,Universit%C3%A0%20degli%20studi%20di%20Parma
[PANEL] TRIUMPHAL ARCHES AND CLASSICIZING MONUMENTS IN THE AMERICAS
Confererence: Annual Meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians
Mexico City, Mexico: April 15-19, 2026
We’d like to encourage you to submit a paper for our session, Triumphal Arches and Classicizing Monuments in the Americas, at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians. You can do so by visiting the SAH website and the Call for Papers link located here - https://www.sah.org/2026/call-for-papers-mexico-city.
The submissions are due by June 5 (Thursday) at 11:59 pm CDT.
Session Title: Triumphal Arches and Classicizing Monuments in the Americas
Session Description: Mexico City's Monument to the Revolution counts among the many classicizing monuments built in the Americas since 1492. While these freestanding arches, columns, and obelisks initially served to advance political projects such as imperialism, communities have continued to reinterpret, reshape and repurpose them. Past studies have addressed these monuments individually, often in comparison to European precedents.
Forging an intersection between critical monument studies and classical reception studies, this panel brings the classicizing monuments of South, Central, and North America into dialogue with each other for the first time. We aim to sharpen awareness of the role monuments played in the broader phenomenon of classical reception in the Americas. We also seek to understand the role of the Americas in creatively reimagining the classical designs of monuments that have become global in their popularity.
We welcome case studies that consider any facet of triumphal arches and other classicizing monuments in the Americas: their role in settler colonialism; their negotiation of global, regional, and local art and architectural traditions; the social and political contexts of their patronage, dedication, and commemoration; the significance of settings and recurrence in urban design; reception of individual structures over time, including destruction, neglect, and adaptive reuse; and current usefulness for wayfinding and anchoring community gatherings such as protests and farmers’ markets. Ephemeral monuments designed for special events and world’s fairs are also core to this discussion. While assembling case studies from different regions, we also aim to build an international cohort of specialists who are in conversation with each other.
Source: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;65543ebb.ex
(CFP closed June 5, 2025)
CANONS OF LATINITY NETWORK: LATIN RESPONSES TO HORATIAN LYRIC, 1150 TO THE PRESENT
Faculty of Classics, Oxford: April 16-17, 2026
Thursday 16 April 2026
0900–0945 Marc Laureys, Imitation and emulation of Horace in the lyric poetry of Giano Pelusio (1520–1600).
0945–1030 Hélène Bufort, Girolamo Carbone’s Sapphic Ode IX and its Horatian hypotext: an example of generic hybridity in the Renaissance.
1030–1115 Mateusz Wiater, Between the Latin and Polish Muse: political poems from the fourth book of Sarbiewski’s Odes.
1115–1135 Tea & Coffee
1135–1220 James Clark, Moralising with Horatian lyric: William Gager’s Odes.
1220–1255 Thomas Haye, Horace in the service of the university: the Latin lyric of Johann Matthias Gesner (1691–1761).
1255–1400 Lunch
1400–1445 Gesine Manuwald, Lyric poetry for friends: Horace and Helius Eobanus Hessus (1488–1540).
1445–1530 Neven Jovanović, Lyric tradition in the Croatiae auctores Latini collection.
1530–1615 Grażyna Urban-Godziek, The composition of sixteenth-century northern European lyrical collections: Johannes Secundus’ Odarum liber and Jan Kochanowski’s Lyricorum libellus.
1615–1635 Tea & Coffee
1635–1720 Nicholas De Sutter, Horace in the Age of Nations: Neo-Latin lyric, war, and national identity in the nineteenth century, from Crimea to Risorgimento.
1720–1805 Llewelyn Morgan, Horatian lyric at the finis saeculi: J. P. Steele and others.
Friday 17 April 2026
0900–0945 Hélène Casanova-Robin, Poetry and philosophy in the alcaics of Marullo’s Hymni naturales.
0945–1030 Irina Tautschnig, Odes on the nature of things: Neo-Latin scientific lyric.
1030–1115 Sven Johannes, Castalii procul valete rores. Framing the ‘new’ in Aloysius Ferronius’ ode on chocolate (1664).
1115–1135 Tea & Coffee
1135–1220 Tristan Spillmann, Reinventing an old authority: imitations of Horace in Filelfo’s Odes. Part I: Filelfo’s addressees and poetic networking.
1220–1255 Gernot Michael Müller, Reinventing an old authority: imitations of Horace in Filelfo’s Odes. Part II: Filelfo’s poetic roles in his Odes and their Horatian background.
1255–1400 Lunch
1400–1445 Anders Kirk Borggaard, From Flaccus to Blaccus: Horatianism and confessional strife in the Odae sacrae (1549) of Hans Black.
1445–1530 Simon Smets, From Odes to Psalms – and back: imitating Horace, recasting David in the early modern period.
1530–1615 Kristi Viiding, 800 years of Horace in the Baltics: verbum irrevocabile.
1615–1635 Tea & Coffee
1635–1720 Maurice Jensen, Cristoforo Landino’s commentary on Horace: divergent approaches to his lyric poetry and the Ars poetica.
1720–1805 Christoph Pieper, Horatius apud Florentinos ‘canonizatus’ – reflections on the importance of Cristoforo Landino’s Horatian imitations and commentary.
Information and Registration (free): https://www.classics.ox.ac.uk/event/latin-responses-to-horatian-lyric-1150-to-the-present
[HYBRID] ECOCRITICAL APPROACHES TO ANCIENT PERFORMANCE CULTURE
Online/University of Durham, UK: April 22-24, 2026
Proposals are invited for papers to be delivered at a hybrid conference, convened at the University of Durham by Emma Bentley and Edith Hall, which will address the relationship between ancient Greek and Roman dramatic/mimetic performances and the natural world, including their reception. Ancient performance culture (c.550 BCE-500 CE), under the aegis of the arboreal/vegetal/viticultural/mountain god Dionysus, encompassed tragedy, comedy, satyr play, mime, operatic/balletic pantomime and aquatic/hunting spectacles; these enacted, in venues requiring vast quantities of timber and stone, myths involving creation, plague, flood, fire and marine, tree, metallurgical and agricultural divinities.
Questions to be addressed may include:
How can evidence (textual/artistic/archaeological) for the rich performance culture of the ancient Greek/Roman worlds (North Africa to Ukraine, Portugal/England to Afghanistan) be read to unmask its producers/consumers’ unease with the relationship between humans and their environment?
How can we use dramatic texts and enactments to unravel the ambivalent ancient view of humans’ conflicted relations with nature via (mis)representation/ erasure?
Can we refine an ecocritical method that accommodates ‘traditional’ philological/archaeological analysis but advances beyond the (often woolly) antihumanism of New Materialism, the frequently anthropocentric environmental insensitivity of traditional literary Marxism and the nebulous psychological anti-materialism entailed by the Jungian concept of the ‘ecological consciousness’?
How best can we test the hypothesis that anthropogenic environmental damage has subsequently been legitimised by receptions of the celebration of the exploitation of nature in the canonical performance texts of antiquity?
Can we leverage the creative arts in new receptions of ancient literature to raise awareness of the environmental crisis?
Confirmed speakers include Alicia Stallings, Arnaud Zucker, Alison Sharrock, Joel Christensen, Niklas Bettermann, Jason König, Christopher Schliephake, Magdalena Zira, Andrew Fox, Bill Freeman and Michael Loy. Submissions from Early Career Researchers are particularly welcome.
Please send an abstract of around 300 words to emma.bentley@durham.ac.uk by 1st November 2025.
Call: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;63c4cba6.ex
(CFP closed November 1, 2025)
[ONLINE] BEYOND THE PROTAGONIST: SUPPORTING CHARACTERS IN BIG SCREEN GREECE AND ROME
Online: April 24-25, 2026 (USA, UK, and EU); April 25-26, 2026 (Australasia)
Under the Aegis of the Research Network EuGeStA
Organized by Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos (Saint Joseph’s University, USA)
DATES/TIME ZONES: All of the dates and times listed below are in Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).
FRIDAY, APRIL 24
Welcome and Introduction
10:00 – 11:00 a.m. (EDT); 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. (France)
Opening Remarks – Jacqueline Fabre-Serris (Université de Lille, France / EuGeStA)
Introduction: Why Focus on Supporting Characters – and How Do We Define Them? – Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos (Saint Joseph’s University, USA)
Session 1
11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. (EDT); 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. (CDT); 6:00 – 7:30 p.m. (Athens)
The Woman behind (the) Caesar: Wives, Mothers, and the Limits of Female Power
Chair: Sophia Papaioannou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece)
“How Foolish Do Your Fears Seem Now, Calpurnia!”: Depicting and Dismissing Caesar’s Wife on Screen – Christopher McDonough (The University of the South, USA)
“Sempre la Mamma”: Tacitus’ Agrippina and Gloria Swanson’s Big Screen Legacy in Mio Figlio Nerone (1956) – Christos Argyropoulos (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece)
Break: 30 minutes
Session 2
2:00 – 4:00 p.m. (EDT); 3:00 – 5:00 p.m. (Belo Horizonte); 9:00 – 11:00 p.m. (Athens); 6:00 – 8:00 a.m. (Saturday, Auckland)
Gigolos, Cuckolds, Bullies: Supporting Male Characters in Big Screen Adaptations of Greek Tragedy
Chair: Maria Cecília de Miranda N. Coelho (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil)
Absent on Stage, Present on Screen: Reimagining Aegisthus in Cacoyannis’ Electra – Kaiti Diamantakou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece)
Creon and Toxic Masculinity in Auteur Cinema: Pasolini, von Trier, Ripstein – Patricia Salzman-Mitchell (Montclair State University, USA)
Caught between Ambition and Vulnerability: Menelaus in Cacoyannis’ The Trojan Women and Iphigenia – Anastasia Bakogianni (Massey University, New Zealand)
Break: 60 minutes
Session 3
5:00 – 6: 30 p.m. (EDT); 10:00 – 11:30 p.m. (Lisbon); 7:00 – 8:30 a.m. (Saturday, Melbourne)
The Hero’s Brother-in-Arms: Male Bonding in Cinematic Retellings of Greek Epic
Chair: Walter D. Penrose, Jr. (San Diego State University, USA)
Screening Patroclus – Nuno Simões Rodrigues (University of Lisbon, Portugal)
Homosocial Pathos: Hercules and Hylas in the Late Post-War Hollywood Epic Jason and the Argonauts (1963) – Djoymi Baker (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia)
SATURDAY, APRIL 25
Session 4
10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. (EDT); 9:00 – 11:00 a.m. (CDT)
Figures in Between: Mediating Power and Identity in Cinematic Antiquity
Chair: Georgia Tsouvalas (Illinois State University, USA)
The Queen’s Insolent Maid: From Mute Servant in the Odyssey to Embodiment of 1920s Flapper Femininity in The Private Life of Helen of Troy – Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos (Saint Joseph’s University, USA)
Social Space and Seeking Redemption in William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959) – Jennifer Rea (University of Florida, USA)
Modeling Middle Management in Hollywood Sword-and-Sandal Films of 1950s and 1960s – Lee L. Brice (Western Illinois University, USA)
Break: 60 minutes
Session 5
Time: 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. (EDT); 12:00 – 2:00 p.m. (CDT); 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. (UK)
Depicting the “Other”: Outsiders in Celluloid Rome
Chair: Tommaso Gazzarri (Union College, USA)
Cinema’s Ur-Black Gladiator: Glycon and His Legacy – Kirsten Day (Augustana College, USA)
The Woman and the Gladiator Revisited: Women and/as Gladiators on Screen 2024-2026 – Amanda Potter (The Open University, UK)
Occidentalism and the She-Wolf: Self, Other, and the Western Turn in Centurion (2010) – Jesse Weiner (Hamilton College, USA)
RESPONDENT
Monica S. Cyrino (University of New Mexico, USA)
3:00 – 3:30 p.m. (EDT); 2:00 – 2:30 p.m. (MDT)
Conference Zoom link: https://sju.zoom.us/meeting/register/ayOVqOSYR7-G9E43LcV5_w
Conference registration form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfLh9OX98bftuYwC_JRpGpm5bvWvVqS1ILOam3dnfJzpPxxqg/viewform
Program: https://eugesta-recherche.univ-lille.fr/fileadmin/user_upload/eugesta-recherche/pdf/eugesta_gender_studies_classical_scholarship/flyer-2-days-meeting-eugesta-project-24-25-april-2026.pdf
Abstracts: https://eugesta-recherche.univ-lille.fr/fileadmin/user_upload/eugesta-recherche/pdf/eugesta_gender_studies_classical_scholarship/Abstracts-2-days-meeting-eugesta-project-24-25-april-2026.pdf
Bios: https://eugesta-recherche.univ-lille.fr/fileadmin/user_upload/eugesta-recherche/pdf/eugesta_gender_studies_classical_scholarship/Speaker-Bios-2-days-meeting-eugesta-project-24-25-april-2026.pdf
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May 2026
VISITING RESEARCHERS 2026: 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 Normandie: 4 to 6 weeks length; in May/June/early July 2026.
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 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. They will also be able 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 2026 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 2026, the AGRELITA project will focus on these lines of research:
* “Cultures of violence and female resistance: receptions of ancient Greek myths from the 14th to the 21st century, in Europe and beyond”;
* “The reception of ancient Greece in Europe through the dialogue between texts et images inside and outside the book (14th-16th century)”;
* 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.
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 curriculum vitae;
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 lorene.bellanger@unicaen.fr.
Application deadline: by February 15th, 2026.
Call: https://agrelita.hypotheses.org/9813
(Call closed February 15, 2026)
ANALOGUE GAMES AND THE ANCIENT & PRE-MODERN PAST
Institute Of Advanced Study, Durham University, UK: Friday May 1, 2026
Organisers: Dr. Helen Roche (Durham University, UK) and Dr. Hamish Cameron (Victoria University of Wellington, NZ)
Recently, analogue games have been gaining increasing attention within the context of Game Studies, Ludonarratology, Historical Game Studies and Classical Game Studies. This interdisciplinary workshop will focus on modern analogue games which engage with ancient and pre-modern pasts, with an eye to producing an edited volume which will complement existing work already in progress.
The organisers are currently seeking abstracts, and welcome suggestions for 20-minute papers which engage with:
* a broad range of historical periods (including games with historical elements which are not purely historical, e.g. historically-inspired fantasy and science fiction; mythical games); archaeogaming;
* any analogue game genres - including, but not limited to, board games and card games, Tabletop Roleplaying Games (TTRPGs), live action games, tabletop wargames, miniature wargaming, and megagames;
* analogue games which range beyond the popular (e.g. analyses of indie games as well as well-known classics);
* analogue games as vectors for historical pedagogy, engagement and outreach; serious games; creative ludic research methods;
* intersectional and postcolonial perspectives are especially welcome.
Our primary goal is for the workshop to take place in person (though please note that we cannot guarantee funding to cover speakers' expenses, and any funding we can find will be used to facilitate attendance by ECRs and precarious speakers). However, given sufficient interest, we would consider organising a separate online workshop at a later date to accommodate those who are unable to travel to Durham in person.
Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to gaming.history.ias@gmail.com by 31 MARCH 2026.
Source: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;853df6a3.ex
(CFP closed March 31, 2026)
ANNUAL MEETING OF THE CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION OF CANADA (CAC)
Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada: May 5-7, 2026
Website: https://www.queensu.ca/cac-conference-2026/cfps
(CFP closed January 5, 2026)
WORKSHOP: COLLABORATIONS WITH ANTIQUITY: MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN
St Andrews Centre for the Reception of Antiquity (SACRA)
School of Classics, University of St Andrews, Scotland: May 6-7, 2026
Teleological accounts of national literary histories valorise the ‘conquest’ of the vernacular and celebrate great individual ‘overreachers’. This workshop instead investigates the ways culture, languages, people and ideas continue to work together with and through antiquity in medieval and early modern Europe. This workshop brings together scholars in Early Modern Studies, Modern Languages, History and Classics. It aims to move beyond established approaches (‘quotation studies’, ‘classical reception’, ‘individual authorship’, ‘allusion and intertextuality’ ) to explore complex stories of collaboration with antiquity. We hope that this inter-disciplinary approach will create new ways of understanding the cultures, intellectual histories, and creative literature and material culture of medieval and early modern Europe.
This workshop is the annual event of the St Andrews Centre for the Receptions of Antiquity (SACRA). We are grateful to The School of Classics and SACRA for their financial support.
This workshop is an in-person event. Attendance is free, but you must register to attend by emailing eb221@st-andrews.ac.uk by 29 April 2026.
Find out more information on the SACRA website: https://sacra.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2026/04/15/collaborations-with-antiquity-medieval-and-early-modern/
[HYBRID] FEMINISM & CLASSICS IX: COMMUNITIES
Hybrid/Department of Classics at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio: May 7-10, 2026
The program committee for the next Feminism & Classics conference (May 7–10, 2026) invites submissions of abstracts, panels, roundtables, workshops, and innovative presentation formats related to the theme of “Communities.” Presentations for this hybrid conference may be delivered in person in Cincinnati, Ohio or on the virtual conference platform. For more details about the conference theme, see below.
In addition to traditional research papers, the committee is eager to receive proposals related to pedagogy, mentorship, hidden labor, accessibility, creative work, and beyond. We are enthusiastic about participation from K–12 teachers and independent scholars as well as faculty and students from all types of institutions. Grant funding from the Loeb Classical Library has been earmarked to provide registration waivers and other subsidies to students, K–12 teachers, contingent faculty, and others requiring financial assistance. Since this will be a hybrid conference, all participants will have the option to attend events in person, online, or in combination; proposals for both in-person and online presentations and events will be accepted. Thoughtful approaches to ensuring that in-person events are fully accessible to online participants are especially encouraged.
Submission Instructions:
Abstracts and proposals should be sent to feminism.classics@gmail.com by September 12, 2025 as anonymized attachments in Word or PDF format. Please remove all personally identifying information from the attached document, including from the file name. In the body of the message, please list your name, the title of your proposal, and the email address at which you would like to receive communications about the conference.
Individual abstracts should be no more than 350 words (excluding bibliography) and should reflect plans for oral delivery of a paper lasting maximum 15 minutes.
a. Please indicate at the top of your abstract whether you intend to deliver the paper in person or online.
Proposals (for panels, roundtables, workshops, or other innovative modes of delivery) should be no more than 350 words (excluding bibliography). Individual abstracts within proposed panels can each be up to 350 words in addition.
a. Please indicate at the top of the proposal document whether you plan for your event to last 60, 90, or 120 minutes; the number of speakers; and whether each speaker will attend in person or online. Hybrid panels (with some in-person and some online participants) are absolutely acceptable.
b. If you are proposing an innovative mode of delivery, please explain clearly what your plans are and how you will ensure accessibility for online participants. (This explanation can be excluded from the 350 word limit.)
Conference Theme: COMMUNITIES
The organizing theme for this meeting of Feminism & Classics will be COMMUNITIES. Communities formed around human connection and exclusion have long shaped social identities, enforcing or eliding differences in the pursuit of political, intellectual, artistic, or affective goals. In the modern world, when such connections can be made across vast distances at the speed of a computer click, we are primed to reflect on the formation, development, and impact of communities in antiquity—how and why did ancient people come together to collaborate over shared goals or commiserate over shared grievances? How did factors like sex, gender, civic status, social and political capital, disenfranchisement, disability, or ethnos influence the formation of communities? What physical spaces housed ancient communities? What material traces did they leave behind? How did those experiencing exclusion from certain communities respond to being denied the benefits or privileges of membership?
Communities have a powerful influence on the unity or fragmentation of the people with whom they interact. Shared ideologies regularly generate extreme reactions, from empowerment and compassion to anger and fear. These affective conditions may precipitate actions upon other individuals or communities, resulting in increased division, hierarchical power differentials, and desires for resistance—considerations which have long been foundational to feminist scholarship in the Classics and beyond (see Rabinowitz and Richlin 1993, Weiss and Friedman 1995, McManus 1997). Community studies, as an interdisciplinary branch of sociological and anthropological investigations encompassing a number of frameworks and terminologies familiar to scholars in Classics (e.g., ethnography, social network analysis, liminality; see Blackshaw 2009), has also contributed a great deal in recent decades to explorations of antiquity. Scholars in Classics have examined the dynamics of ancient communities based on political networks (Brock and Hodkinson 2000; Broekaert et al. 2020), religious practices (Collar 2013; Muñiz-Grijalvo and Tejedor, 2023), urban infrastructure (Simelius 2024), education and class (Mosconi 2008), provinces and colonies (Christol 2010), women’s associations (Hirschmann 2003), and wealth disparities (Carlà-Uhink et al. 2023), often situating the peoples of antiquity within networks that transcend governed entities and elite social ranks (e.g., Taylor and Vlassopoulos 2015).
Aspirations toward communities of equality have long motivated feminist practitioners; importantly, historical failures of feminist movements to recognize intersectional oppressions and to acknowledge the contributions of women of color and trans women have inhibited the formation of accessible communities within both academic disciplines and political movements. This conference’s focus on communities will therefore necessarily escape the temporal bounds of the ancient Mediterranean world, as disciplinary discourses reflect ongoing concerns about the formation and continuity of a truly accessible global community for the study of antiquity.
With these considerations in mind, we invite submissions to Feminism & Classics IX that reflect on the concept of Communities, broadly conceived. In formulating their proposals for this conference, authors are invited to understand “feminism” from an intersectional perspective that embraces numerous theoretical approaches as relevant and important to the conference’s mission. These may include queer theory, critical race theory, disability studies, ecocriticism, and postcolonial theory, among many others. Possible topics and approaches to the theme of Communities include (but are by no means limited to):
* How social, political, and economic forces shaped ancient communities (and sub-communities) into hierarchical, oligarchic, aristocratic, democratic, and/or autocratic structures
* How access to education, texts, and convivial gatherings contributed to the construction of elite and exclusive communities of literacy in antiquity; how those denied access to such resources still built or maintained communities engaged with storytelling, narrative, and oral traditions
* Communities of care, whether in the ancient world or in our modern discipline (e.g., fostering mentorship, empathy, accessibility, and growth in academia, especially for junior and contingent teachers and scholars)
* Communities of choice, as aligned with or divergent from communities of birth
* Gendered communities, with consideration of the ways in which communities form or exclude based on social perceptions and constructions of gender
* Community building(s), including both the action of forming communities and the physical spaces that may house those communities
* The spaces and tools of community: how sites, objects, and interactions between them constructed or affected communities
* Communities and social identity, with consideration of in-group/out-group dynamics or how/whether individuals fit into certain communities
* Strategies for community-building within and beyond the discipline, including outreach or engagement with the public, collaboration between academia and other spheres, and networks of communal pedagogy
Our commitment to ACCESSIBILITY:
Feminism & Classics is committed to creating a welcoming and accessible hybrid conference that enables all attendees to engage fully with the program. We pledge to take concrete steps to support neurodivergent attendees and attendees with physical disabilities, mental illnesses, and/or chronic illnesses. If you require any accommodations to participate in this event, or have any questions or concerns related to access, please contact our Accessibility Team so that we can make sure your needs are met: femclas.accessibility@gmail.com
We will encourage all conference participants to consult the “Making SCS Presentations More Accessible” document here , created by Zoé Elise Thomas and Clara Bosak-Schroeder, to ensure that their conference presentations and materials are as broadly accessible as possible. As the conference gets closer, we will update the website with more detailed information about on-site and online accessibility.
Contact and Logistics:
For more information about conference logistics, planned events, and our commitment to hosting an accessible and welcoming gathering for all participants, please visit our webpage: https://www.wccclassics.org/femclas9
If you have any questions about the conference, please direct your inquiries to Caitlin Hines (caitlin.hines@uc.edu).
If you require accommodations or have questions about accessibility, please email femclas.accessibility@gmail.com
Works Cited
Blackshaw, Tony. 2009. Key Concepts in Community Studies. SAGE.
Brock, Roger, and Stephen Hodkinson (ed.). 2000. Alternatives to Athens: varieties of political organization and community in ancient Greece. Oxford University Press.
Broekaert, Wim, Elena Köstner, and Christian Rollinger (eds.). 2020. The Ties that Bind: Ancient Politics and Network Research. Journal of Historical Network Research 4. Luxembourg.
Carlà-Uhink, Filippo, Lucia Cecchet, and Carlos Machado (eds.). 2023. Poverty in Ancient Greece and Rome: Realities and Discourses. Routledge.
Christol, Michel. 2010. “L’organisation des communautés en Gaule méridionale (Transalpine, puis Narbonnaise) sous la domination de Rome.” Pallas 84: 15–36.
Collar, Anna. 2013. Religious Networks in the Roman Empire: The Spread of New Ideas. Cambridge University Press.
Hirschmann, V. E. 2003. “Methodische Überlegungen zu Frauen in antiken Vereinen.” In de Ligt, L., E. A. Hemelrijk, and H. W. Singor (eds.), Roman Rule and Civic Life: Local and Regional Perspectives: Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire (Roman Empire, c.200 B.C. – A.D. 476), Leiden, June 25–28, 2003. Brill: 401–414.
McManus, Barbara. 1997. Classics and Feminism: Gendering the Classics. The Impact of Feminism on the Arts and Sciences. Twayne.
Mosconi, Gianfranco. 2008. “‘Musica & Buon Governo’: paideía aristocratica e propaganda politica nell’Atene di V sec. a.c.” Rivista di Cultura Classica e Medioevale 1: 11–70.
Muñiz-Grijalvo, Elena, and Alberto del Campo Tejedor (ed.). 2023. Processions and the construction of communities in antiquity: history and comparative perspectives. Routledge.
Rabinowitz, Nancy Sorkin, and Amy Richlin. 1993. Feminist Theory and the Classics. Routledge.
Simelius, Samuli. 2024. “Networks of Inequality: Access to Water in Roman Pompeii.” Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology 7: 54–74.
Taylor, Claire, and Kostas Vlassopoulos. 2015. Communities and Networks in the Ancient Greek World. Oxford University Press.
Weiss, Penny A., and Marilyn Friedman. 1995. Feminism and Community. Temple University Press.
Website: https://www.wccclassics.org/femclas9
(CFP closed September 12, 2025)
INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS’ CONFERENCE: CONTEMPORANEITY OF ANTIQUITY
Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (Georgia): May 13-15, 2026
The Institute of Classical, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies of Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (Georgia) is pleased to announce the Call for Papers of the International Student Conference “Contemporaneity of Antiquity” to be held in Tbilisi, Georgia in hybrid mode (via ZOOM and face-to-face) on May 13-15, 2026.
The Conference invites proposals exploring different aspects of the reception of the Ancient Greek and Roman Literature, Philosophy, History, Culture etc. in the Modern World. The topics of the Conference may include other issues of Classical, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies as well.
Undergraduate and graduate students are kindly invited to take part in the Conference. The Conference participants will get the Certificate of Participation. No registration fee required.
The working languages during the Conference will be English and Georgian.
Papers should not exceed 20 minutes in length. Presentations will be followed by 10-minute discussion. The abstracts of the papers (between 250-300 words) should be sent to the following e-mail: greekstudies@tsu.ge by February 28, 2026. The authors will be notified of the Scientific Committee’s decision in one week after submitting the proposal.
Along with the abstract the following information about the author should be provided:
* Personal information (first name, last name):
* Higher Education Institution, Country:
* Level of Studies (Bachelor, Master, Doctoral):
* Participation mode (Online / in person):
* Contact data (phone and email):
Questions may be directed to the following e-mail address: greekstudies@tsu.ge
Call: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;961c5e35.ex
(CFP closed February 28, 2026)
THE ANCIENT WORLD ON SCREEN CONFERENCE
Commemorating 50+ years of classics and film reception
The University of Granada, Spain: May 14-15, 2026
It is 50 years since the start of Classics and Film reception as an academic discipline, with the publication of early key texts, including The Ancient World in the Cinema (1978) by John Solomon, Classics and Film (1991) edited by Martin M. Winkler, and Projecting the Past: Ancient Rome, Cinema and History (1997) by Maria Wyke. To commemorate this milestone, and to showcase the vast array of different approaches to the Ancient world on different screens (cinema, TV, computer, phone) that have since emerged, we would like to invite you to contribute to an international conference on the Ancient World on Screen to be held from 14-15 May 2026. The conference will be in person at the University of Granada, and will include keynote lectures by Profs Maria Wyke and Francisco Salvador.
Topics within this broad area could include the following:
• Films, Television drama series, animation or documentaries based on the ancient world/mythology
• Video games drawing on aspects of the ancient world
• Ancient world media fandom, including fanfiction and fan art
• Modern screen-based media as a means to engage viewers in the ancient world (YouTube, TikTok etc.)
• VR and immersive experiences, including the use of multi-media in museums and as education/entertainment
• New methodological approaches to the ancient world on screen
Please submit abstracts of 250 words for 20-minute papers in English or Spanish to classicalreceptiongranada@gmail.com by the 1st December, 2025.
Organisers: Dr Javier Martínez Jiménez and Dr Amanda Potter
Call: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;b96aca33.ex
(CFP closed December 1, 2025)
[HYBRID] TAGUNG ZU LATEINISCH-DEUTSCHEN ÜBERSETZUNGEN
Hybrid/University of Zurich: May 15, 2026
Ort: RAA-G-01 (kleine Aula im Stockwerk G), Rämistrasse 59, 8001 Zürich
10:15–10:30 Begrüssung durch Markus Hafner (Stv. Institutsleiter), Anke Walter und Fabian Zogg
10:30–12:00 Martin Revermann (Toronto), Keynote-Vortrag: Übersetzungstheorie und Übersetzungspraxis: einleitende Bemerkungen
Mittagspause (für eingeladene Gäste im Dozentenfoyer der ETH, für alle anderen individuell)
14:00–14:45 Stefan Freund (Wuppertal): Vel verbum e verbo, vel sensum de sensu. Vorsondierungen zu einer synchronen Translatologie des Lateinischen
14:45–15:30 Raphael Schwitter (Bonn): Zwischen Philologie und Algorithmus – Stiläquivalenz im KI-gestützten Übersetzen lateinischer Texte
Kaffeepause
16:00–16:45 Gottfried Kreuz (Salzburg): Bruschius digitalis. Virtuelle Darstellung von Leben und Werk eines Humanisten als Testfall für automatisierte Editionstechniken
16:45–17:30 Fabian Zogg (Zürich): Überlegungen zum Ursprungstext einer zweisprachigen Ausgabe Lateinisch-Deutsch
Apéro für alle Teilnehmenden im Lichthof an der Rämistrasse 59 (Erdgeschoss)
Zu den Fachvorträgen am 15. Mai sind alle Interessierten sehr herzlich eingeladen! Die Teilnahme an den Vorträgen ist auch online möglich (Anmeldung bei fabian.zogg@iaka.uzh.ch).
Für weitere Informationen, siehe die Tagungswebsite: https://www.iaka.uzh.ch/de/klph/veranstaltungen/conventus/2026_uebersetzungen.html
CLASSICS AND THE CLASSICAL TRADITION IN LONDON
Warburg Institute, London: May 21, 2026 (2-6pm)
2026 is a year of two significant anniversaries: (i) the centenary of the so-called Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek, established in 1926 in Hamburg that would become the Warburg Institute following its relocation to London (in 1933); and (ii) the bicentenary of the foundation of University College London in 1826. These landmark ‘birthdays’ will be celebrated with an afternoon of lectures and discussion. The event will mark the important contributions of each of these institutions to classical scholarship and the classical tradition and also commemorate the teaching of these disciplines across London over the last two centuries.
Programme:
2.00–2.05pm – Welcome from the Warburg Institute
2.05–2.15pm – Introduction
2.15–3.00pm – Professor Jill Kraye (Warburg Institute): ‘Teaching the Classical Tradition in Woburn Square: The Warburg Institute and the Afterlife of Antiquity’
3.00–3.45pm – Professor Michael Trapp (KCL): ‘Professing Classical Literature at King’s College London: George Warr and others’
3.45-4.15pm – Coffee / tea break
4.15–5.00pm – Professor William Fitzgerald (KCL): ‘Cockney Catullus, Brompton Sappho and Other Hybrids’
5.00-5.45pm – Professor Catharine Edwards (Birkbeck): ‘Cicero in Eighteenth-Century London’
5.45–6.00 pm – Concluding remarks
All welcome! Attendance free; booking required.
Details here: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/classics-and-classical-tradition-2026
4TH IJSEWIJN LECTURE & LABORATORIUM
KU Leuven, Belgium: May 21-22, 2026
The 18th Jozef IJsewijn Lecture will take place on Thursday 21 May 2026, at 5pm, in the Justus Lipsius Room of the Erasmushuis (8th floor; Blijde Inkomststraat 21, 3000 Leuven), and will be delivered by Professor Marc Laureys (Universität Bonn), offering a quo vadis? view on Neo-Latin studies at the occasion of the sixtieth birthday of the Seminarium Philologiae Humanisticae. The lecture will be followed by a reception at 6pm in the big hall of the Erasmushuis on the ground floor. Attendance is completely free, but registration will be required.
The next day, on Friday 22 May 2026, the 4th IJsewijn Laboratorium will be held at the Colloquium (University Library, Mgr. Ladeuzeplein 21, 3000 Leuven). The Laboratorium will have a full-day program devoted to ongoing Neo-Latin research, and has two main aims: (1) showcasing state-of-the-art research in Neo-Latin studies, in terms of both subject and methodology, and (2) bringing together young scholars with established researchers, including the Jozef IJsewijn Lecturer. There is, in other words, no specific thematic focus, and everyone is encouraged to present work-in-progress, paying due attention to both successes and pitfalls in Neo-Latin research, and how to build on, or deal with, them. In the frame of the sixtieth birthday of the Seminarium, we do encourage participants to engage critically with the legacy of Jozef IJsewijn and the Seminarium within the discipline. The scientific committee will make a competitive selection of abstracts, as we have a maximum of 10 paper slots.
The Laboratorium aims to create an active exchange among the participants, in order to address and discuss promising research perspectives. All sessions will be plenary, including a research pitch by local Neo-Latin students. Each session will last one hour and include two presentations of 15’ each, followed by 30’ discussion time. Presenters will be asked to pre-circulate their materials and ideas in a way they see fit (e.g. a Neo-Latin text with translation and/or commentary, a short paper summarizing the main points of their work-in-progress, an advanced paper not yet submitted for publication, a poster file, …). The only prerequisite is that these materials contain two to three questions you want to see addressed during the discussions. The pre-circulated materials will be shared only with those registered for the workshop and will serve to encourage in-depth discussions. The main workshop language will be English.
Abstracts are due 15 December and should be sent to Adriaan Demuynck (adriaan.demuynck[aet]kuleuven.be) and Raf Van Rooy (raf.vanrooy[aet]kuleuven.be).
The registration fee for the IJsewijn Laboratorium will be €35 to cover catering. (BA and MA students of KU Leuven are exempted from paying the Laboratorium's fee.)
Organizing committee:
Marijke Crab (KU Leuven Libraries), Nicholas De Sutter (KU Leuven), Adriaan Demuynck (KU Leuven), Raf Van Rooy (KU Leuven)
Scientific committee:
Susanna de Beer (Leiden University), Gianmario Cattaneo (Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale), Marijke Crab (KU Leuven Libraries), Ingrid De Smet (University of Warwick), Nicholas De Sutter (KU Leuven), Martine Furno (Université Grenoble Alpes / ENS Lyon), Christian Laes (University of Manchester / University of Antwerp), Han Lamers (University of Oslo), Marc Laureys (Universität Bonn), Vasileios Pappas (University of Ioannina), Maxim Rigaux (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona / Ghent University), Florian Schaffenrath (Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Neulateinische Studien, Innsbruck), Toon Van Houdt (KU Leuven), Raf Van Rooy (KU Leuven)
Call: https://www.arts.kuleuven.be/sph/ijsewijnlab
(CFP closed December 15, 2025)
ACADEMIA VIVARIUM NOVUM CONFERENCE: “OVID AND PHILOSOPHY”
Villa Falconieri (Frascati), Italy: May 24-26, 2026
After the conferences on philosophy in Virgil (2024) and in the post-Virgilian epic (2025) the Academia Vivarium novum organizes a conference on “Ovid and philosophy”.
The conference will take place on 24-26 May 2026 at Villa Falconieri (Frascati). The Academy will accomodate the participants in the Villa.
Interested scholars can propose a paper on (1) philosophy in the works of Ovid, or on (2) philosophical interpretations of the works of Ovid by commentators and other authors from Late Antiquity to the Modern Age.
Proposals, accompanied by an abstract of 20/30 lines, must be sent BY DECEMBER 31 to the following addresses:
Fabio Stok: fabio.stok@uniroma2.it
Giampiero Scafoglio: Giampiero.Scafoglio@univ-cotedazur.fr
Call: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;c3e1bdeb.ex
(CFP closed December 31, 2025)
NEW MEANINGS IN ANCIENT TEXTS: MODERN RECONSTRUCTIONS, REINTERPRETATIONS AND RECONTEXTUALIZATIONS OF ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL SOURCES
International Conference on Classical Studies and Related Disciplines
Bucharest, Romania: May 29-30, 2026
The Romanian Society for Classical Studies and the Department of Classical Philology at the University of Bucharest invite you to participate in the conference "New Meanings in Ancient Texts. Modern Reconstructions, Reinterpretations and Recontextualizations of Ancient and Medieval Sources," which will take place on May 29-30, 2026, in Bucharest.
This conference aims to explore the ways in which contemporary research rediscovers, reinterprets and recontextualizes ancient, medieval, and pre-modern sources, offering new perspectives on classical heritage. We encourage contributions that seek to illustrate how modern theories, methods and approaches can reveal novel meanings in established or lesser-known sources from Antiquity and the medieval period. By ancient texts we understand, in the broad Barthesian sense, any ancient object open to interpretation, whether it be a specimen of a literary genre, historical document, philosophical writing, visual text or cultural artifact.
For example, in the 1960s-70s, structuralism, interested in highlighting the patterns and deep structures behind cultural expressions, revolutionized classical studies: researchers began to look beyond traditional philological and historical approaches and opened toward broader research directions, such as theories of knowledge, cultural systems, and meaning-generating processes. Thus illuminated, Homeric texts or Greek tragedies gave rise to interpretations that awakened interest and inspired generations of classicists. More recently, techniques such as computed tomography, infrared and ultraspectral imaging, or artificial intelligence, applied to the Herculaneum papyri, have opened pathways to deciphering texts previously inaccessible. Indeed, the true engine of the survival and reinvention of classical studies lies in this availability to reveal the new in what appears to be completely explored and exhausted, the ever-fresh gaze directed toward ancient sources.
Conference Topics:
Proposed contributions may address, but are not limited to, the following areas:
- Philology and textual criticism, paleography and codicology: new critical editions, manuscript discoveries, textual reconstructions
- Hermeneutics and interpretation: new exegetical approaches, contemporary re-readings of classical, medieval and pre-modern texts
- Intertextuality: relationships between ancient sources and modern and contemporary cultural creations
- Digital methodologies: the use of modern technologies in the study of classical sources
- Reception of classical authors: transformations of meanings in diverse cultural and historical contexts
- Translations and adaptations: problems of cultural and linguistic transfer
- The popularity of gender studies and postcolonial approaches in the analysis of ancient texts in recent decades
- Comparative literature: dialogues between antiquity and modernity
- Ancient and medieval philosophy: reinterpretations of concepts in contemporary context
- Re-evaluations of earlier archaeological discoveries (artifacts, artworks, topographical elements), epigraphic, papyrological, numismatic and paleographic findings from antiquity and the medieval period in light of recent research
- Historical linguistics and etymological reconstructions
- New theories on ancient music
Conference Format
The conference will be divided into individual presentations (20 minutes per presentation + 10 minutes discussion) and thematic sessions (groups of 3-4 presentations on a common theme - 90 minutes).
Submission Guidelines
Abstracts, of maximum 300 words and accompanied by 3-5 keywords, should be sent in .doc or .docx format to colocviusensurinoi2026@gmail.com by March 1, 2026. For thematic sessions, please also include a brief description of the proposed theme.
Registration
The participation fee of 100 lei will be paid to the account of the Society for Classical Studies and will cover conference materials, coffee breaks and lunches.
For additional information, please contact us at the email address mentioned above: colocviusensurinoi2026@gmail.com.
Call: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;4dc343a5.ex
(CFP closed March 1, 2026)
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June 2026
ISNS PANEL: AGREEMENT, DISAGREEMENT, AND INTERPRETATION: ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS IN NEOPLATONIC AND MEDIEVAL THOUGHT
International Society for Neoplatonic Studies Conference
Leuven, Belgium: June 3-7, 2026
The panel explores how Neoplatonists and medieval philosophers (Latin and Byzantine) read and used Aristotle’s Metaphysics within their own systems. While papers on any part of the work are welcome, we are especially interested in Alpha Meizon, Alpha Elatton, and Beta, and in how these books are employed to define first philosophy, order causes, and frame or resolve aporiai.
A central concern of the panel is authority and canonicity: how Neoplatonic and scholastic authors reconstruct Aristotle’s own position or his reception of earlier thinkers, and how particular books, chapters, or lemmata of the Metaphysics acquire a special canonical status.
Possible topics include (but are not limited to):
* Strategies for harmonizing or opposing Plato and Aristotle, or Aristotle and Christianity (e.g. hierarchy of the sciences, the role of theology, the value of aporia).
* The place of the Metaphysics within scholastic philosophical systems and its role in shaping key metaphysical notions.
* Authority and canonicity: how prolegomena, divisio textus, citation practices, and teaching contexts rank
* Aristotle among other authorities and confer special status on certain books.
* Comparative studies that put Neoplatonic and medieval/Scholastic commentators into dialogue on the same passages of the Metaphysics.
Proposals should briefly indicate:
* the Neoplatonic and/or medieval text(s) to be discussed;
* the relevant parts of Aristotle’s Metaphysics; and
* the intended interpretative payoff (agreement, disagreement, or constructive reinterpretation), with particular attention to how commentary practices authorize or de-authorize Aristotle’s text.
Please send an abstract by 19 January to both organizers:
Nastas Jakšić – nastas.jaksic@helsinki.fi
Timo Zarakovitis– timo.zarakovitis@kuleuven.be
Call: https://isnswebsite.wordpress.com/isns-2025/panels-2025-isns/
(CFP closed January 19, 2026)
ISRAEL SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF CLASSICAL STUDIES: 54TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE
University of Haifa, Israel: June 3-4, 2026
The ISRAEL SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF CLASSICAL STUDIES is pleased to announce its 54th annual conference to be held at the University of Haifa on 3-4.6.2026. The official languages of the conference are Hebrew and English.
With renewed faith in the possibility of peace in the Near East, we hope that our CfP will be received as a call for reconciliation, mutual respect for the sanctity of life, and academic cooperation in the pursuit of knowledge.
Our keynote speaker this year will be Prof. Heinz-Günther Nesselrath (University of Göttingen).
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 ISPCS Secretary, Dr. Merav Haklai, at haklaime@bgu.ac.il.
A general Call for Papers can be found at the ISPCS webpage, as well as a CfP for a Student Session and one for a Poster Session.
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 24.12.2025. 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://israel-classics.org/en/conferences/
(CFP closed December 24, 2025)
TRANSFER OF KNOWLEDGE IN AUXILIARY TEXTS TO GREEK AND LATIN LITERATURE (14TH-16TH C.)
The Making of the late Medieval and Renaissance Canon
University of Catania, Italy: June 4-5, 2026
The School for Saving Classics at University of Catania invites submissions for the international conference “Transfer of Knowledge in Auxiliary Texts to Greek and Latin Literature (14th-16th c.)”, to be held at the University of Catania in June 2026. The event is also sponsored by the Associazione Italiana di Cultura Classica (AICC).
The conference investigates how knowledge of ancient Greek and Latin texts was transmitted, reshaped, and made accessible through a range of so-called auxiliary text forms – notably translations, commentaries, marginalia, prefaces, epitomes, and introductions – from the Late Middle Age to the Renaissance. Particular attention will be devoted to the ways in which these text forms mediated the comprehension of classical works for different readerships across both the Greek East and the Latin West, responding to distinct historical and cultural contexts and to the resources available in each period.
Our central aim is to explore how service to the reader – whether through explanation, contextualisation, reinterpretation, or simplification – functioned as a crucial vector for the transfer of knowledge, enabling successive generations to approach, interpret, and appropriate ancient texts.
To ensure a broad and representative perspective, the conference seeks contributions relating to any existing literary genre.
We encourage proposals that examine the production, function, and reception of these auxiliary genres, addressing questions such as:
* How did translations, commentaries, prefaces, or epitomes reshape the understanding of ancient literature?
* What strategies did medieval and Renaissance scholars employ to guide readers through linguistically or conceptually difficult texts?
* In what ways did different cultural and institutional contexts influence the presentation and interpretation of Greek and Latin authors?
* How did the availability of sources inform exegetical and editorial choices?
* What continuities or ruptures emerge across the transition from manuscript culture to early print?
The conference welcomes interdisciplinary approaches drawing on philology, manuscript studies, medieval and Renaissance studies, history of scholarship, translation studies, and book history.
Proposals for papers
Each speaker will have a 30-minute-slot, followed by a discussion. Please send an abstract (200-300 words) and a short bio (approx. 150 words) by February 15, 2026 to giandamiano.bovi@unict.it and/or vincenzo.damiani@unict.it.
Conference papers will preferably be delivered in Italian and English. A publication of the proceedings is planned, either as an edited volume or as a journal special issue. All contributions will undergo peer review.
Notification of acceptance will be sent by March 1, 2026.
No registration fee is required, and free catering will be offered to all speakers.
Call: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;cca79b30.ex
(CFP closed February 15, 2026)
CIRCULATING PERSPECTIVES OF THE PAST - EPIGRAPHIC MATERIAL IN MANUSCRIPTS (15TH–17TH CENTURIES). COLLOQUIUM IN MEMORIAM OF MARCO BUONOCORE
La Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy: June 8-10, 2026
We invite proposals for contributions to a forthcoming colloquium, to be held at Sapienza Università di Roma on 8–10 June 2026, to honour the late Marco Buonocore (1954–2022), former Scriptor Latinus of the Vatican Library.
The colloqium will be dedicated to the study of the circulation of epigraphic material in manuscript (and printed sources) from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. This initiative seeks to explore not the inscriptions themselves, nor individual manuscripts, but rather the modalities of their transmission.
We aim to explore to what extent the selection, excerpting, adaptation, and repurposing of epigraphic texts reflected the intellectual mindset of the time, and how these practices may have contributed to the circulation of manuscripts or their integration into printed works. We are also examining the networks that facilitated the dissemination of epigraphic information via manuscripts.
The aim is to reconstruct the pathways through which knowledge of ancient inscriptions travelled across Europe and beyond, shaping antiquarian discourse, humanist scholarship, and broader cultural practices. We are particularly interested in the infrastructures, actors, and textual strategies that underpinned the mobility of epigraphic information.
We welcome proposals that address (but are not limited to) the following three key axes:
i) Types and Methods of Manuscript Transmission of Epigraphic Information in the Context of Print Culture. How was epigraphic material copied, organized, and circulated in handwritten form before and alongside print culture? What kinds of compilations, excerpta, or antiquarian notebooks preserved such data, and how were these manuscripts shared or transmitted among scholars and collectors? Was there a particular style and quality to the presentation of inscriptions in manuscripts that made them more appealing for dissemination than the prints produced at around the same time or shortly afterwards?
ii) Manuscript–Print Interactions. What relationships can be traced between manuscript testimonies and printed works that incorporate or are based on epigraphic content? How did print both stabilize and transform the dissemination of epigraphic knowledge, and in what ways did it rely on, or diverge from, manuscript traditions?
iii) Evidence of Circulation in Broader Contexts. How did epigraphic materials—transmitted via manuscripts or printed books—find their way into more general historical, literary, or encyclopedic works? What can such occurrences tell us about the cultural functions and perceived authority of inscriptions within early modern knowledge systems?
Rather than analyzing individual inscriptions or their philological features, this colloquium focuses on epigraphy as a medium of transmission: its formats, networks, uses, and epistemic roles. We are especially interested in methodological reflections and case studies that illuminate the mechanisms of transmission, the interplay of media, and the evolving status of epigraphic evidence in early modern intellectual life.
Contributions may be in AIEGL working languages (English, French, German, Italian, or Spanish).
The organization may be able to provide some financial support to early-career researchers. This support could include coverage of travel and accommodation expenses, subject to availability of funds and specific eligibility criteria. Further details regarding the application process and selection criteria will be made available in due course.
Proposals (250–500 words), along with a short bio, should be sent to manuscript2026@uni-mainz.de by 30 November 2025.
Accepted authors will be notified by 20 December 2025.
Scientific Committee:
Maria Letizia Caldelli, La Sapienza Università di Roma
Xavier Espluga, University of Barcelona, Spain
Marietta Horster, JGU Mainz and CIL / BBAW, Germany
Silvia Orlandi, La Sapienza Università di Roma
Call: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;27368f48.ex
(CFP closed November 30, 2026)
CULTURES OF VIOLENCE AND FEMALE RESISTANCE: RECEPTIONS OF ANCIENT GREEK MYTHS FROM THE 14TH TO THE 21ST CENTURY, IN EUROPE AND BEYOND
ERC AGRELITA International Conference
University of Caen Normandie, France: June 10-12, 2026
Call for papers
Among modern and contemporary interpretations of Antiquity, there is a striking
proliferation of writings about mythical female figures from ancient Greece. In numerous
dramatic adaptations, novels, and comic books—the list is not exhaustive, and these works
are often linked to visual representations—authors give voice and interiority to female figures
who, in ancient texts and many of their later interpretations, were often subordinated to male
heroes, rendered invisible, reduced to supporting roles, or depicted as deserving of the
symbolic, physical, psychological, and/or political violence inflicted upon them.
Far from the previously dominant male perspective, these adaptations often imagine
how these women themselves experienced their own stories, how they endured this violence
and attempted to resist it. Many recent works of fiction are explicitly militant and feminist in
the context of increased discussion and awareness of violence against women and the
affirmation of revolts. Some examples of reception: Circe, who in Homeric poetry weaves
while singing and mastering the science of phármaka, becomes the protagonist of Madeline
Miller’s eponymous novel (2018). Margaret Atwood—an author who became world famous
thanks to the success of the series The Handmaid’s Tale, adapted from her dystopian novel
in which women serve society only as reproducers for their masters—rewrites The Odyssey,
this time from the perspective of Penelope in The Penelopiad (2005) and that of her maids,
who sang in chorus but remained ignored. More recently, Emily Hauser’s The Golden Apple
Trilogy (2016-2018) and Nathalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships (2019) evoke the Trojan War
from the perspective of the Trojan women.
The increasing number of theatrical adaptations featuring Greek female characters,
not only in Europe but also in the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, particularly
in the postcolonial context, often combines the representation of violence against women
with the denunciation of violence perpetrated by colonial, racist, and slave-owning systems,
multiple forms of discrimination, and/or authoritarian political regimes. We can mention,
among many adaptations, Malintzin, Medea americana, by Jesús Sotelo Inclán (1957,
Mexico), La pasion segun Antigona Pérez by Luis Rafael Sánchez (1968, Puerto Rico), Gota d’Agua by Paulo Pontes and Chico Buarque (1975, Brazil), Antígona by José Watanabe (1999, Peru), Medea, the adaptation of Medea by Satoshi Miyagi (1999, Japan), Tegonni: An African Antigone by Femi Osofisan (1999, Niger), Mojada by Luis Alfaro (United States, 2013), Yocasta by Mariana Percovich (2003, Uruguay), and Antigone in the Amazon by Milo Rau (2023).
These modern and contemporary works, written in such diverse cultural contexts, thus find in ancient myths a privileged medium for representing and often denouncing violence against women. Their reception is shaped by the political, social, and cultural contexts of their authors: the appropriation and transformation of texts from the culture of what is most often the colonizer constitute acts of affirmation and emancipation—a phenomenon that a priori does not exclude the existence of rewritings which continue to justify the violence of patriarchal traditions. The fact that these receptions extend beyond Europe gives them a transcultural dimension, which warrants further analysis in terms of how women are viewed.
This proliferation of rewritings in the 20th and 21st centuries, in Europe and on other continents, is also a response to ancient texts, and/or to textual and visual receptions of these ancient texts and myths that emerged from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. Many of the receptions of the Middle Ages and subsequent centuries—but not all, as we shall see—exalt the submission of these Greek female figures to male authority, denying or justifying violence against them, starting with sexual violence and rape, so often depicted as scenes of loving union and aestheticized in works of art, and ultimately legitimized by a culture of rape that did not wait for its modern definition to exist.
While the concepts of gender studies and postcolonial studies must always be historicized and contextualized in relation to texts and works of art, the fact remains that strategies for legitimizing violence against women—what we call “cultures of violence”—as well as opposing views on the violence suffered, the absence of consent, the suffering endured, and women’s resistance or attempts at resistance, can already be seen in certain European interpretations of ancient myths from the Middle Ages onwards, especially with the flourishing, from the 14th century onwards, of rewritings and adaptations of the texts of Ovid and medieval Latin mythographers. While cultures of violence certainly dominated for centuries, voices were raised against them. This was the case in France at least since the so-called Roman de la Rose controversy, launched by Christine de Pizan at the end of the 14th century in her letters responding to Jean de Meung’s misogynistic discourse in the Roman de la Rose. This was followed by the “Querelle des femmes” (Quarrel of Women), a debate on the promotion and emancipation of women that lasted for five centuries in part of Europe, but whose historical reality was long been obscured, as Éliane Viennot studied. In her Cité des Dames, Christine de Pizan responds explicitly to the misogynistic discourse of the Latin author Matheolus, which was widely circulated, but sometimes also implicitly to Boccaccio’s very ambiguous view in his De mulieribus claris: she imagines and traces the symbolic development of a city of women, which, while claiming and proving the fundamental contribution of women to the history of humanity since Antiquity, must also serve as a refuge for them. The aim is to make visible what we now call “matrimony” and also to reject male violence, starting with the discourse advocating the supposed inferiority of women. Numerous collections on illustrious women have been written over several centuries, very often reworking ancient Greek myths. Jennifer Tamas also recently showed how certain works of classical literature have given women, including some Greek heroines, the power to resist and say “no.”
The questioning of cultures of violence and rape is therefore much older than is often claimed, and the accusations of anachronism or activism sometimes levelled at critical studies of these themes in works from the Middle Ages and later centuries should therefore be dismissed.
What is more, in the course of establishing studies on women in ancient Greece—whose work solidly demonstrates their presence in areas of life previously denied by certain sources and by a whole misogynistic tradition that had been built up around them—the development of reception research has enabled us to renew our understanding of certain female figures in the ancient world. This research is not limited to Antiquity itself: it draws inspiration from it, questions it, and projects new issues onto it. Works ranging from Women in the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers, edited by John Peradotto and John Patrick Sullivan (1978), to the project Eurykleia – celles qui avaient un nom (Sandra Boehringer, Adeline Grand-Clément, Sandra Péré-Noguès, and Violaine Sebillotte Cuchet, 2015), as well as Reflections of Women in Antiquity (1978) by Hélène Foley and Women in Greek Myth (1986) by Mary Lefkowitz, also show that, through various strategies, women responded to male violence, often by challenging dominant discourses. Beyond understanding the ancient world, reception studies that focus on mythical Greek women and sometimes rewrite their stories have also led to a reflection on the relationship that later contexts sought to establish with Antiquity, whether to reinforce or challenge rape culture, as several recent studies have shown (Rosanna Lauriola, 2022; Susan Deacy, José Malheiro Magalhães, and Jean Zacharski Menzies, 2023).
It therefore no longer seems possible to read adaptations of Greek myths relating to violence against women without exploiting and, where necessary, discussing concepts developed in the field of gender studies (for example, but without excluding other concepts, rape culture, agency, the male gaze, situated knowledge, and intersectionality). These concepts allow us to better understand and analyze representations of violence in literary adaptations of ancient myths, to better decipher the frequent strategies of justification and, conversely, denunciations, as well as, often, the staging of female reactions.
It is these rewritings of Greek myths and their depictions of multifaceted violence against women, as well as the resistance or attempts at they sometimes oppose to it, that we would like to examine during this conference. The corpus under consideration is very broad: it includes texts written over a long period, from the 14th to the 21st century, in Europe and beyond, with, where appropriate, the images that illustrate them or the data from dramatic performances. The aim will be to question the perspectives underlying these representations in relation to their contexts of reference. Studying how violence is portrayed in Greek myths will also highlight the similarities and differences, developments, and changes between the systems of thought specific to Greek Antiquity and those of later periods, and to examine the different perceptions of violence/violences and the different attitudes which are attributed to women in the face of such violence, and which give rise to diverse judgments.
How do authors approach Greek myths, and how do adaptations of these myths take a stance, either explicitly or implicitly, within the ideological debates of their time on the place of women in society and on political and social relations of domination and violence? Today, we recognize in these mythical narratives not only physical violence, but also symbolic gender violence, as defined by Pierre Bourdieu, imposed by a system of male domination (guilt, norms, language, discourse, etc.): thus, although violence against women is mostly committed by men, Greek myths also feature forms of violence inflicted on women by women (Athena on Arachne, Juno on Latona, etc.), and these too are part of this patriarchal system, as punishments for disobeying the order imposed by an androcentric society.
From one text, context, and era to another, what acts or situations were considered violent by the authors who revisited these myths? What moral judgments did they make about the characters? Who did they recognize as guilty and on what grounds? What forms of resistance are attributed to women and what comments are made about them, particularly those that sometimes take the form of revenge? What differences can be noted between the points of view of these authors who have reworked Greek myths and those of the authors of their sources they have reworked, whether ancient or later (already receptions of ancient texts)?
We will also examine how representations and issues surrounding violence and power relations have evolved based on the ancient texts that authors have appropriated and adapted. From the 14th to the 17th century in Europe, Ovid was a major source: his Metamorphoses and Heroides inspired countless textual and visual interpretations, with a plurality of perspectives on these acts of violence from the outset, as early as the 15th and 16th centuries. Striking examples can be found in the various stories devoted to Arachne and Philomela, as well as in the rewritings and adaptations of Ovid’s Heroides. Ovid’s works have inspired rewritings and adaptations to this day, with a resurgence of influence in contemporary novels. Other Latin sources have also been exploited, such as Seneca’s tragedies. But above all, when the teaching of Greek resumed in Western Europe and Greek literary texts were rediscovered, ancient tragedies became major sources of inspiration and, through their countless adaptations, multiple receptions of Greek myths about women persisted for centuries. The study of the plurality of their perspectives on violence against women still needs to be explored in greater depth.
Finally, how did representations of violence against women evolve over time and space, from the 14th to the 21st century? Greek myths relating to violence against women have inspired numerous adaptations since the 14th century in France and Western Europe, continuing to the present day. This process of appropriation began much later outside Europe, in the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, but it has taken root there with great vitality. What are the geographical and historical contexts, and the political and social factors that gave rise to and fueled this abundant reception outside Europe? While the adaptations initially seem to be linked to the liberation movements from the colonial empires, they continue to denounce other forms of authoritarian power. What new representations and interpretations of violence against women do they convey? What resistance do they lend to women and from what perspectives?
The aim of this conference is therefore to reflect, from a broad diachronic and transcultural perspective, on the ways in which the reception of Greek myths has represented violence against women, either perpetuating it or combating it. It will also examine the drivers and challenges of this process of reception, i.e., reappropriation, critical reading, and transformation. Why, how, and in what circumstances have these Greek myths been mobilized to express the challenges of other socio-historical contexts? To what extent is the concept of “reception” a relevant theoretical tool for analyzing these representations of violence against women and the resistance attributed to them?
Submission Guidelines
Proposals for papers, in French or English (title and abstract of 200-300 words), should be sent, along with a brief CV, no later than January 15, 2026, to the following addresses:
catherine.gaullier-bougassas@unicaen.fr
lorene.bellanger@unicaen.fr
After review of the proposals, acceptance will be notified around mid-February 2026.
Travel and accommodation expenses will be covered according to the terms and conditions of the University of Caen Normandy.
The conference proceedings will be published in the collection “Recherches sur les réceptions de l’Antiquité” by Brepols (https://www.brepols.net/series/RRA).
Proposed articles must be unpublished.
Organization:
Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas, University Professor of Medieval French Language and Literature, ERC Agrelita (Principal Investigator), CRAHAM (UMR 6273), University of Caen Normandie
Lorena Lopes da Costa, Associate Professor of Ancient History, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
Lorène Bellanger, Project Manager, ERC Agrelita, CRAHAM (UMR 6273), University of Caen Normandie
Julie Labregère, Postdoctoral Fellow, ERC Agrelita, CRAHAM (UMR 6273), University of Caen Normandie
Giulia Parma, Postdoctoral Fellow, ERC Agrelita, CRAHAM (UMR 6273), University of Caen Normandie
Adrian Faure, Postdoctoral Fellow, ERC Agrelita, CRAHAM (UMR 6273), University of Caen Normandie
Call (French & English): https://agrelita.hypotheses.org/9587
(CFP closed January 15, 2026)
TRANSLATING LATIN IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD
University of Bologna (Italy): June 11-12, 2026
The conference will address the topic of translation of Latin texts into modern languages – both natural and computer-based – by combining theoretical, historical, and cultural perspectives on translation. The goal is to bring together scholars from translation studies, classics, modern languages, comparative literature, linguistics, and digital humanities, to foster an interdisciplinary discussion of how the translation of Latin continues to shape the cultural and intellectual landscapes of the contemporary world. The conference will feature two keynote lectures by Alexandra Lianeri (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) and Siri Nergaard (University of South-Eastern Norway).
We invite proposals that address the topic of translation of Latin texts into modern languages from a variety of perspectives, including but not limited to the following areas:
- Challenges arising from the translation of Latin into modern languages
- Case studies of Latin translations that have played a key role in the development of a given national literature or intellectual tradition
- Instances of ideological or cultural manipulation of Latin texts in their modern translations
- Comparative analyses of multiple translations of the same Latin text into a given language
- The impact of digital humanities, machine translation, and artificial intelligence on the translation and interpretation of Latin texts
- Didactic perspectives on the use of AI-based tools for the automatic translation of Latin texts
- Pedagogical perspectives on translation as a hermeneutic tool for learning Latin
- Cognitive approaches to translation and their relevance to the study of classical languages.
Contributions focusing on less commonly studied languages and traditions are particularly welcome.
Please send abstracts of up to 300 words for 20-minute papers (followed by a 10-minute discussion). Abstracts may be submitted in Italian, English, French, German, or Spanish; however, the working languages of the conference will be Italian and English. Submissions will be subject to blind review by the scientific committee. Please send your proposal to translating.latin@gmail.com by 15 January 2026, attaching an anonymous abstract and including the following information in the body of the email: paper title, author’s name, affiliation, and email address for correspondence. Notification of acceptance will be sent by 15 February 2026.
For further information please visit the conference website: https://eventi.unibo.it/translating-latin-contemporary-world
(CFP closed January 15, 2026)
[ONLINE] TEACHING WITH OVID
Online: June 12-13, 2026
Multiple time zones: 9am-1pm ET / 2-6pm BST / 3-7pm CEST
The International Ovidian Society and the Societas Ovidiana welcome proposals for papers
(15-20 mins), panels (1 hr), or roundtables (1hr) for an online pedagogy symposium.
We invite proposals on any aspect of teaching Ovid in the university or school classroom.
Proposals might consider, but are not limited to the topics of:
● Classroom exercises based on Ovidian texts and themes (e.g. love; exile; epic;
tragedy);
● Teaching with Ovidian intermediaries (e.g. medieval moralised Ovids; early modern
translations);
● Using modern editions and/or translations in the classroom;
● Ovidian retellings in the classroom;
● Teaching with the material text, archives, or library resources;
● Language teaching with Ovid (e.g. Latin; medieval languages);
● Producing creative responses to Ovidian texts and ideas.
The CFP deadline is Friday 16th January 2026.
Please send abstracts of c. 200 words with a brief author bio to rebecca.menmuir@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
The symposium will be free to attend, but membership to the International Ovidian Society (https://ovidiansociety.org) will be required.
Call: http://ovidiansociety.org/calls/
(CFP closed January 16, 2026)
[HYBRID] EXPERIMENTS IN CLASSICAL RECEPTION: A SYMPOSIUM IN HONOUR OF PROFESSOR EMERITA LORNA HARDWICK
Hybrid/University of Oxford (Corpus Christi): June 13, 2026
Programme:
10.30-11.00: Arrive/register/coffee
Welcome and short introduction - Anastasia Bakogianni and Stephen Harrison (University of Oxford)
11:00-12:15 Panel 1
The Popular Turn in Classical Reception Studies: Challenges, Methods and Media - Anastasia Bakogianni and Luis Unceta Gómez (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
12.15-1.30 Panel 2
Temporalities and Reception - Fiona Macintosh (University of Oxford) and Justine McConnell (King’s College London)
1.30-2.15: Sandwich lunch (included)
2:15-3.30 Panel 3
Stop, Look and Listen: Paradigms of Reception panel
How To Talk About Classical Reception - Joanna Paul (The Open University
Red Lamps and Shades of Reception - Henry Stead (St Andrews)
3:30-4:15 Tea
4.15 – 5.30: Panel 4
Towards a Sociology of Classical Reception - Christopher Stray (Swansea University)
Beyond Allusion - Elizabeth Vandiver (Whitman College)
5:30: Concluding thoughts - Stephen Harrison
5:45-6:15 Final drinks and celebration
This conference is free of charge to all participants, including lunch. Attendance is limited to 60 in person; there will also be an online option.
Please sign up for the relevant option via a message to Dr Anastasia Bakogianni
(a.bakogianni@massey.ac.nz) by 31 May, stating any dietary or other needs.
Source: https://classicalreception.org/experiments-in-classical-reception-a-symposium-in-honour-of-professor-emerita-lorna-hardwick/
#CFP [ONLINE] IMAGINATIVE LANDSCAPES AND OTHERWORLDS 2026: THE ALTERITY OF DESERTS AND ARID ENVIRONMENTS
Online: June 13, 2026
Following up on the recent publication of a special issue of Preternature (Spring 2026) entitled "The Liminality of Water and Aqueous Realms," which was based on papers from the ILO 2024 conference, we're happy to announce the upcoming theme for ILO 2026. This year's ILO will be hosted by Charlotte Spence and myself, and the theme now turns from such aquatic spaces, to more desert-like environments and their conceptualizations as otherworldly and fantastical spaces.
While the surging interest in the Blue Humanities has focalized aqueous realms as spaces of otherworldly encounters, similar elements also occur in environments characterized by their very lack of water. Deserts are one such environment often portrayed as profoundly hostile to humanity. The scarcity of potable water and difficulty of navigation naturally fosters a sense of danger and unease within these environments, which function as highly imaginative landscapes. Modern science fiction, most famously Dune and Star Wars, often utilizes desert worlds to represent such hostile ecosystems and the potential therein for transformation within such otherworldly spaces. Yet, such popular themes are themselves built upon traditions stretching back to antiquity of conceptualizing arid spaces as sites of marvels, transcendental experiences, and fantastical encounters with non-human forces.
These spaces, with their distance and separation from the normative communal spaces of human habitation, make for prominent sites of mystical encounters with evil. For example, Athanasius’ Life of Antony depicts the desert as a space brimming with demons, and into which Saint Antony travels in order to confront them. This hagiography begins a long history of Christian conceptions of desert-like spaces as associated with spiritual journeys, and encounters with cosmological evil. Elsewhere, we see also the example of Navajo folklore conceptualizing remote spaces of arid environments as the dwelling places of skinwalkers, shapeshifting malevolent figures that are the antithesis of Navajo cultural and communal values.
This year’s theme focuses on deserts and arid environments as spaces that, through their lack of hospitability for humans, are envisioned as otherworldly and harboring encounters with non-human entities. We welcome abstracts on topics related to how these spaces and figures dwelling within them are conceptualized in religious, mythological, and folkloric systems of knowledge.
Contributions might include, but are not limited to:
• Investigating the function(s) of the desert in narratives of religious and spiritual development
• Ecotheological analysis of legends characterizing arid environments as sites environments associated with the divine
• Exploring cultural conceptions of deserts as dwelling spaces for non-human creatures and supernatural entities
• Examination of folkloric or mythological narratives that involve “cold desert” environments, such as tundra, glacial and arctic regions
This is an online conference, which will take place on June 13, 2026. Abstracts should not be more than 250 words for a 15-20 minute paper. Please include your name, affiliation, and a brief bio (50-100 words) with submissions. These should be sent to iloconferenceofficial@gmail.com
The deadline for submission is April 20, 2026
Select papers from this conference will be chosen for inclusion in an edited volume that we are proposing on this theme.
Call: https://www.cfplist.com/CFP/46848
(CFP closes April 20, 2026)
ANTIQUITY IN SIMULATION: GLOBAL RECEPTIONS OF THE CLASSICAL WORLD IN VIDEO GAMES
Oxford UK (Classics Faculty, Ioannou Centre, OX1 3LU): June 13, 2026 ("virtual presentation is possible in extraordinary circumstances")
Keynote Speakers: Dr Dunstan Lowe (University of Kent), Dr Jennifer Cromwell (Manchester Metropolitan University)
The reception of the classical world in video games is by no means a new phenomenon, and the past decade has seen a rapid transformation and expansion of the digital landscape, with release of massively successful titles – Assassin’s Creed Origins and Odyssey, God of War II and III, Rome: Total War, and Hades, to name only a few – introducing a global player base in the millions to the Greco-Roman world – in many cases, for the first time. Scholarly interest in the reception of the classical world in video games has given rise to a foundation of limited but fruitful scholarship, including several edited volumes (e.g., Thorsen 2012, Rollinger 2020, Draycott and Cook 2022, Sanz 2025) and monographs (André 2016, Clare 2021, Vandewalle 2026), and the recent conference New Directions in Classics, Gaming, and Extended Reality (Bristol, June 2024). Likewise, the panel ‘Game On! Teaching and Reinterpreting Classical Antiquity through Video Games’ at the 2026 SCS Conference made promising inroads into the pedagogical use of such games.
While these are exciting developments, the current discussion has largely focused on titles produced by major Western developers, with little attention paid to studios beyond Europe and North America, such as those within the hugely successful East Asian sector. As a representative example of the massive reach and profitability of these games, Honkai: Star Rail (HSR), a mobile game from Chinese developer Hoyoverse, released a massive update (‘Version 3.0 Paean of Era Nova’) in January 2025, introducing its 5-million global player base to the Greco-Roman fantasy world of Amphoreus. Following this update, the game would achieve a monthly revenue estimated at $100 million USD in April of that same year.
In view of this research gap, this conference aims to serve as a platform for dialogue on Eastern and Western approaches to the reception of the classical world in video games. We are particularly interested in the duality of ‘Reception’: both the reception of the classical world in video games produced by non-Western studios (e.g. Elden Ring, Final Fantasy), including those hosted on mobile platforms (e.g., Fate/Grand Order, Reverse:1999), and the reception of these classically-inspired games in the non-Western world. We therefore invite papers that touch on any aspect of the global reception of the classical world in video games, particularly those which respond to the following:
* How do Eastern and Western receptions of Classics in video games differ? What version/vision of the classical world (broadly defined) is presented in non-Western video games?
* How are elements of classical antiquity monetised within video games? How is the ancient world adapted for mass entertainment?
* How do social, cultural, and linguistic contexts affect the reception of classically-inspired video games?
* Immersive world building: How are sounds/images of classical antiquity created in non-Western video games?
* How does the unique interactivity of video games, compared with other visual media, influence the player’s experience of the ancient world? How is the experience ‘embodied’?
This conference is organised by Clare Chang (Lincoln College, DPhil Classical Language & Literature) and Sarah Marshall (St Hugh's College, DPhil Classical Language & Literature), and in collaboration with the Bristol Digital Game Lab and the APGRD.
We are also honoured to have Dr Dunstan Lowe from the University of Kent, speaking on ‘Journeys to the West: Mediterranean Antiquity in Japanese Video Games’, and Dr Jennifer Cromwell from Manchester Metropolitan University, who will speak on ‘(Re)constructing Ancient Egypt in non-Western Video Games’, as our keynote speakers.
Instruction for Abstract Submission:
Please submit an abstract (300 words or less) for a 20-minute paper. In-person presentations are strongly preferred, but virtual presentation is possible in extraordinary circumstances.
If you are interested in presenting at the conference, please send us an abstract in the following format:
Presenter Name:
Academic/Formal Association (if applicable):
Presentation Title:
Abstract (300 words or less):
The deadline for submission is the 20th of March, and responses will be communicated by the end of March.
Please direct all abstracts and queries to the following email: antiquityinsimulation@outlook.com
Call: https://classicalassociation.org/events/call-for-papers-antiquity-in-simulation-global-receptions-of-the-classical-world-in-video-games-university-of-oxford/
(CFP closed March 20, 2026)
#CFP CLASSICAL RECEPTION STUDIES NETWORK (CRSN) PGR AND ECR WORKSHOP: CRITICALITY AND CRISES IN CLASSICAL RECEPTION
University of Reading, UK: June 16, 2026
We would like to invite Postgraduate Researchers and Early Career Academics based in the UK and working in the field of classical reception studies to submit proposals for 5-10 minute lightning presentations on the theme: Criticality and Crises in Classical Reception.
This one-day workshop will take place at the University of Reading on 16 June 2026 and invites speakers to reflect on developments in the field of Classical Reception Studies from the perspective of today’s polycrisis: political; ecological; social; and the crises of UK HE. The theme showcases the capacity for Classical Reception Studies to speak to and address contemporary issues, particularly those that disproportionately impact marginalized groups.
Priority will be given to scholars that are underrepresented in traditional academic spaces and to interdisciplinary approaches that will develop the field in new directions and promote novel approaches to research and teaching in Classical Reception studies.
Abstracts of up to 200 words, together with a short bio of up to 200 words (including full name, contact information, affiliation, and career stage), should be submitted to s.agbamu@reading.ac.uk and polly.stoker@winchester.ac.uk by 4 May 2026.
A limited amount of funding will be made available to those without access to research funds to help cover travel costs. Details on how to apply will be released once the programme is finalised.
Call: https://classicalassociation.org/events/classical-reception-studies-network-crsn-pgr-and-ecr-workshop-criticality-and-crises-in-classical-reception/
THE SCIENCE OF NATURAL PROPERTIES: KNOWLEDGE, TRANSMISSION, AND PRACTICE (6TH – 15TH CENTURY)
Bologna, Italy: June 17-19, 2026
Call for papers AND posters
The conference might be of interest to many Late and Medieval Hellenists and Latinists, and will explore how theoretical and technical knowledge of natural properties was shaped through transmission, translation, and adaptation, as well as the impact of its practical applications in crafts and artisanal practices. By tracing these trajectories across time (6th – 15th century), space (Mediterranean area, Near East, Iran and Central Asia), as well as cultures and languages (Greek, Latin, Arabic, Middle Persian and Persian, Hebrew, Syriac, and Turkish), the conference seeks to illuminate the pathways of transmission through which mediaeval understanding of natural properties and their applications was shaped and circulated.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:
* Theories of properties: explicit formulations or implicit theories, encoding, the conceptual space of properties within the study of nature.
* Properties across genres and fields of knowledge: the technical side and application of properties in different textual genres (medicine, magic, alchemy, agriculture, crafts, fraud, etc.), its application to various purposes, erudite and popular circulation, the combination of technical and literary elements.
* Practical and artisanal applications and techniques: technical knowledge applied to the manipulation of nature, examined in connection with professionals or with specific social and intellectual groups and contexts, and from different perspectives (erudite physicians, street physicians, root cutters, apothecaries, etc.); techniques, instruments, and materials; practices of counterfeiting and adulteration; the role of replication in the study of premodern natural properties.
* Clues of transmission: Manuscripts and manuscript traditions; textual criticism (variant analysis and its impact, the study of fluid traditions); multilingual traditions; corpora, lines and clusters of transmission; authorship, and pseudo-epigraphy.
The conference is organised by Alessandra Scimone & Amine Xhakoni, with the participation of Lucia Raggetti (University of Bologna, UseFool Project), and will feature a special event for the launch of the edition of The Book of Occult Properties by Abū al-ʿAlā ibn Zuhr, as a collective research endeavour of the UseFool Project.
We invite abstracts from scholars at any stage in their academic career with a philological, linguistic, and historical background, or an expertise in premodern material culture. Poster presentations are also welcome and may be included in a dedicated session.
Abstract Submission: Abstracts of papers and posters (in Italian, English, French, Spanish or German) must not exceed 300 words (papers) or 200 words (posters) and must include: author(s)’ full name(s); title of the contribution, institutional affiliation; abstract; three to five keywords for papers, three for posters.
Presentation format: 20 minutes + 10 minutes (Q&A)
Submission deadline: 15th January, 2026. Accepted papers and posters will be announced by mid-February 2026.
Conference activities will be free of charge both for speakers and for attendees. For the speakers, travel and accommodation expenses are to be covered by the UseFool project.
Please consider submitting an abstract and feel free to share this call with colleagues who might be interested.
Further details can be found in the full Call for Papers, available at the following link: https://www.academia.edu/145294551/Call_for_Papers_The_Science_of_Natural_Properties_Knowledge_Transmission_and_Practice_6_th_15_th_century_Bologna_17_19_June_2026?source=swp_share.
If you have questions about the event, please do not hesitate to contact amine.xhakoni2@unibo.it or alessandra.scimone@unibo.it).
(CFP closed January 15, 2026)
#CFP 2026 JANUS PROJECT CONFERENCE: "THE GLOBAL RHETORIC OF ANTIQUITY"
University of Oxford (Corpus Christi College): June 18–19, 2026
This year, the Janus Project conference welcomes papers exploring the roles, imaginations, and uses of ‘antiquity’, especially as conceived and canonised as ‘Classics’, in cross-cultural exchange and comparison.
In the 16th–19th c. encounters between Europe and East Asia, the antiquities of both contexts exerted strong influence on the cross-cultural exchange that took place through the Jesuit missions. Whether through translations, ethnographies, histories, grammars, or even pure belles lettres, the ancient literatures of Greece/Rome and of Sinographic spheres and the intellectual traditions arising from those texts were important ‘canons’ through which and with reference to which communication, whether intercultural or intracultural, occurred. Confucius was presented to Europe, for example, as an alter Cicero or alter Seneca through allusions to Roman texts in the translation strategies of the Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, which brought the Confucian canon to Latinate audiences. The Jesuit poems Paciecid and Ruggeriad donned the stylings of Virgil to epicise the Society’s mission work in Japan and China as well as the peoples and landscapes of those countries. On the other hand, Christianity was presented to China as slotting perfectly into the Confucian tradition. Jesuits, writing catechetical and philosophical texts like Ricci’s Twenty-five Sayings (二十五言 Ershiwuyan), engaged not only Confucian terms but also contemporary debates among Chinese literati concerning those terms. Michele Ruggieri composed poems on theological matters in close imitation of the Poems of a Thousand Masters (千家詩 Qianjiashii). In many ways, the distance of time became a more familiarly traversable surrogate for the distance of space. Cross-cultural writing in this era was also a quasi-prototype for the fields of comparative history and comparative literature.
The focus of the conference will be on Greece, Rome, and East Asia, but other global approaches are welcomed as well. How can ‘Classics’ be conceptualised in a cross-cultural context? How is the notion of ‘canon’ or ‘antiquity’ or ‘Classics’ persuasive? How can a culture-specific notion of ‘canon’ be translated? How does comparison between conceptions of antiquity and ‘Classical’ traditions shape our modern understanding of disciplinary bounds?
The 2026 Janus Project Conference encourages scholars across various disciplines, including but not limited to history, Classics, East Asian studies, comparative literature, and translation studies, to join us in exploring these and related questions.
Keynotes TBA.
This year’s conference is co-sponsored with Korea University’s Institute for Sinographic Literatures and Philology and Institute for Global Humanities Research and Collaboration.
Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words to admin@janus-project.org by 1 May 2026. If you have any questions, do reach out to cynthia.liu@classics.ox.ac.uk and kai.chen@balliol.ox.ac.uk.
Call: https://janus-project.org/events/conference/
THE RECEPTION OF ANCIENT GREECE IN EUROPE THROUGH THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN TEXTS AND IMAGES INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE BOOK (14TH-16TH CENTURY)
International conference - ERC AGRELITA
University of Caen Normandie, France: June 18-19, 2026
This conference aims to explore the literary, artistic, and cultural reception of ancient
Greece through the prism of the relationships between texts and images in Europe from the
14th to the 16th century. How are the different visual and textual forms associated in this
context? How was the alliance between text and image integrated into the processes of
reception of ancient Greece, in the broad sense defined by Lorna Hardwick i.e., both the
reception of its knowledge and texts, and the development of representations of ancient
Greece? What does the collaboration between literary and visual creation bring to the various
forms of reception of ancient Greece? What aspects of Greek antiquity, real or imagined, are
particularly highlighted through the dialogue between texts and images in literary, historical,
and philosophical works?
The conference will take place at the University of Caen Normandie on June 18–19,
2026. It will focus on the dialogue between texts written in Europe from the 14th to the
16th century (editions, translations, and commentaries on ancient Greek works, as well as
new literary, historical, philosophical, and didactic texts) and images. Two main themes will
be considered.
The first theme—texts and images in the book—concerns the dialogue between texts
and images within manuscripts and printed books, from the perspective of their materiality
and content. We will study the different links established between texts and images, the roles
assigned to images in the multiple forms of reception of ancient Greece, and the evolution of
this collaboration between textual and visual representations from the 14th to the 16th
century. Attention will be given to the different forms of illustration and decoration found in
manuscripts and printed works (paintings, engravings, drawings, marginal decorations,
frontispieces, inscriptions, etc.).
The second theme—texts and images outside the book—focuses on the creation of
images that exist outside the book but originate in one or more books, and that illustrate,
develop, or rework a textual tradition about ancient Greece, containing a textual trace or sign
(caption, inscription, poem beneath the image, speech scroll, representation of a book
within the image or visual object, etc.). This corpus includes various categories of works
belonging to visual arts (drawings, engravings, emblems, paintings, sculptures, architecture,
etc.), decorative arts (furniture, goldsmithing, stained glass, tapestry, precious objects, etc.),
performing arts (ceremonies, theater, dance, opera, etc.), or applied arts (fashion, everyday
objects, etc.).
These two themes invite reflection on the importance of intermediality in the reception
of ancient Greece, in other words on the transfers of form and meaning between different
media that contribute to this reception. Furthermore, the intermedial approach is not born ex
nihilo but is founded on a legacy from the theorists of ancient Greek, as Jürgen E. Müller has
pointed out, developing this concept in the 1980s.
The assertion of close links, even kinship, between the different arts is indeed ancient,
as Aristotle already noted, in his Poetics, the similarities between the work of the poet and
that of the painter: “the poet is a maker of representations, just like the painter or any other
maker of images.” Horace’s famous formula, ut pictura poesis , lies at the heart of 2 3
Renaissance art theory, justifying the idea that the work of painters is no less noble than that
of writers. While the dialogue between the arts was strongly affirmed and valued from the
16th century onward, it was not absent in previous centuries, albeit in a less theorized form.
The intermedial perspective thus allows us to address the processes of creation and the
transfers of form and meaning between text and image within a vast interdisciplinary field of
study. Without excluding other approaches, proposals will highlight aspects still little
explored concerning the versatility of artists, the circulation of models, and the strategies of
representation of ancient Greece in the transmission from books to other visual works.
Within the space of the book, our first theme, what types of dialogue are established
between text and image, and in what forms of illustrated books? What roles does the text play
in relation to the image that illustrates it, and conversely, the silent image to the speaking text?
The image illustrates the text, complicates a story, or, on the contrary, selects and simplifies
the narrative; the image interprets the text, allegorizes or personifies a concept, sometimes
alters its meaning, and can make present (“re-present”) what is not said; it deploys an
ornamental function where it is not necessarily expected (in the margin, for example),
gradually gaining autonomy from the text.
Other questions are raised by the second theme : how do images related to ancient
Greece take shape outside the space of the book, while drawing on textual traditions about
ancient Greece? How do they reveal this heritage through the presence of short texts or
textual signs on the image? and how to interpret these different forms of links between text
and image, and these devices of mise en abyme? How do artists use them in their
representations of ancient Greece?
The various ways in which images emerge and are arranged in relation to texts do not
exclude each other, and others undoubtedly remain to be studied in the field of reception
studies of ancient Greece.
Submission guidelines
Proposals for papers, in French or English (title and abstract of 200–300 words), should be
submitted along with a brief CV by December 15, 2025 to the following addresses:
• catherine.gaullier-bougassas@unicaen.fr
• lorene.bellanger@unicaen.fr
After review, notification of acceptance will be sent by January 15, 2026.
Travel and accommodation expenses will be covered according to the regulations of the
University of Caen Normandie.
The conference proceedings will be published in Brepols’ series "Recherches sur les
Réceptions de l’Antiquité" (https://www.brepols.net/series/RRA). Submitted articles must be
original and previously unpublished.
Organization
• Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas, Professor of Medieval French Language and Literature, ERC
Agrelita (Principal Investigator), CRAHAM (UMR 6273), Université de Caen Normandie
• Julie Labregère, Postdoctoral Researcher, ERC Agrelita, CRAHAM (UMR 6273),
Université de Caen Normandie
• Giulia Parma, Postdoctoral Researcher, ERC Agrelita, CRAHAM (UMR 6273), Université
de Caen Normandie
• Lorène Bellanger, Project Manager, ERC Agrelita, CRAHAM (UMR 6273), Université de
Caen Normandie
ERC Advanced Grant AGRELITA • The Reception of Ancient Greece in Premodern French
Literature and Illustrations of Manuscripts and Printed Books (1320–1550): How Invented
Memories Shaped the Identity of European Communities.
The AGRELITA project was launched on October 1st, 2021. It is a 6-year project
(2021-2027), which has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under
the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No
101018777).
For more information on the project: https://agrelita.hypotheses.org
Call: https://agrelita.hypotheses.org/8943
(CFP closed December 15, 2025)
#CFP [HYBRID] IX YOUNG RESEARCHERS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ANIWEH–XI SHRA: RECEPTIONS OF ANTIQUITY FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD
Hybrid/Faculty of Arts of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain: June 24, 2026
This pre-doctoral conference arises from the synergy of two collective projects, Antiquity,
Nationalisms and Complex Identities in Western historiography: Modern Inequalities and New
Identity Paradigms (ANIWEH/ANIHO, https://aniho.hypotheses.org/) and the Seminario de
Historiografía y Recepción de la Antigüedad (SHRA). The ANIWEH project analyses the use of
topics and references from classical antiquity in the 21st century, focusing on their impact on
identities such as gender, nation, ethnicity, and class, as well as its use in the educational sphere.
Similarly, it studies the appropriation of the ancient world in political spaces, such as nationalism and
new reactionary movements. For its part, the SHRA, promoted by the Autonoma University of
Madrid, is organized as a meeting point and an exchange of ideas for PhD students who are
interested in the study of the reception of Antiquity through multidisciplinary analysis of
historiography, art and political discourse. The meeting is scheduled for June 24th at the Faculty of
Arts of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), in Vitoria-Gasteiz(Spain). Likewise,
potential interested parties are reminded that the ANIWEH International Congress will take place
at the same location on June 25th and 26th.
Under the same title as in previous editions, Reception of Antiquity from the Middle Ages to
the Contemporary World, the IX Young Researchers International Conference ANIWEH – XI SHRA
is conceived as a forum for research studies that analyses examples of reception of the classical
world, as well as other ancient cultures (Egyptian, Near Eastern, proto-historical, etc.),
throughout history. In this sense, the meeting will focus on the contemporary world (19th to 21st
centuries) according to the line of research of the ANIWEH project, although proposals that address
the uses of Antiquity in Medieval and Early Modern times will also be welcome.
Participation in the meeting
The participation in the IX Young Researchers International Conference ANIWEH – XI
SHRA is open to current master’s or PhD students and postdoctoral researchers and will consist of
papers of 15 minutes. Contributions in English, Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish or any of
the co-official languages in Spain (català, euskera or galego) will be accepted. Proposals should
follow the instructions in the attached form [please see website, below], which must be completed before April 13th and sent
through an e-mail to the contact address. The organizing committee will announce via e-mail the
acceptance or the refusal of the proposals by April 20th.
Even though this conference is meant to be face-to-face, to encourage participation from
international researchers, especially from Ibero-America, it will be possible to participate using the
online format, previously valued by the organization. In order to facilitate the trip to Vitoria the
organization will facilitate one night's accommodation, through previous application. Further
information will be provided once the communication has been accepted.
Contact and information:
E-mail: shla.aniho@gmail.com
Web: https://aniho.hypotheses.org/
Call: https://aniho.hypotheses.org/5328
26th ANNUAL JOINT POSTGRADUATE SYMPOSIUM ON ANCIENT PERFORMANCE
Theme: Technologies in the Theory and Practice of Greek and Roman Performance and its Reception
Oxford & London, UK: June 25-26, 2026
The 26th Annual Joint Postgraduate Symposium on Ancient Performance and Reception, hosted by the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, University of Oxford and Royal Holloway, University of London, will take place on Thursday 25 and Friday 26 June 2026. This year’s theme will be: ‘Technologies in the Theory and Practice of Greek and Roman Performance and its Reception.’
ABOUT THE SYMPOSIUM
This Symposium focuses on the reception of Greek and Roman tragedy, comedy, satyr play, epic, lyric, and other texts in performance, exploring their afterlives through re-workings by writers and practitioners across all genres and periods. This year’s theme seeks to explore how technology, broadly conceived, has shaped ancient drama and the modern reception and performance of Greek and Roman drama. The relationship between technological innovation and ancient drama is discernible in both the ancient and modern worlds. Its implications range from questions surrounding ancient stage technologies such as the mēkhanḗ (μηχανή); to the relationship between ancient performance and the development of literary and material cultures; and to the role that digital technologies play in and around modern performances of Greek and Roman drama, for example the 2021 Oxford Greek Play, Orestes. The word ‘technology’ itself derives etymologically from the ancient Greek word téchnē (τέχνη), defined variously as ‘art’, ‘skill’, ‘craft’ and ‘cunning’. The link between this concept and the performance of ancient drama is visible in the name given to the performers of Greek drama during the Hellenistic period and the Roman Empire: ‘hoi peri ton Dionuson technitai’ (οἱ περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνιταί) or ‘Artists of Dionysus’. We invite responses which consider such expanded understandings of ‘technology’ in relation to the study and performance of Greek and Roman drama in antiquity and modernity.
Participants are invited to consider any of the following prompts:
• Modern performance technologies (lighting, sound, video and digital scenography)
• Ancient technologies and the performance of Greek and Roman drama
• Transmission technologies, including archiving and documentation
• The impacts of digital technologies/humanities
• The implications of Artificial Intelligence for the study and performance of Greek and Roman drama
• The history, politics and ethics of technology
• Broader explorations of technologies from perspectives of ecocriticism, postcolonialism, critical AI theory, disability studies, queer theory, feminism and posthumanism
The guest respondent on Day 1 in Oxford will be Dr Francesca Beretta, and Dr Aneta Mancewicz will be our guest respondent on Day 2 at Royal Holloway. Day 1 will include a keynote lecture by Professor George Rodosthenous and Day 2 will include a panel discussion featuring Professor Jen Parker-Starbuck.
SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRPAHY
Auslander, P. (2022) Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. Third edition. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Bakogianni, A. et al. (2024) Classical Reception: New Challenges in a Changing World. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Dixon, S. (2007) Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Escobar Varela, M. (2021) Theater as Data: Computational Journeys into Theater Research. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press
Lavender, A. (2016) Performance in the Twenty-First Century: Theatres of Engagement. London: Routledge.
Mancewicz, A. (2014) Intermedial Shakespeares on European stages. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshires: Palgrave Macmillan
Parker-Starbuck, J. (2014) Cyborg Theatre: Corporeal/Technological Intersections in Multimedia Performance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Rodosthenous, G. and Poulou, A. (eds.) (2024) Greek Tragedy and The Digital. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama.
Slocombe, W. and Liveley, G. (eds.) (2025) The Routledge Handbook of AI and Literature. New York, NY: Routledge.
Worthington, I. (1996) Voice into Text: Orality and Literacy in Ancient Greece. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
PARTICIPANTS
Masters and PhD students from around the world are welcome to participate, as are those who have completed a doctorate but have not yet taken up a post. The symposium is open to speakers from different disciplines, including researchers in the fields of classics, classical reception, modern languages and literature, and theatre and performance studies. Practitioners are welcome to contribute their personal experience of working on ancient drama. Papers may include demonstrations or recorded material. Undergraduates are very welcome to attend. This year’s symposium will be in person and online, although we encourage participants to attend in person where possible. We hope to be able to offer a small bursary for travel from afar. Those who wish to offer a short paper (15 mins) or performance presentation are invited to send an abstract of up to 200 words outlining the proposed subject of their discussion to postgradsymp@classics.ox.ac.uk by the 20th of March 2026. If applicable, please include details of your current course of study, supervisor, and academic institution. There will be no registration fee. Please indicate in your application whether you would like to be considered for a travel bursary.
CONTACT FOR ENQUIRIES: postgradsymp@classics.ox.ac.uk
Source: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;8b671cef.ex
(CFP closed March 20, 2026)
AUSTRALIAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE 2026
Stream: Teaching the Ancient Mediterranean World in Australia, Today
Macquarie University, Sydney: June 29-July 3, 2026
This stream invites papers that explore the specific challenges, opportunities, and responsibilities we bear in how we teach the ancient Mediterranean world in Australia, today. Contributions might address curriculum design, embedding Indigenous knowledges, classroom practice, Generative Artificial Intelligence, student engagement, or other pedagogical questions relevant to our field and region.
Submissions should ideally respond to the conference theme, "Changing Minds."
Submissions close: 1 February 2026
To submit a paper proposal, please use this link: https://mqedu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0vtwRoPEVdsanlk
Whether you would like to present a paper or simply attend the stream, I would be delighted to hear from you (ulia.hamilton@mq.edu.auj).
Further details about the conference here: https://theaha.org.au/aha-conference-2026/.
(CFP closed February 1, 2026)
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July 2026
OVID'S METAMORPHOSES THROUGH TIME: PARATEXTS, TRANSLATIONS AND ICONOGRAPHY
Universitat de Barcelona, Spain: July 2-3, 2026
We are delighted to open a call for papers for the closing conference of the research project “The Transformation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Modern Printing: text, image and new readership” (MedOvid, PID2023-153036NA-I00) entitled "Ovid’s Metamorphoses Through Time: Paratexts, Translations and Iconography" to be held in Barcelona on the 2nd and the 3rd of July 2026 (Facultat de Filologia i Comunicació, Universitat de Barcelona).
The MedOvid project studies textual and paratextual changes of the medieval vernacular translations of the Latin poem from their manuscript form to their circulation as printed books (particularly, from 1480s to 1550). We focus largely on paratextual materials (prologues, epilogues, letters of dedication, marginalia, engravings) as a means to explore how the text is used or presented in a new light for a wider audience, and how this contributes to the emergent philological discourses on the translation of classical texts in the early modern period. We also pay attention to the role of women in these printed translations (as dedicatees, sponsors, readers).
The conference aims to bring together scholars who can contribute on the following topics:
1. Medieval and humanistic translations of Ovid’s "Metamorphoses" (preferably translations of the whole poem).
2. Later translations of Ovid’s "Metamorphoses" (17th-21st centuries).
3. Commentaries of the "Metamorphoses" up to the 16th c.
4. Representation of episodes from the "Metamorphose"s in medieval and Renaissance visual arts.
5. From manuscript to print: new readership, uses, censorship, the role of women in Ancient and Medieval works in printing. (This topic is open to the study of works other than the "Metamorphoses". We encourage researchers on medieval and Renaissance Catalan literature to present papers on this research topic).
Submission of proposals: Please send a short biography (a link to an institutional page or similar resource is also acceptable), a provisional title and an abstract of no more than 300 words by Thursday, 15th of January 2026 both to Gemma Pellissa Prades (gemmapellisa@ub.edu) and Pere Fàbregas (pfabregas@ub.edu). Papers should be 20 minutes long (plus discussion). The languages of the conference will be Catalan, English, French, Italian, and Spanish. Papers will be selected according to their intrinsic relevance and affinity with the project’s subject matter. Authors will be notified by Monday, 2nd of March.
Scientific committee: Anna Alberni (UB), Anna Cappellotto (U. Verona), Mattia Cavagna (UCLouvain), Juan Antonio Estévez (U. Huelva), Albert Lloret (U. Massachusetts Amherst), Carles Mancho (UB).
The conference is an in-person event. The inscription is free of charge, but unfortunately we cannot offer any funding to cover travel or accommodation expenses.
Should you have any questions or if you wish to make any informal inquiries, please contact either Gemma Pellissa Prades (gemmapellisa@ub.edu) or Pere Fàbregas (pfabregas@ub.edu).
Conference website: https://web.ub.edu/web/projecte-recerca-medovid/conference
(CFP closed January 15, 2026)
NEW ANCIENT GREEK LITERATURE: CONTEXTS, AUDIENCES, LEGACIES
Leuven, Belgium: July 8-10, 2026
The ongoing HellBel project organizes an international conference devoted to the vibrant but understudied phenomenon of New Ancient Greek (NAG) or Humanist Greek literature (also known as e.g. Neo-Greek). This body of texts, composed primarily during the Renaissance and the early modern period but by no means limited to it, sought to revive and reinvent classical Greek as a living literary language, bridging antiquity and Byzantium with the authors’ contemporary intellectual landscapes. Our conference aims to explore NAG literature not simply as a philological curiosity but as a dynamic cultural practice — crafted by specific authors, for specific audiences, and shaped by particular literary and performative conventions.
Keynote speakers:
Tua Korhonen (University of Helsinki)
Han Lamers (Norwegian Institute, Rome)
Filippomaria Pontani (Ca’ Foscari University, Venice)
We invite proposals for papers on any topic relevant to the subject matter of the conference.
Deadline for abstracts: 30 November 2025
Call (PDF): https://www.dalet.be/CfP_HellBel_conference2026.pdf
Website: https://www.dalet.be/hellbel
(CFP closed November 30, 2025)
[PANELS] 17TH CELTIC CONFERENCE IN CLASSICS
Department of Ancient Classics at Maynooth University, Ireland: July 14-17, 2026
The Celtic Conference in Classics is returning to Ireland next year and will be hosted by the Department of Ancient Classics at Maynooth University, from 14-17 July, 2026. This will be an in-person event.
This first announcement is a Call for Panels, inviting colleagues to submit proposals to the conference organizers by 31 October 2025. Please send on your panel title, abstracts, and the names and affiliation of any proposed speakers to classics@mu.ie.
This will be the 17th Celtic Conference in Classics, and we plan to host approximately twenty specialist panels here in Maynooth with – ideally – fifteen to twenty papers on each panel. (Though smaller panels are also acceptable.) In keeping with the founding principles of the conference, this CCC seeks to promote cross-fertilisation between separate fields and so panel suggestions on any Classical antiquity-related theme are most welcome.
Details about organizing and running a CCC panel can be found on the new Celtic Conference in Classics website.
Any further questions or queries can be directed to your hosts at classics@mu.ie.
EDIT: list of panels of classical reception relevance:
* Classical Antiquity and Northern Ireland
* Gramsci, Marx, and the Pre-Capitalist World
* Lyric Forms, Modern Worlds
* Myth Doesn't Work That Way
* Receptions of Homeric Scholarship in Antiquity
Full panel list: https://cccmaynooth2026.mailerpage.io/panels-full
Website: https://www.celticconferenceinclassics.org/
Call: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;ab685bbd.ex
(CFP PANELS closed October 31, 2025; for calls for papers, see individual calls)
PACIFIC RIM ROMAN LITERATURE SEMINAR 34. THEME: TRAGEDY
Melbourne, Australia: July 20-22, 2026
To mark the revival of the Pacific Rim Roman Literature Seminar after its hiatus following the pandemic, the thirty-fourth meeting of the Pacific Rim Roman Literature Seminar will be held in Melbourne, Australia from 20-22 July 2026. The convenor invites proposals for papers addressing the theme of TRAGEDY, in any manifestation in ancient Roman literature. Topics might include the genre of tragedy itself (such as the plays of Seneca), or tragedy as a theme in any genre of Roman literature. Approaches might include literary analysis, textual criticism and paleography, historiography, ancient philosophy, medieval & Renaissance and neo-Latin studies, classical reception studies, performance studies, and more. Papers on other topics will also be considered.
Papers should be 30 minutes in length, with fifteen minutes of discussion time. The Pacific Rim Seminar does not run parallel sessions, so that participants may attend any or all papers. Submissions are welcome from postgraduate students and early-career researchers as well as established academics. Abstract proposals of 200-300 words should be emailed to K.O. Chong-Gossard (pacrimlatin2026@gmail.com). Please submit abstracts by 1 April 2026. Earlier submissions are of course welcome.
The seminar will be held in a venue in the city of Melbourne, and it is expected that a seminar registration fee for participants will be required to cover the costs. We might be able to offer a reduced registration fee for postgraduate students. If there is a large number of papers, the seminar might be extended for an extra day (23 July). A seminar website will be built in due course.
Feel free to send enquiries to the Convenor, K.O. Chong-Gossard, Associate Professor in Classics (Ancient Greek & Latin), The University of Melbourne - pacrimlatin2026@gmail.com
Call: -.
(CFP closed April 1, 2026)
#CFP THE MARY RENAULT PRIZE
The deadline for the 2026 Mary Renault Prize competition is: July 22, 2026.
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/
#CFP [BOOK CHAPTERS] DAUGHTER OF CLASSICS AND COMICS
Abstract deadline: July 31, 2026
First drafts: March 31, 2027
Final drafts: August 31, 2027
Long considered a medium produced by and for White men and boys, the reality of comics today is that comics are both consumed and produced by a large group of women and non-binary individuals. And this female and non-binary interest in medium has particularly flourished in comics that actively engage with material from the ancient Mediterranean world, including Rachel Smythe’s Eisner-award-nominated webcomic, Lore Olympus, and Mari Yamazaki’s Thermae Romae & Olympia Kyklos.
With an explicit focus on female practitioners (writers, artists, editors), significantly expanding upon the coverage of previous Classics and Comics volumes, this collection seeks to consider ways in which the ancient Mediterranean world has appeared and been interpreted in comics, manga, manhwa, and bande desinée. Bringing together scholars of classics & the ancient Mediterranean world, archaeology, comics studies, gender studies, and queer studies, amongst others, this volume collects interdisciplinary analyses of the particular engagement of female creators with this material. We hope that this volume will encourage a continuing engagement with classics in modern comics, while expanding scholarly discussions about the place of comics within the reception of the ancient Mediterranean world in the modern world. We further hope that this will inspire the creation of a similar volume that addresses non-binary creators and their engagement with material from the ancient Mediterranean world in comics.
Paper Proposals
We encourage proposals for chapters from a wide range of disciplines, including literature, comics studies, media studies, cultural studies, gender and queer studies, and (of course) Ancient Mediterranean studies. Submissions may also include creative-critical or practiced-based contributions.
We welcome proposals in English for chapters of 7000-8000 words in length. Please send an abstract (500 words plus bibliography) along with a brief biography (100 words) to Amanda Potter (amandapotter@caramanda.co.uk) and Natalie J. Swain (natalie.swain@acadiau.ca) with a deadline of 31 July 2026.
If you would like to discuss your ideas with the editors before submitting an abstract, please reach out to us.
Provisional Timeline:
30 September 2026 – Contributors are informed that their chapter proposal has been accepted, and any required amends to the abstract will be suggested
31 October 2026 – Abstracts submitted to publisher for peer review
31 December 2026 – Any suggestions from peer reviewers shared with contributors
31 March 2027 – First drafts of chapters are submitted
By 30 June 2027 – First drafts with comments are returned to contributors
31 August 2027 – Final drafts of chapters are submitted to the editors for submission to the publisher
Call: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;c4a56cae.ex
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August 2026
[EEA PANEL] DIGGING UP THE DIRT: ARCHAEOLOGY, COLONIAL LEGACIES AND THE POLITICS OF CULTURAL OWNERSHIP IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN
European Association of Archaeologists conference
Athens, Greece: August 26-29, 2026
Organisers: Martina Derada, Alessio Galli, Isabella Bossolino
This session brings together archaeological researchers working across the Eastern Mediterranean to interrogate the intertwined legacies of imperialistic and post-colonial archaeological practices, posing the question: who owns the past? By reassessing the historical presence of foreign schools and missions in the region, we aim to move beyond their conventional portrayal as paramount centres of scholarship and instead highlight their frequently overlooked role as agents of cultural diplomacy and political penetration.
While archaeology has long served as a vehicle of power, identity building, and diplomatic projection, especially in Mediterranean contexts where foreign missions have operated for over a century, there is a pressing need to revisit the assumptions, motivations, and social networks underlying those practices. In this regard, the session invites papers that explore: the transformation of research agendas of long-standing foreign missions; the archiving and collection practices that reproduce colonial narratives; the role of national and local institutions in renegotiating heritage ownership; and methodological reflections on how digital tools, open archives, and collaborative historiographies can contribute to de-colonising classical archaeology. We welcome case studies from Greece, Anatolia, North Africa, the Near East, and beyond, which investigate: the changing raison d’être of foreign institutes; the politics of excavation, restoration, and exhibition; the circulation of artifacts and archival sources; and the contemporary ethical responsibilities of archaeologists in contexts of contested heritage. Topics may also include the politicization of restoration and heritage tourism, the role of museums and archives as spaces where colonial logics persist, and the selective construction of “classical” and “national” pasts that have marginalized local and subaltern legacies.
By focusing on the entanglements of archaeology, politics, and heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean, the session seeks to bridge the divide between scientific knowledge and public accountability, between past and present, and between disciplinary traditions and open, inclusive models of archaeological practice.
Organisers:
Alessio Galli (SNS / SAIA): alessio.galli@sns.it
Martina Derada (UniPv / SAIA): martina.derada01@universitadipavia.it
Isabella Bossolino (ULB): isabella.bossolino@ulb.be
If you are interested in giving a paper at our discussion session (15 minutes), please submit an abstract of 150–300 words via the EAA 2026 website: https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2026
The deadline for submitting or modifying an abstract is 5 February 2026, 23:59 CET.
Call: https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2026/sessions/overview/index
(CFP closed February 5, 2026)
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September 2026
[ONLINE] SEMINAR SERIES: STRONG WOMEN OF THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN WORLD AND THEIR RECEPTION
Online: September-December 2026 [dates TBC]
Organisers: Anastasia Bakogianni (Massey), Martina Treu (Milan)
Sponsored by EuGeStA Network, AWAWS, The Imagines Project
This online series of meetings brings together scholars and practitioners from both hemispheres to discuss the stories of ancient historical and fictional women who inspire them and their work. We invite speakers to problematise the concept of what a 'strong' woman means to them, and how our ideas about the position and roles of women, gender and female agency have evolved over time. In turn this affects how we receive, interact with and adapt these ancient female figures and their stories.
Each speaker will reflect on their chosen ancient woman/women or group, as a launchpad for a wider examination of the impact of ancient women in recent scholarship and/or in a variety of modern media (including but not limited to the stage, screen and the visual arts). Speakers can choose to focus on the ancient material but must engage with recent scholarly debates on questions of gender, and/or diversity. Practitioners are particularly welcome to present their creative receptions of these ancient female figures, partnering up with a scholar or by themselves with a scholar as a respondent to foster dialogue and the exchange of ideas.
We welcome proposals from interested scholars, postgraduates and practitioners (a title and a short abstract of 200-300 words) by 6th of January. Collaborations between researchers and between scholars and practitioners are most welcome. Since our goal is to bring together people from both hemispheres, we aim to preserve a balance in terms of numbers between northern and southern speakers. We envisage a seminar series of between 10 and 12 speakers, with around 2 speakers, plus a chair/respondent per session. Dates and times to be decided after the selection of abstracts has been completed.
Southern Hemisphere contact: a.bakogianni@massey.ac.nz
Northern Hemisphere contact: martina.treu@iulm.it
Call: https://www.mommsen-gesellschaft.de/veranstaltungen/call-for-papers/3408-strong-women-of-the-ancient-mediterranean-world
(CFP closed January 6, 2026)
#CFP SAPIENS UBIQUE CIVIS XIII – SZEGED 2026
PhD Student and Young Scholar Conference on Classics and the Reception of Antiquity
Szeged, Hungary, September 2–4, 2026
The Department of Classical Philology and Neo-Latin Studies, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Szeged (Hungary) is pleased to announce its international conference Sapiens Ubique Civis XIII – Szeged 2026, for PhD students and young scholars, as well as M.A. students aspiring to apply to a PhD program.
The aim of the conference is to bring together an international group of young academics working in various places, languages, and fields. Papers on a wide range of subjects, including, but not limited to, the literature, history, philology, philosophy, linguistics, and archaeology of Greece and Rome, Byzantinology, Neo-Latin studies, and reception of the classics, as well as papers dealing with theatre studies, digital humanities, comparative literature, contemporary literature, and fine arts related to antiquity are welcome. We are also happy to accept submissions regarding pedagogical methods in teaching Latin, Greek and other classical subjects. Panel submissions from multiple speakers on these subjects are also welcome.
Lectures: The language of the conference is English. Thematic sessions and plenary lectures will be scheduled. The time limit for each lecture is 20 minutes, followed by discussion. It is not possible to present online.
Application: Applications should be sent via Google Form: https://forms.gle/nf2rHpMZshFrMJgu9
Abstracts of a maximum of 300 words are welcomed and should be proofread by a native speaker. The application deadline is June 7, 2026. An acceptance notification will be sent to you by June 21, 2026 at the latest.
Registration: The registration fee for the conference is €80. The participation fee includes the conference pack, reception meal, closing event, extra programs, and refreshments during coffee breaks. The participation fee does not include accommodation, but the conference coordinators can assist conference participants in finding accommodation in the city.
The participants will also be informed about publication possibilities in due course.
Getting here: Szeged, the largest city in Southern Hungary, can be easily reached by rail from Budapest and the Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport. Those who prefer travelling by car can choose the European route E75 and then take the Hungarian M5 motorway passing by the city.
For general inquiries about the conference, please contact us at sapiensuc@gmail.com.
Call: https://klasszika.hu/suc/
#CFP 4TH INTERNATIONAL CLASSICS CONFERENCE IN GHANA (ICCG)
Theme: Classics at the Crossroads
Classical Association of Ghana
University of Ghana, Legon: September 3–4, 2026
Over the past decade, significant strides have been made to rethink Classics beyond its traditional boundaries. Collaborative initiatives such as Global Classics and Africa, Classics Beyond Borders, the Africa World Initiative, and Classics at the Crossroads have sought to reimagine the discipline as more inclusive, globally engaged, and responsive to diverse intellectual traditions. At the same time, ongoing conversations around decolonization, restitution, curriculum reform, language pedagogy, and the place of Classics in contemporary education continue to challenge and reshape the field. What does it mean to practice Classics in a global and interconnected world? In what ways can Classics contribute to broader conversations in the humanities and beyond? We invite papers from scholars in Classics and related disciplines (including archaeology, history, literature, religion, philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, art history, performing arts) as well as from those working in interdisciplinary and comparative frameworks.
Sub-themes (not exhaustive):
Cross-cultural reception and reinterpretation of antiquity
Collaboration, partnership, and knowledge production
Pedagogy, curriculum development, and language teaching
Digital Classics and AI
Archives, museums, restitution, and material culture
Race, ethnicity, and identity
Gender, sexuality, and marginalized voices
Migration, mobility, and cosmopolitanism
Politics, democracy, and public discourse
Environment, ecology, and sustainability
Classics, the humanities and STEM
Public Classics and community engagement
Decolonizing Classics
Globalizing methodologies in Classical studies
Histories and historiographies
Africa and the Classics
Submission Guidelines:
Abstracts should be no more than 200 words and should be submitted via: http://bit.ly/4 uWxL8f
Papers will be 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion
Deadline for submission: 15 May 2026
Notification of acceptance: 30 May 2026
Deadline for conference registration: 31 July 2026
Conference Fee
The conference fee, which includes conference materials as well as breakfast and lunch on both days, is $100 ($50 for students). Participants are responsible for arranging their own travel and accommodation.
Dinner and Excursion
The conference dinner will take place on Thursday, 3 September (7:00pm), and an excursion to the Shai Hills Resource Reserve on Saturday, 5 September (7:00am). At the previous conference, each cost approximately $50, and we do not anticipate a significant increase.
Special Event: A Mock Retrial of Socrates
A mock retrial of Socrates in a Ghanaian legal context, featuring qualified legal practitioners and a jury, will be held on the evening of Friday, 4 September at the University of Ghana. The event is open to the public and is supported by the Ancient Worlds, Modern Communities initiative of the Society for Classical Studies.
Please direct enquiries to Gifty Etornam Katahena (gekatahena@ug.edu.gh) or Michael Okyere Asante (moa24@cam.ac.uk).
Organising Committee: Peter Grant (Cape Coast), Gifty Etornam Katahena (Ghana), Hendrik Lorenz (Princeton), Michael Okyere Asante (Cambridge/UESD), Stephen Oppong Peprah (Ghana), Luke Roman (Memorial), Frisbee Sheffield (Cambridge)
The conference is co-sponsored by the Classics Beyond Borders initiative, Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge with support of the Leventis Foundation; Princeton University’s Africa World Initiative; and the Classics at the Crossroads project funded by the SSHRC (Canada).
Call: https://casa-kvsa.org.za/2026/03/cfp-4th-international-classics-conference-in-ghana-iccg/
#CFP THE FROBEN PUBLISHING HOUSE AND ROMAN HISTORY (1518-1554)
All Souls College, Oxford: September 3-4, 2026
The Last Historians of Rome project, hosted at the Universities of Edinburgh and Nottingham and sponsored by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/Z505936/1) welcomes proposals for contributions to a conference on ‘The Froben Publishing House and Roman History (1518-1554)’, to be held at All Souls College, Oxford, on 3-4 September 2026.
In the second decade of the sixteenth century, the Basel publishing house founded by Johann Froben (c. 1460-1527) achieved fame across Europe, with Desiderius Erasmus as the star contributor and designs by artists including Hans Holbein. This conference focuses on one particular aspect of the press’s varied output under Froben and his son Hieronymus (1501-63): its contributions in the field of ancient and especially Roman history. Aided by a wide network of scholars and by in-house correctors who were themselves acute historians and textual critics, above all Beatus Rhenanus (1485-1547) and Sigismundus Gelenius (1497-1554), the press published the first editions of historians including Velleius Paterculus (1520/21), books 41-45 of Livy (1531), Landolfus Sagax (1532), and Josephus in both Latin (1524) and Greek (1544). The use of ancient manuscripts from monasteries across the German lands can be identified in editions of the Historia Augusta (1518) and Ammianus Marcellinus (1533), among others. The press also brought out historically significant texts, such as the editio princeps of the illustrated Notitia dignitatum and the De rebus bellicis (1552), and original works of historical scholarship including Beatus Rhenanus’ Rerum Germanicarum libri tres (1531).
This conference aims to bring together Classicists and ancient historians with historians of art, books, and the intellectual life of the Renaissance. We welcome papers on topics including:
* Froben editions of Roman historians.
* The manuscripts behind the editions.
* Commentaries included alongside the editions and publications of other works relevant to Roman history.
* Latin translations of historical works written in Greek.
* Design and illustration of books.
* Reeditions and republications, both by Froben and others.
* The correctors who worked on the shop floor and the networks of scholars who procured and edited texts.
* The broader context of publishing and historical scholarship in Basel and beyond.
Confirmed speakers include Andreas Ammann (Munich), Ann Blair (Harvard), James Hirstein (Strasbourg), Gavin Kelly (Edinburgh), and Valentina Sebastiani (Bern).
We welcome proposals for further longer (c. 40 minute) or shorter (c. 20 minute papers, to be sent to Prof. Gavin Kelly (Gavin.Kelly@ed.ac.uk) by Friday 1 May 2026; we aim to reply quickly thereafter. We should be able to cover accommodation costs and meals for speakers during the conference, and to contribute to travel expenses, dependent on need and distance. Please feel free to contact Gavin Kelly with any queries.
Source: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;4d19ea1c.ex
(CFP closes May 1, 2026)
#CFP FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF STUDIES ON POPULAR CULTURES IN GREECE AND ROME, FROM II MILLENNIUM BCE TO MODERN FOLKLORE
Rome, Italy (Università di Roma Tre, via Ostiense 236)/limited online participation: September 9-12, 2026
Although Greek and Roman literature rarely focuses explicitly on popular culture, a substantial body of evidence allows us to reconstruct what may be described as the folklore of the ancient world. From precious testimonies emerge beliefs and ‘superstitions’, folktales and proverbs, imaginary beings, songs and other types of musical forms, folk-pharmacopoeia and medicinal remedies, apotropaic gestures and practices, along with many other traits characteristic of a popular culture of the ancients. This Greek and Roman folklore can often be approached (and effectively compared) on the one hand with other ancient Euro-Mediterranean traditions, and on the other hand with the documentation of modern popular culture, especially in certain culturally conservative areas such as central Greece and southern Italy. Studies on ancient Greek and Roman popular culture have witnessed significant developments in recent decades. New approaches and new research have contributed to a renewed reading of Greek and Roman authors and texts. Building on the experience of folkloricum.it, the time now seems ripe for organising an International Congress of Studies, aiming to bring together scholars from different disciplines (including Classics, folklore studies, anthropology, history of religions, and archaeology) and devoted to all aspects of popular culture in the Greek and Roman world. These will be the main fields of interest:
1 – Definitions and Methods. What is ‘popular’? ‘Lower’ and ‘upper’ cultures; ancient and modern cultural levels; diachrony and synchrony; ‘popular’ and ‘learned’ magic; comparation and philology; orality and literacy.
2 – Material Cultures. Art; archeology; history and sociology; objects; dress and clothes; amulets; games and toys; frescoes and gems.
3 – Languages and Non-verbal Codes. Non-standard and vernacular grammar, morphology and lexicon; proverbs and popular sayings; gestures; music and dances; riddles; dreams; curse formulae.
4 – The sacred and the supernatural. Cults and rites; festivals; religious practices (weddings, mourning, funerals, child-related protective practices); ‘superstitions’ and beliefs; Evil Eyes; figures of fear: monsters, witches, and others;
5 – Nature and Techniques. Animal-, plant- and stone-lore; agricultural practices; popular medicine, remedies and pharmacopaea; beliefs about stars and celestial phenomena.
6 – Beyond Literature and Orality. Narrative patterns (types and motifs), myths and folktales; fables; legends and belief tales; fairytales; sub-literary genres (folk theatre, mimes, popular narrative literature); popular songs (work-songs, festival-songs, seasonal and quest-songs).
The list is not intended to be exhaustive, and proposals addressing related topics are also encouraged.
Anyone interested in contributing a paper to the conference is invited to submit their title and a brief abstract in one of the conference languages (English, Italian, French, Spanish, German; papers may be delivered in the same languages) of no longer than 200 words to the two organisers, Prof. Tommaso Braccini (tommaso.braccini@unisi.it) and Prof. Emanuele Lelli (prof.emanuele.lelli@gmail.com) by 1 August 2026 (please send a Word document and cc both organisers). Scholars at all levels of juniority/seniority are equally welcome.
We will evaluate all submissions and inform all applicants about acceptance or rejection by mid-August.
Papers should be no longer than 20 minutes. Each accepted paper must be accompanied by an handout/abstract in English no longer than 3000 characters (including spaces).
Only in limited cases it will be possible online participation for speakers.
Conference fee (100 €) includes welcome dinner on September 9th, three buffet lunches, conference material and the volume of the Proceedings.
With the Patronage of Fédération Internationale des Associations d’études classiques,
Associazione Italiana di Cultura Classica, Delegazione “Antico e Moderno”.
Scientific Committee: Igor Baglioni, Simone Beta, Tommaso Braccini, Ignazio E. Buttitta, Andrea Ercolani, Emanuele Lelli, Sonia Macrì, Camillo Neri, Riccardo Palmisciano, Giulia Pedrucci, Eleonora Rocconi, Silvia Romani, Andrea Taddei.
Source: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;757dfcc.ex
[ONLINE] CLASSICAL THOUGHT AND THE GERMAN REICH (1871-1945)
Online: September 17-18, 2026
Conference Organiser: Aaron Turner (Knapp Foundation/Royal Holloway, University of London)
Confirmed Speakers:
Christoph Begass (Universität Heidelberg)
Mauro Bonazzi (Università di Bologna)
Suzanne Marchand (Louisiana State University)
James I. Porter (University of California, Berkeley)
Stefan Rebenich (Universität Bern)
In August 1870, Friedrich Nietzsche obtained leave from his position at the University of Basel to volunteer as a medical orderly following the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War a month earlier. Nietzsche was optimistic for Bismarck’s vision of the founding of the German Reich, “because in that power something will perish that we hate as the real opponent of every deeper philosophy and art consideration, a state of illness from which the German character has been suffering primarily since the Great French Revolution…not to mention the great crowd, in which that suffering is called...liberalism”. On account of illness, Nietzsche spent only a few weeks on active duty and by October 1870 he had returned to Basel. In July 1870, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff obtained his doctorate from the University of Berlin and, immediately afterwards, he enlisted as a grenadier and fought in the Franco-Prussian War until its end in January 1871. While Wilamowitz fought on the frontline, and while the possibility of the unification Germany and the establishment of Otto von Bismarck’s German Reich edged closer and closer to actuality, Nietzsche was already back in Basel working on his major work, The Birth of Tragedy. This book reignited the rivalry between Nietzsche and Wilamowitz, which had its origins when both were students at the Schulpforta and which in many ways became determinative for the future of classical studies in Germany until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and the consequent collapse of the Third Reich of National Socialism in 1945.
This conference explores the development of classical thought in Germany from out of this important dispute between Wilamowitz and Nietzsche and within the political context of the unification of the German Reich in 1871, its progress until the First World War, the period of the Weimar Republic from 1919, and the rise and fall of National Socialism between 1933 and 1945. Ultimately, this conference asks how and in what ways did the question of Antiquity inform and influence the question of Germany throughout this turbulent period and, simultaneously, how did the German question inform the study and reception of Antiquity?
For Nietzsche, by the 1860s classical philology in Germany had grown stagnant. “It is time”, he noted in 1867/68, “to stop bending over singular letters. The next generation of philologists must…take on the responsibility of the great legacy of the past”. Like Hölderlin before him, like his contemporary Burckhardt, and like George and Heidegger who came after him, Nietzsche belonged to a tradition that was strongly reproached by “conventional” philologists for its “radical” approaches to Greek thought. Wilamowitz in particular was critical of both Burckhardt and Nietzsche for ignoring the advancements made by the “science of antiquity”. When Nietzsche resigned from his Chair of Classical Philology in Basel in 1879 due to poor health, Wilamowitz set about revitalising the various philological schools, especially those of Welcker, Hermann, and Boeckh. Following his lead, a new generation of Altertumswissenschaftler emerged, including Diels, Leo, Meyer, and Schwartz.
In 1921, Wilamowitz declared the fulfilment of German classical philology wherein “the conquest of the ancient world by science had been completed”. And yet, despite Wilamowitz’s bluster, the spectres of both Burckhardt and Nietzsche had already begun again to haunt the hallowed halls of Altertumswissenschaft. Defeat in the First World War profoundly impacted the conception of the historical destiny of Germany upon which the German Reich was established. The transformation of classical studies after 1918 is indicative of these misgivings. Many philologists, including Friedländer, Reinhardt, Schadewaldt, Stenzel, and Friedemann sought to consolidate their duty to the traditional practices prescribed by Wilamowitz and the new ways of interpreting Antiquity offered through Nietzsche and George. Arguably the most significant of these was Werner Jaeger, who was as much influenced by George and Nietzsche as he was by Schleiermacher and Dilthey and it was out of this prism of traditions that Jaeger preached the need for a “cultural renewal” through what he termed a “third humanism”, which aimed at retrieving the fundamental values of Greek Paideia and appropriating them for German Bildung.
The volatile and ever-changing political landscape of the German state between 1918 and 1945 is reflected in the shifting focuses of classical philologists, for many of whom cultural renewal became the basis upon which their engagement with Antiquity laid. Despite the growing optimism of a new Germany founded on Greek ideals, and despite the radical departure classical philology had made from its traditional roots toward founding the question of this cultural renewal, the rise of National Socialism soon put such optimism to rest. Jaeger, whose wife was Jewish, emigrated to the US in 1936. Friedländer, one of the few Jewish officers to have served in the First World War, was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1938. At the same time, philologists such as Josef Vogt and Helmut Berve took up the call of National Socialism and began to integrate its fundamental principles into their work. For Vogt, this included recontextualising the wars between Rome and Carthage in terms of race, in which the “Nordic” Romans successfully fended off the Punic uprising, which according to Vogt, was “fundamentally Semitic”.
Between 1871 and 1949, between the unification of the German states and the division of Germany between East and West, the question of Antiquity and its role in the historical consciousness of modern Germany was constantly being posed and reposed anew. As the political and social landscape of Germany became increasingly unsettled and unstable over the course of these eight decades, so too the shape and purpose of the study of Classical Greece and Rome became increasingly contested and, in many cases, radical. Did Greek and Roman studies inform the question of Modernity, of Germania itself? Or did the question of Germania inform the study of Classical Antiquity? This conference seeks to answer neither question directly, but asks, ultimately, what lies at the confluence of these two questions?
This conference will take place entirely online on September 17th-18th 2026. If you would like to present a paper at this conference, please send an abstract (300-500 words) to aaron.turner@knappfoundation.ac.uk by Friday 27th February 2026. Notifications will be sent out by mid-April.
Call: https://classicalassociation.org/events/classical-thought-and-the-german-reich-1871-1945/
(CFP closed February 27, 2026)
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October 2026
TRUTH IN THE CLASSICAL GREEK CITY: LOCAL AND UNIVERSAL RENDERINGS
University of Sydney, Australia: October 1-2, 2026
Organisers: Hans Beck & Julia Kindt.
In the first quarter of the twenty-first century, truth has become a deeply contested – if not divisive – concept. Intensifying political polarization, social media, identity politics, and the deliberate spread of mis- and disinformation have all contributed to a climate in which truth gradually forfeits its quality as a shared reference point. Rather, it might be deployed as a marker of exclusion, used to distinguish us from them.
This conference returns to the period that witnessed the emergence and proliferation of truth as such a shared frame of reference and communal value in Classical Greece. It invites speakers to examine the role of truth in a range of ancient Greek texts and social and political contexts. We will consider how truth – and, at times, its absence or its wilful distortion and manipulation – operates in the assembly and law courts of the city-state, as well as how truth claims are articulated across various genres of Classical Greek thought and literature, including myth, drama, historiography, and philosophy. Of particular interest is the tension between epichoric encodings of truth – grounded in specific local discourse environments – and their correspondence with, and aspiration toward, universal validity.
Our aim is not merely to recover ancient conceptions of aletheia, but to investigate the social, political, and cultural functions truth once served: what did truth mean in contexts where civic trust, justice, and collective decision-making depended upon it? And, crucially, what might be lost if contemporary societies abandon truth as a shared aspiration and horizon of meaning?
The papers presented at this conference will form the basis of a collaborative volume on Truth and the Ancient Greek City. The conference will be held from October 1 to 2, 2026 at the University of Sydney, Australia. Moderate travel bursaries may be available for participants.
To be considered as a speaker please send a short (200-300 word) abstract of your paper to Julia.Kindt@sydney.edu.au by the 6.12.2025.
Call: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;aed65b95.ex
(CFP closed December 6, 2025)
#CFP [ONLINE] AN EXTRAORDINARY SUBSTANCE: A HISTORY OF DEMONS AND BLOOD ACROSS TIME
Online: October 3, 2026
Organisers: Tiana Blazevic (Macquarie University), Ryan Denson (University of Silesia), Charlotte Spence (University of Oxford)
The history of demonic possession in various cultures and religions since antiquity seems to suggest a deep physiological connection that humans and demons share with blood. The relationship between blood and demons is a complex topic for scholars to approach for a number of reasons. One such reason is because the study of demons in any field often requires an interdisciplinary approach. Demonic figures appear in myth, religion, literature, medical texts, manuscripts, art, archaeology, and iconography. The other challenge for scholars is how to best sift through the various theoretical approaches to demons.
This conference focuses on demonic realism, which takes the view that nonhuman malevolent demons were perceived by humans as real physical (both material and immaterial) entities, and not just as metaphors for evil. Such a perspective is particularly useful for studying these ideas as they exist in various cultural systems of knowledge. The idea that demons may have existed in the human mind as tangible, real, and understood as being capable of intermingling with humans on a physiological and biological level, suggests the need for a revision of our assumptions as to the importance of demons and blood.
This conference is the first step in a broader project which will hopefully culminate in an edited volume. We seek to examine the longue durée history of the relationship between blood and demons and the changing nature of the relationship between demons and blood across the periods from the first century CE through until the nineteenth century CE. One of the key considerations is to examine the changing notions of demons and blood across periods and cultures. There will be a particular focus on demonic and/or supernatural realism as opposed to psychological or literary interpretations.
Select papers from this conference will be chosen for inclusion in an edited volume that we are
proposing on this theme. We welcome a broad range of topics, particularly those that are interdisciplinary in nature, including, but not limited to:
• Anthropological analyses or approaches to the relationship between demons and blood in human culture.
• Historical studies of the changing conceptions of demons and blood in religious, mythological, or folkloric systems of knowledge.
• Sociological analyses or approaches that explore the changing cultural understandings of demons and blood.
• Philosophical or theological taxonomies or ontologies of demons and blood across time
• Material or archaeological analyses of the connection between demons and blood in human societies across culture, time, and space.
• Literary analyses or approaches of the history of demons and blood in textual evidence.
This conference will take place on October 3, 2026. To apply for this conference please send an abstract via the link below of no more than 250 words for a 15-20 minute paper. Please include your name, affiliation, and a brief bio (50-100 words) with submissions. The deadline for submission is August 3.
Abstract submissions and conference website: https://sites.google.com/view/bloodanddemons2026/
(CFP closes August 3, 2026)
"CIVILIZING" THE WORLD: CLASSICISM, NEO-CLASSICAL SCULPTURE, AND PLASTER CASTS IN THE SERVICE OF IMPERIAL POWERS AND POST-COLONIAL ELITES (1780-1945)
Warburg Institute, London: October 22-23, 2026
Papers deadline: 1 December 2025
A two-day conference to be held at the Warburg Institute (School of Advanced Study, University of London) in co-organization with the Institute of Classical Studies (SAS, UoL) and the Department of the Classics (University of Reading).
Organizers:
Dr Eckart Marchand (Warburg Institute)
Prof. Katherine Harloe (Institute of Classical Studies)
Prof. Amy Smith (University of Reading)
This conference aims to bring together and foster new research into the roles that classical and neoclassical art (broadly defined) fulfilled for European colonial powers and post-colonial elites globally, seeking critical exploration and assessment of the ways classical visual culture has been reused, redefined and also contested. The conference seeks to investigate classical visual culture in the service of self-presentation among competing nations and as a means to “civilize” and / or dominate indigenous, subaltern and settler populations. We encourage examination of the social, political and racial implications of engagement with the European classical tradition in both colonial and post-colonial contexts worldwide. We invite contributions on works including neo-classical sculpture, plaster casts after the antique, and works such as ethnographic life-casts, the creation and use of which amplified and illuminated concepts of race and evolution that underpinned notions of Greco-Roman cultural supremacy. While the principal focus of the conference is on sculptural works, proposals on other arts and/or the interaction of the visual and literary are also welcome.
Further details here: https://ics.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/CFP-civilizing-the-world-2026
(CFP closed December 1, 2025)
SO(CIALLY) ANCIENT! REPRESENTING ANCIENT AND EARLY MEDIEVAL SOCIAL, ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS REALITIES IN VIDEO GAMES
Finnish Institute at Athens: October 22–23, 2026
Video games have become a significant and influential part of mainstream culture. Consequently, historical game studies have rapidly evolved into a new field of study over the last two decades. The objective of this conference is to direct attention towards two aspects of video games that have received comparatively little scholarly attention; firstly, the representations of social, ethnic and religious aspects of past worlds in video games and, secondly, the reception of the late antique and early medieval periods (however defined) in video games. We also wish to include non-Eurocentric points of view, such as papers focusing on the rarely discussed social, ethnic and religious aspects of the ‘Byzantine’ empire or SWANA (South-West Asian and North African) societies in video games.
In order to encourage discussion between different academic disciplines and to bridge the gap between classical and medieval reception studies, we welcome case studies and comparative studies on the reception - in any game genre - of social, ethnic and religious realities from Classical Antiquity until the Crusades.
The two keynote speakers who have confirmed their participation are Jane Draycott (Glasgow University) and Robert Houghton (Winchester University).
We warmly invite scholars from any discipline to submit an abstract, whether they are PhD students or more experienced academics. Please submit your abstracts and a short bio in English (max. 300 words for the abstract and 50 words for the bio) to ajlamp@utu.fi by 31 March 2026.
The results will be communicated in April. The proceedings of the conference will be published in a collected volume.
Organisers:
Antti Lampinen (University of Turku), ajlamp@utu.fi
Jasmin Lukkari (University of Helsinki), jasmin.lukkari@helsinki.fi
The full call for papers can be viewed here: https://lukkarij.wixsite.com/socially-ancient
(CFP closed March 31, 2026)
#CFP [HYBRID] ALEXANDER THE GREAT IN SPAIN (FOREVER ALEXANDER II)
Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain): October 22 (hybrid workshop) + October 23 (in-person), 2026
Alexander the Great is one of the most famous historical figures. Beyond his own age, his impact over the centuries has been widely studied. Recent volumes (like F. J. Gómez Espelosín's "En busca de Alejandro. Historia de una Obsesión" (2016) and P. Briant's "Alexandre: Exégèse des lieux communs" (2016) or the collective book edited by K. Moore, "Brill's Companion to the Reception of Alexander the Great") have focused on the main topics and traditional lines of the presence of Alexander in tradition, reception, art and historiography, but a lot still remains to be analysed.
In Jan. 2023, the Online Conference "Forever Alexander" gathered a (wild?) bunch of scholars during two days concerning the many ways of Alexander's reception from Antiquity to our days, including a strong interest in pop culture and forms and themes of reception in elements and issues different from the 'usual', academic or traditional ways, like board games, video games, comic-books and manga or TV series and documentaries, among other topics.
In order to continue this path, we are organising a second conference now, but with a more defined context for the study of Alexander's reception: the Spanish tradition.
Proposals concerning Alexander's reception in Spain and the Iberian peninsula, and Spanish-speaking traditions elsewhere (from the end of Antiquity until our own days) would be very welcome. Poetry, Historiography, Fiction, or Gaming would be considered along with other more usual topics of Alexander's reception studies.
The languages of the communications in this conference should preferably be Catalan, Spanish, and English, but we are open to proposals in other languages after previous inquiry with the organisers.
Those interested in taking part in the conference can send a proposal with a title and a brief abstract (max. 300 words) to the organisers' emails before May 31st, 2026.
Any question, please, do not hesitate to contact us anyway:
borja.antela@uab.cat
marc.mendoza@uab.cat
Call: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;16c77362.ex
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November 2026
THE 19TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF TAIWAN ASSOCIATION OF CLASSICAL, MEDIEVAL, AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES (TACMRS)
National Central University, Taoyuan City, Taiwan (limited hybrid sessions): November 6-7, 2026
For centuries, the symbiosis between the sea and land has been a central
theme in Western cultures and thoughts: while land provides resources,
manpower, and technology to the sea, the sea opens channels for trade and
communication. As civilizations grew, the conceptual boundary between sea and
land was consistently redefined and reimagined. Maritime trading routes
centered around the Mediterranean began to flourish from the 5th century
onward, fostering economic, cultural, and religious exchanges and
cosmopolitan unities across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. In
the 13th century, when the Venetian merchant Marco Polo ventured East, he
not only revealed broader markets in Asia (for silk, spices, porcelain,
etc.), but also prompted a surge of cultural interests in the East, real or
imagined. At the same time, the Hanseatic League emerged along the Baltic
shores starting in the late 12th century, linking coastal ports and cities
in the name of commerce. Not only did the organization contribute to the
success of commercial exchanges across Europe (such as raw materials,
necessities, and luxury goods), but it also brought political stability in
the regions.
Beyond the realm of commerce, the relationship between sea and land has
been thematized in literary works for centuries. In Virgil’s *Aeneid*, for
instance, the Roman poet describes Aeneas’ westward travels to Italy after
the fall of Troy, tracing the transition between old and new empires
(*translatio
imperii*). Even some of the oldest works of English literature, including *The
Seafarer, *projected contemporary theological questions onto an uncertain
seascape as if to take advantage of this conceptual no-man’s land to
explore questions of religion and poetics side by side. In the 15th
century, English mystic writer Margery Kempe faced perilous seas while
accompanying her daughter-in-law back to Danzig (now Gdańsk). While Kempe
described the experience as soul crushing, she managed to retrieve inner
strength and faith in the midst of it. Shakespeare himself, building on a
by then established tradition, frequently used the motifs of shipwreck
and piracy
to explore the porosity between comedy and tragedy, as seen in *The
Merchant of Venice*, *Twelfth Night*, and even *Hamlet*.
This conference calls for research from scholars working in classical,
medieval, and Renaissance studies under the topic of *The Sea and the World*
(in both English and Chinese). The 2026 international conference will
include primarily in-person sessions with a limited number of hybrid
sessions. For questions of accessibility, including remote presentation
and/or special technological requirements, please email the organizers
before submitting your abstract. We particularly encourage submissions from
MA and PhD studㄝents in the humanities across the country. Conference
participants may also form panels or roundtable topics among themselves
before submission. Suggested topics include the following (but are not
limited to):
- Maritime histories, literatures, and cultures
- Trading routes and the archeology of trade
- *mappa mundi* and cartography
- Piracy and shipwrecks
- Old Norse literature
- Human geography and islands studies
- Ecocriticism
- Emotion studies
- Empire and colonialism
- Subjectivity and alterity
- State borders and boundaries
- Sea voyage and immigration
- The hero’s journey and its adaptations
The conference will be held on November 6-7, 2026 at National Central
University. Please submit your proposal (250 words for English; 500 words
for Chinese) along with a one-page CV to tacmrs.ncu@gmail.com by July 1,
2025. There is no registration fee for the conference. Please note that
presenters should be members of TACMRS if they reside in Taiwan. Membership
application forms can be downloaded from the TACMRS website or upon request
via email. For more information, please visit the TACMRS website at https://
tacmrs.org.tw/.
Conference Coordinators:
· Dr. Yu-Ching (Louis) Wu, Assistant Professor, National Central
University
· Dr. Claudio Sansone, Assistant Professor, National Central
University
Conference Email Address: tacmrs.ncu@gmail.com
Conference website: https://tacmrsncu.wordpress.com/
(CFP closed July 1, 2025)
#CFP [HYBRID] TARTALO. 10TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MYTH IN THE ARTS
Hybrid/Faculty of Arts, UPV/EHU (University of the Basque Country), Vitoria-Gasteiz: November 17–20, 2026
Myth, understood in its broadest sense, designates a form of narrative not bound to
historical time, yet endowed with the capacity to reflect reality in universal and profound ways,
as well as to embody essential truths about the human condition. In this respect, myth may be
understood as a means of rendering visible, in symbolic and condensed form, the
transcendent—that which is fundamental to both humanity and the cosmos. For this reason,
since the earliest stages of history, human societies have produced myths that, in many cases,
operate as metaphors for human nature itself: its fears, anxieties, and uncertainties, as well as
its deepest desires and aspirations. Thus, articulated as narratives that may appear simple or
even naïve, myths have persisted over time and have continually adapted to new contexts and
circumstances, while preserving their cultural relevance and interpretative potency.
With this aim in mind, TARTALO. 10th International Conference on Myth in the Arts
seeks to bring together scholars whose work explores myth across its diverse artistic
expressions, spanning different historical periods and geographical settings, and approached
from a wide variety of theoretical frameworks.
Accordingly, we invite the submission of proposals that examine myth within any of
the following thematic areas:
* Myth, Poetics, and Rewriting
Mythopoetics, the revision and evolution of myths and folklore, transtextual dialogues
and the relationship between myth, genres, traditions, and aesthetic movements.
* Myth, Media and Artistic Practices
Myth in the arts, sound, audiovisual media, and new forms of creation approached from
aesthetic, formal, and transmedia perspectives.
* Myth, Translation and Cultural Circulation
Myth within translation studies, intercultural transfer and the role of technologies in its
adaptation and resignification.
* Myth, Identity, Body, and Society
Myth and identity construction, gender studies and intersectionality, stereotypes,
power, diversity, disability, accessibility, and the social uses of myth.
* Myth, the Fantastic, and Aesthetic Traditions
The fantastic as an aesthetic and cultural category in dialogue with myth, its presence
in the visual and literary arts, its relationship with gender and representation, and its
articulation in traditions such as science fiction, the Gothic, and the legacy of the
Inklings.
TARTALO. 10th International Conference on Myth in the Arts will take place in
bimodal format (online and in person). Each presenter will be allotted 15 minutes for the
presentation of their paper. The working languages of the conference will be English and
Spanish.
Submission of Proposals
Members of the academic community are invited to submit paper proposals to
TARTALO. 10th International Conference on Myth in the Arts. Proposals must include the
author’s details (full name, institutional affiliation, and email address), an abstract of no more
than 200 words, a brief biographical note (maximum 100 words) and should state if the
presentation will be delivered online or in-person.
The abstract should clearly state the objectives, methodology or approach adopted, and
the main results and/or conclusions, and should include up to five keywords.
All materials must be submitted in a file compatible with MS Word, using Times New
Roman 12-point font, double spacing, and justified text.
Proposals must be submitted via the TARTALO platform (https://www.tartalogasteiz.com/en/congress) by 8 May 2026 for evaluation
by the Scientific Committee. Applicants will be notified of the decision by 5 June 2026. Upon
acceptance, participants will be able to proceed with registration, which will be confirmed once
the corresponding registration fee has been paid.
Accepted abstracts will be published in the fourth volume of the ISBN-registered series
The Fantastic in the Arts.
Modes of Participation
The conference will take place in a hybrid format, both online and in-person. All
papers will be allotted a maximum of 15 minutes for presentation and will be delivered in
English or Spanish.
The in-person sessions will be held at the Faculty of Arts, University of the Basque
Country (Paseo de la Universidad, 5, 01006 Vitoria-Gasteiz, Álava). Virtual presentations will
be delivered via the Microsoft Teams platform. Participants whose proposals are accepted for
virtual presentation will receive the access link a few days prior to the conference and will be
required to submit their presentation in advance (in .ppt, .pptx or .pdf formats) to minimise
potential technical issues.
The TARTALO Loyalty Awards are intended to cover the conference registration fee
for TARTALO. Myth in the Arts, to recognise and encourage the sustained participation of
researchers in this academic forum.
Two awards will be granted per calendar year. Applicants must meet the following
requirements:
• Be doctoral candidates or hold a PhD degree.
• Have participated in the TARTALO conference in at least two previous editions (not
necessarily consecutive) and be presenting a paper in the current edition.
• Not have been a recipient of this award in the immediately preceding call.
Publication
A selection of papers will be published in a journal operating under a Green Open
Access model. This system guarantees free and immediate access to published contents while
recognising and respecting authors’ copyright. Moreover, in line with the criteria established
by ANECA, the Green Open Access model promotes the wide circulation of research through
the possibility of depositing preprint and postprint versions in institutional or subject
repositories, thereby contributing to increased visibility, academic impact, and traceability of
publications.
Articles must be submitted via the TARTALO platform, within the section specifically
designated for this purpose, where authors will also find the journal’s style sheet and formal
guidelines. Authors wishing to have their work considered for publication must submit the
final version of their article by 11 January 2027. All submissions will undergo a double-blind
external peer-review process, and only those that successfully pass this evaluation will be
published. Articles must be between 5,000 and 7,000 words in length (including notes and
references) and must follow the MLA style for citations and references.
Registration
All conference participants are required to pay the registration fee. In the case of coauthored papers, all authors must register individually.
Please consult the registration deadlines and fee options here: https://www.tartalogasteiz.com/en/congress
Organisation, Sponsorship, and Collaborating Institutions
TARTALO. 10th International Conference on Myth in the Arts is organised by
Knowledge Transfer Group TR42872 and by academic staff from the Faculty of Arts,
University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).
The conference is sponsored by the non-profit cultural association HEVENDAY; the
Department of English and German Philology and Translation and Interpreting; the
Department of Classical Studies; the Department of Philology and History; and the Master’s
Degree in Comparative Literature and Literary Studies of the Faculty of Arts, UPV/EHU.
Collaborating institutions include the Vice-Rectorate for the Álava Campus
(UPV/EHU), the Faculty of Arts (UPV/EHU), the Master’s Degree in Comparative
Literature (UPV/EHU), the REWEST Research Group (UPV/EHU), the IdeoLit Research
Group: Literature as Historical Document (UPV/EHU), the Basque Centre for Irish Studies
(Eusk-Cara), Sociedad Española de Estudios Clásicos País Vasco, and the International
Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA).
Confirmed Plenary Speakers
J. J. Benítez (Writer, Spain)
Jim Casey (ICFA Conference Director, USA)
Anke Eissmann (Illustrator and Graphic Designer, Germany)
Juan F. Elices (University of Alcalá de Henares, Spain)
David Higgins (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, United States)
Toti Martínez de Lezea (Writer, Spain)
Marisol Morales Ladrón (University of Alcalá de Henares, Spain)
Janina Ramírez (University of Oxford, United Kingdom)
Héctor Uroz (University of Murcia, Spain)
Organising Committee
Jon Alkorta Martiartu (University of the Basque Country)
Adrián Arana Armesto (University of the Basque Country)
Naiara Berganzo Besga (University of La Rioja)
María del Carmen Encinas Reguero (University of the Basque Country)
Olga Fernández Vicente (University of the Basque Country)
Alba Jimeno Ruiz de Larrinaga (University of the Basque Country)
Alicia Martínez Martín (University of the Basque Country)
Alejandro Martínez Sobrino (University of the Basque Country)
Jonatan Pérez Mostazo (University of the Basque Country)
Tamara Rojo Castro (University of the Basque Country)
Ane Belén Ruiz Lejarcegui (University of the Basque Country)
Scientific Committee
Mercedes Aguirre Castro (Complutense University of Madrid)
Asier Altuna García de Salazar (University of Deusto)
José Javier Azanza López (University of Navarra)
Antonio Andrés Ballesteros González (National University of Distance Education – UNED)
Richard Buxton (University of Bristol)
P. J. Matthews (University College Dublin)
Juan Ignacio Oliva Cruz (University of La Laguna)
David Río Raigadas (University of the Basque Country – UPV/EHU)
María Inmaculada Rodríguez Moya (Jaume I University)
África Vidal Claramonte (University of Salamanca)
Social Media
Youtube: @tartalogasteiz
TikTok: @tartalogasteiz
Instagram: @tartalogasteiz
X: @TartaloGasteiz
Website: https://www.tartalogasteiz.com/en/congress
TEXT, TRADITION, AND TRANSFORMATION IN LATE ANTIQUITY AND THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD. INTERTEXTUAL PRACTICES IN COMPARISON
LMU Munich, Germany: November 19-21, 2026
Organised by Marco Besl and Claudia Wiener (LMU)
In times of social change, the need to refer back to cultural tradition seems particularly urgent. In literary production, this tendency is evident in intertextual techniques, which establish connections with literary works of authority to lend credibility to current statements and writings. Intertextuality therefore plays a central role in understanding cultural and social transformation processes.
This conference will take a comparative look at Late antiquity and the Early modern period, when authorities of the past were emphasised across cultures in Latin and Greek literature, but also had to be renegotiated. These authorities were not only simply accepted, but also transformed in new contexts. The underlying practices and objectives will be analysed and compared during the conference. In addition, the conference will examine the possibilities and trends of contemporary philological methods, especially digital ones, in the study of intertextual phenomena for our own methodological reflection.
We cordially invite you to attend the international conference organised by the Cluster of Excellence (EXC 3061) Cross-Cultural Philology at Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich (LMU Munich) from Thursday, 19 November to Saturday, 21 November 2026 in Munich. Contributions from established researchers and early-career scholars of all relevant disciplines in German or English are welcome. Please submit an outline of your presentation (max. 1 page) and a short CV by 31 January 2026 to marco.besl@lmu.de. Feedback will be provided in February 2026. Presentations should last 25–30 minutes, followed by a 15-minute discussion. Travel and accommodation expenses can be covered.
Call: https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CLASSICISTS;44833f07.ex
(CFP closed January 31, 2026)
#CFP [HYBRID] ANNUAL MEETING OF POSTGRADUATES IN RECEPTION OF THE ANCIENT WORLD (AMPRAW)
Dates: November 19-21, 2026
Location: hybrid/University of Warsaw (Faculty of “Artes Liberales”/Centre for Studies on the Classical Tradition (OBTA))
Theme: Reimagining Futures, Reinventing Pasts: Classical Antiquity and the Making of Imagined Worlds
Call: https://al.uw.edu.pl/ampraw-2026/
Abstract deadline: June 15, 2026
AMPRAW is an annual conference designed to bring together early-career researchers in the field of classical reception studies. The 2026 meeting will mark the fifteenth edition of the conference. Since 2011, AMPRAW aims to contribute to the growth of an international network of PhD students and early career scholars working on the reception of classical antiquity, as well as to strengthen relationships between emerging researchers and established academics.
AMPRAW 2026 will be held at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw, in the milieu of the Centre for Studies on the Classical Tradition (OBTA), from Thursday 19 November to Saturday 21 November 2026.
We anticipate holding this conference in a hybrid format. We warmly encourage participants to attend in person in Warsaw, while also providing the possibility of remote participation for both speakers and audience members. We cannot guarantee funding to cover speakers’ expenses, however, there is no conference fee.
Conference Theme: Imagined Worlds
In a world increasingly oriented toward the future – marked by rapid change, uncertainty, and recurring crisis – classical antiquity remains a powerful resource for imagining and questioning possible worlds. Far from belonging solely to the past, ancient myths, philosophies, and narratives are repeatedly drawn on to articulate hopes and fears, and to envision alternative futures. Ancient thought itself often engaged in speculative reflection, developing ways of thinking about time, nature, and society, as well as the limits of human agency – approaches that continue to shape contemporary debates.
This conference invites early career researchers to explore how classical antiquity participates in the making of imagined worlds across different temporal directions: how it is reactivated in visions of the future, used to reinvent or contest the past, and how it helps to frame the present. Particular attention is given to speculative practices – utopian, dystopian, futuristic, or counterfactual – in which antiquity functions as a shared point of reference, a critical language, or a site of ideological struggle.
At the same time, receptions of antiquity are never neutral. They emerge within specific social, political, and cultural contexts, and often reflect contemporary concerns and power relations. By approaching antiquity as a historically situated and contested resource, the conference aims to foster interdisciplinary discussion on how ancient material is used and reworked in politics, science, art, and cultural imagination.
The conference welcomes contributions from scholars working worldwide in classics, classical reception studies, cultural studies, history, sociology, and the arts. We particularly encourage innovative and interdisciplinary approaches.
Suggested Topics
Reimagining Futures
• Classical antiquity in utopian, dystopian, and speculative fictions
• Myths and classical figures in futuristic or post-apocalyptic settings
• Ancient paradigms of heroism, otherness, and hybridity in new mythologies
Reinventing and Contesting Pasts
• Counterfactual antiquities: rewriting ancient history in literature, art, and popular culture
• Political uses of antiquity in imagined communities and alternative histories
• The aesthetics of ruins and “future archaeology”: imagining antiquity from the future
Temporalities, Crisis, and Speculation
• Classical myth as a framework for negotiating crisis, catastrophe, and transformation
• Antiquity and the Anthropocene: ecological and environmental imaginaries
• Nonlinear, circular, or fragmented temporalities in classical reception
Media, Technologies, and Digital Worlds
• Digital antiquity: gaming, virtual reconstruction, and immersive worlds
• Classical reception in film, animation, and speculative media
• Mythological motifs in AI, algorithms, and other emerging media
Politics, Ethics, and Communities
• Classical antiquity in visions of political futures and alternative social orders
• Reappropriations of classical narratives in activism and critical art
• Classical frameworks in debates on democracy, justice, and citizenship
Submission Guidelines
The Organising Committee cordially invites proposals for papers. Those wishing to present a 20-minute paper are invited to submit an abstract of no more than 300 words (as a Word document or PDF) to the organisers at ampraw2026@al.uw.edu.pl by 15 June 2026. Each individual may submit only one abstract. A template for the Word submission form can be downloaded here (https://al.uw.edu.pl/ampraw-2026/).
Applicants will be selected and notified by 20 July 2026.
Contact: for general inquiries about the conference, please contact us at ampraw2026@al.uw.edu.pl
The Organising Committee
Hanna Paulouskaya and Marta Pszczolińska
Faculty of “Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw
Website: https://al.uw.edu.pl/ampraw-2026/
Previous AMPRAW conferences:
2025: Malta Classics Association/University of Malta/online: November 21-23, 2025 - https://classicsmalta.org/ampraw2025/
2024: Malta Classics Association/University of Malta/hybrid: November 21-23, 2024. Theme: Rebirth and Renewal - Information.
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.
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December 2026
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January 2027
SOCIETY FOR CLASSICAL STUDIES - SCS 2027 ANNUAL MEETING
Boston, MA: January 7-10, 2027
Website: https://www.classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/2027-annual-meeting
Classical reception panels:
CLASSICS AND EASTERN EUROPE
Organized by Nikola Golubović (University of Tennessee, Knoxville) & Maria Kovalchuk (Wake Forest University)
Call: https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/classics-and-eastern-europe-organizer-refereed-panel
Deadline: March 1, 2026
THE INDIRECT METHOD: TRANSLATIONS AS SOURCES
SCS Committee on Translations of Classical Authors
Organizers: Scott McGill and Stephanie McCarter
Call: https://www.classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/indirect-method-translations-sources-committee-translations
Deadline: February 15, 2026
LUSO-HISPANIC RECEPTIONS IN THE CLASSROOM: CHALLENGES AND STRATEGIES
Sponsored by Hesperides: Classics in the Luso-Hispanic World
Organized by Germán Campos-Muñoz, Marina Cavichiolo Grochocki, Julia Hernández, and Brian Jorge Bigio
Call: https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/luso-hispanic-receptions-classroom-challenges-and-strategies-hesperides
Deadline: February 15, 2026
NEOPLATONISM & THE PRESOCRATICS
Sponsored by the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies
Organized by Jeremy Swist, Michigan State University
Call: https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/neoplatonism-and-presocratics-international-society-neoplatonic-studies
Deadline: March 1, 2026
TRANSLATION AND LANGUAGE LEARNING AS SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES IN CLASSICS
Sponsored by Classics and Social Justice
Organized by Serena S. Witzke (serena.witzke@gmail.com)
Call: https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/translation-and-language-learning-social-justice-issues-classics-classics-and-social
Deadline: March 15, 2026
VERGIL BEYOND EUROPE
Panel Sponsored by the Vergilian Society
Call: https://www.classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/call-papers-panel-sponsored-vergilian-society
Deadline: February 23, 2026
THE VOICE OF THE ARTIST IN AND AFTER OVID
Sponsored by the International Ovidian Society
Organized by Daniel Libatique (Fairfield University) & Alicia Matz (San Diego State University)
Call: https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/voice-artist-and-after-ovid-international-ovidian-society
Deadline: March 1, 2026
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February 2027
AUSTRALASIAN SOCIETY FOR CLASSICAL STUDIES (ASCS) 48TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE
Dates: TBA - usually late January-early February.
Location: University of Sydney, NSW.
CFP (and panels) deadline: TBA.
Conference website:TBA.
ASCS website: http://www.ascs.org.au/.
(CFP close: TBA)
#CFP FROM THE IMAGINARY TO THE RUINS, FROM THE RUINS TO THE IMAGINARY: LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS OF ANCIENT GREECE IN ITS MATERIALITY (14TH–19TH CENTURIES)
French School of Athens, Greece: February 25-26, 2027
International conference ERC AGRELITA co-organized with the French School of Athens
This conference aims to explore representations of the material realities of ancient Greece in literary works written between the 14th and 19th centuries, and to examine how authors constructed images of ancient Greece based on its materiality, as they appropriated and incorporated it into various texts. Its purpose is to analyze how the materiality of ancient Greece (monuments, buildings, ruins, works of art, objects, clothing, etc.) was imagined or reproduced, reconstructed, reinterpreted and re-imagined, both before and after the discovery of material remains during travels, explorations and archaeological excavations. It thus focuses on the shifts and, above all, the interactions between, on the one hand, the constructions of the imagination and thought, and, on the other, the material remains of ancient Greece discovered over the centuries, which are reflected in literature.
We deliberately consider the corpus of literary texts in its broadest sense, as it was understood throughout most of the centuries under consideration: novels, poetry, historical texts, travelogues, antiquarian literature, literature on art and architecture, archaeological treatises, accounts of archaeological expeditions, educational texts… The aim will be to cross-reference analyses of writing forms that are often treated separately. Attention will be focused on the texts and also on the visual images that may accompany them, which depict material remains associated with ancient Greece, as well as the practices linked to them (political, artistic, religious, funerary, etc.).
The material realities depicted by the authors are, in fact, sometimes the product of the imagination alone. We are thinking here particularly of texts from the 14th and early 15th centuries, though not exclusively. More often, they reflect and rework Greek realia or elements identified as such: reproduction, transformation, and the projection of the imagination and/or conceptual frameworks are thus intertwined. The authors of the texts under consideration sometimes had direct access to the Greek realia they depict—travelers, antiquarians, archaeologists…—and/or wrote on the basis of various intermediary sources and their own vision of Greece. Their thinking and imagination may have shaped the representation and interpretation of this materiality, discovered directly or indirectly, to the point of reinventing it. Which aspects of the materiality of ancient Greece have interested authors over the centuries, through which modes of representation and for what purposes? How do different representations of the materiality of ancient Greece relate to one another from one era to the next, within the same era and sometimes within the same work? How does the reception of this materiality also vary from one cultural sphere to another?
From the growing fascination with ancient Greece that emerged in the 14th century through to the birth of modern archaeology in the 19th century, this conference aims to explore the fantasized material representations of ancient Greece found in literary texts. Its goal is to trace the evolution of the perspective taken by numerous authors on the material remains of Greece, and that of their representations—that is, their modes of appropriation. In this regard, we believe it is essential to place the works under study in their historical context in order to better understand the issues (aesthetic, political, identity-related, etc.) underlying these representations.
Proposals (including a title and an abstract of 200–300 words, and a brief CV) should be submitted by 15 May 2026 to Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas and Lorène Bellanger at the following addresses:
catherine.gaullier-bougassas@unicaen.fr
lorene.bellanger@unicaen.fr
Proposals may be submitted in French or English.
To ensure publication before the end of the ERC project, we ask authors to send us their text by 23 December 2026. Changes may be made after the conference.
The articles resulting from the contributions will be published by Brepols in the book series “Recherches sur les Réceptions de l’Antiquité”: http://www.brepols.net/ Pages/BrowseBySeries.aspx?TreeSeries=RRA.
Call: https://agrelita.hypotheses.org/10578 (French & English)
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March 2027
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April 2027
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May 2027
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June 2027
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July 2027
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August 2027
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September 2027
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October 2027
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November 2027
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December 2027
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January 2028
SOCIETY FOR CLASSICAL STUDIES - SCS 2028 ANNUAL MEETING
Denver, CO: January 6-9, 2028
Website: https://www.classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/future-annual-meetings
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February 2028
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March 2028
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April 2028
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May 2028
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June 2028
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July 2028
FIEC (INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF ASSOCIATIONS OF CLASSICAL STUDIES) XVIIITH CONGRESS
Ljubljana (Slovenia): July 3-7, 2028
Source: http://fiecnet.blogspot.com/2025/09/xviiith-fiec-congress-xviiie-congres-de.html
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