1. Classics and/in Africa
The research group Classics at the Crossroads: Partnership, Mobility, and Exchange Between Ghana, Nigeria, and Canada is pleased to announce the call for papers for a conference on Classics and/in Africa at King’s College London, July 3-4, 2025. This conference has two aims: to explore classical antiquity’s presence in and intersections with Africa, ancient and modern, and to provide a venue for current research in the field of Classics pursued by scholars in African countries.
Recent scholarship in Classics has redirected the exclusive focus on ancient Greece and Rome to study of the broader ancient Mediterranean as a space of diversity and connectivity, and at the same time, traced the transmission of classical antiquity in cultures and regions beyond the West. Such work includes the study of ancient African cultures, representations of Africa by Greco-Roman authors, and African receptions of the Classics. At the same time, classicists working in African countries may or may not choose to thematize an African connection to the Classics. This conference is intended to facilitate a flexible and open-ended dialogue, where Africa is at once the focus of research and the site of current disciplinary praxis—it both invites contributions on Classics and Africa and on lines of research currently pursued in Africa. Scholars at all career stages from around the world are invited to submit abstracts. Topics may include but are not limited to:
· Classical representations of Africa
· Africa in the ancient Mediterranean
· African antiquity
· Comparative antiquities
· African receptions of the Classics, including theatrical adaptations
· The global discipline of Classics
· Post-colonial classical receptions
· Research in any sub-field of Classics, including ancient Philosophy, pursued by scholars working in African countries
Confirmed keynote speaker: Nigerian playwright Femi Osofisan will offer a reading from his classical adaptation Medaayé with introductory remarks.
Papers will be 20 minutes in length. Abstracts of no more than 400 words should be submitted to Luke Roman (romanl@mun.ca) by November 8. We plan to send notifications of acceptance by January 2025.
Organizing Committee: Hasskei Majeed (U. Ghana, Legon); Justine McConnell (KCL); Olakunbi Olasope (U. Ibadan, Nigeria); Daniel Orrells (KCL); Luke Roman (Memorial University, Canada)
Classics at the Crossroads: Partnership, Mobility, and Exchange Between Ghana, Nigeria, and Canada, funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada Partnership Development Grant (Co-directors: Olakunbi Olasope, Hasskei Majeed, and Luke Roman)
2. Contextualising the past in the Alban Hills
Situated ca. 25 km south of Rome, the Alban Hills were closely linked to the mythical, religious, and political core of Rome. The aim of the conference is to shed new light on this highly important and geographically limited region. Drawing on the exciting results of recent studies and ongoing investigations in the area, we wish to invigorate research in the Alban Hills, by looking at this significant region in its own right, and by contextualizing some of the new findings within the broader Mediterranean during the Late Republican and Imperial periods.
The fundamental premise of the conference is inspired by the Danish-Italian project: Contextualising the past in the Alban Hills (Colli Albani), that was launched in 2017 (https://www.villa-santa-
The important results of the ongoing excavations challenge both the chronology and the previous interpretations of the building complex. They indicate that the site had a longer history than previously thought, with evidence of occupation from at least the Archaic period onwards. The site also underwent numerous refurbishments over the centuries, both in ancient and modern times. Three features, in particular, deserve attention, for they open up important new questions that indicate that some of our findings should perhaps be contextualised within a broader Mediterranean framework: 1. The monumentality and complex plan of the structure in opus quadratum in the north-western area of the site. One work hypothesis was that the structure should be identified as the Sanctuary of Bona Dea mentioned by Cicero, but while it clearly refers to the foundations of a huge building, its interpretation as a sacred building is not yet ascertained. 2. Water was a fundamental component within the building complex in antiquity. The site is characterised by an extensive infrastructure of water distribution and bottle-shaped cisterns, and a drainage system that connects the site to the immediate area. 3. The exceptional discovery of a ritual deposit with burnt fragments of 11 vessels and clay sealings (cretulae) with figural decorations. These sealings are evidently the very first to have been found in the Italian peninsula.
Part of the conference will be dedicated to the presentation and discussion of the results of the ongoing investigations at Villa Santa Caterina but with the aim of establishing and facilitating the collaboration with various other projects we also welcome papers concerning other ongoing archaeological projects in the Colli Albani. In particular, we welcome papers focusing on various approaches to the study of sacred landscapes, public-private cults, villas, cisterns and water systems, sealings/papyri and archives, also in a broader comparative Mediterranean context.
With this open call-for-papers we wish to invite both experienced researchers and junior researchers (post-docs and PhD students) to submit proposals for contributions. From the submitted proposals, the organisers will choose approximately 15-20 papers to be presented at the conference.
The conference will consist of 20-minute papers followed by 10-minute discussions. Preferably papers should be presented in English, but contributions in Italian, German, or French are also accepted.
The conference will take place at the Danish Institute at Rome, via Omero 18, 00197 Roma (RM), 8 to 9 January 2025.
Submission Guidelines: Please submit your title and a 400-word abstract by email to the organizers. The deadline for submission is October 15, 2024, and the applicants will be notified of our decisions by the end of October.
On behalf of the Danish-Italian project
Niels Bargfeldt
Copenhagen University
nielsbargfeldt@hotmail.com
The conference is supported by the Carlsberg Foundation
3. Acrostics and Telestichs in Latin Poetry
Date and place: March-April 2025; Università degli Studi di Torino, Turin (Italy)
Deadline for submissions: 31st October 2024
Much discussion has been made around lusus in ancient poetry: are they intentional stylistic features created by poets or strings of letters that fortuitously make up meaningful words? Can we reconstruct the artistic techniques and literary conventions within the intellectual relationship between author and reader, which enable the latter to identify the cryptograms embedded in poems? The new tools developed in Digital Humanities, combined with the analysis based on textual hermeneutics, allow us to deepen this theme of debate, especially the question of of the intentionality or randomness of lusus, as well as their success within Latin literature, from its origins to the Late Antiquity.
This conference focuses on acrostics and telestichs in Latin poetry, and tries to answer some of these questions. The first session of the conference will include presentations by scholars who have made significant contributions to this topic; on the second day, speakers interested in the conference are invited to propose their papers on acrostics and telestichs. Each presentation will be 25-30 minutes long.
Prospective speakers are invited to send an abstract (max. 500 words + essential bibliography) must be sent as a Word document, joint with a CV (max. 1 page), to Federica Lazzerini (federica.lazzerini@unito.it), who will forward them anonymously to the scientific committee for evaluation.
In the spirit of a fruitful exchange of ideas, participants will be asked to prepare a written version of their speech, along with a short bibliography, two weeks before the conference which will be share with all those who will attend the event. The aim is to give the opportunity to consult all the papers in advance: for this reason, everyone is asked to prepare at least one question on all papers, so as to facilitate critical debate on the matter.
The conference proceedings will be published by an internation editor following a double-peer review process and with the approval of the scientific committee. Contributors who wish to have their presentation included in the proceeding volume will be asked to send their chapter no later than June 30th, 2025.
Scientific committee: Alberto CROTTO (Università di Torino), Andrea BALBO (Università di Torino), Ermanno MALASPINA (Università di Torino), Massimo MANCA (Università di Torino), Alessandro SCHIESARO (Scuola Normale Superiore)
Organizing committee: Fabio BELLORIO (Università di Torino – Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt), Federica LAZZERINI (Università di Torino), Alessandro MANDRINO (Università di Torino)
4. Association of Ancient Historians Annual Meeting
The Annual Meeting of the Association of Ancient Historians will be held at the University of Cincinnati from the 16th to the 18th of April, 2025. The call for papers can be found at: https://classics.uc.edu/aah-20
Additional information on the conference will be posted as it becomes available.
5. Wearing Antiquity
The deadline to submit a proposal for the Wearing Antiquity conference is approaching - 30 September
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Wearing antiquity: modern fashion and the past 2000 BCE - 1000 AD
9th International Conference IMAGINES
19-21 March 2025, Senate House, London
The past is an alluring place. It has been a long standing influence for artists that not only seek inspiration for their work but also to establish a connection between that past and their own time.
Even fashion has not remained insensitive to the influence of antiquity; its constant process of renewal makes it the ideal means to bring the past to the general public that might have limited access to other ways of interacting with the past. Fashion is also a way of expressing one’s identity, that might be rooted in distant lands and times, as costume parties of the 19th century already showed in a very clear way.
To find antiquities in fashion you only need to look around; one of the fashion trends for Spring 2024 is the use of drapery that brings out “your inner Greek goddess” according to fashion writers. Currently on sale by the firm Jean Paul Gaultier is their Collection “Burn” that features items such as the “Statue draped dress” or the “Statue print pants” made out of material printed with the image of the Venus de Milo. Printed in life size the body of the statue blends with the body of the wearer creating a striking image. This collection is in itself a new reading of Gaultier’s runway collection of Spring 1999 that combined Greek sculpture with Japanese kimonos. A more wearable version of the Statue items was offered by Zara with a tulle dress printed with an image of the Three Graces group by Antonio Canova.
The British department store Liberty released for 2023 Autumn-Winter the Odyssey fabric collection inspired by “the world of ancient myths and legends to explore Liberty’s very own heritage of storytelling”. The collection made extensive use of Greek mythology and architecture but also of artists such as William Morris and Andy Warhol.
However, fashion is much more than clothes and fabric. In Autumn 2023, Lancôme launched its Louvre Collection, designed by the makeup artist Lisa Eldridge. It featured an eyeshadow palette inspired by the XIXth century marble bust of Corinne, the Greek poet of the Vth century BC. and an advertising campaign that with the line “beauty is a living art”, featured the actress Zendaya and the Victory of Samothrace.
Furthermore, the heavy eye liner worn by ancient Egyptians have influenced contemporary make up directly through Egyptian art but mainly through secondary sources such film or music. The Cleopatras of Theda Bara and Elizabeth Taylor have had a long lasting influence in make-up trends and adopted by artists such as Siouxie and subsequently by the general public.
The conference Wearing antiquity aims to bring together scholars and practitioners (fashion designers, pattern cutters, publicists and others) to discuss how and why the past remains such an important influence on modern fashion. Understanding fashion in its broader sense and including also (and not only): jewellery, shoes, makeup, hairstyles, tattoos or publicity.
We aim to have both papers and demonstrations on the following topics (the list is not extensive):
- Fashion projects and designers that have been inspired by antiquity
- Pattern cutting and technology - Fortuny pleating
- The role of antiquity in advertising and fashion discourse
- Archaeological discoveries and fashion
- Body modification - dress reform, tattooing
- Fashion and national identity
Proposals (300 words) and short biographies should be sent to Charo Rovira Guardiola (rosario.rovira@sas.ac.uk) no later than the 30th September 2024. The abstract should clearly state the argument of the paper, in keeping with the topic of the conference. The language of the conference is English but we will consider other languages. The conference will be in person and online.
A selection of contributions (in English) will be considered for a volume publication by Bloomsbury in the series ‘Imagines – Classical Receptions in the Visual and Performing Arts’.
For more information on the Imagines Project: https://www.imagines-project.o
Organising committee:
Charo Rovira Guardiola (Institute of Classical Studies Library)
Marta Garcia Morcillo (Institute of Classical Studies)
Katherine Harloe (Institute of Classical Studies)
6. Ancient and Medieval Greek Etymology as Heuristic and Pedagogic Tool. The Case of Common Words. 4th International Conference of ETYGRAM.
Siena, Italy
April 28-30, 2025
https://www.cepam.cnrs.fr/
Organizers: Simone Beta (Siena Univ.), Maria Chriti (Aristotle Univ.), Claire Le Feuvre (Sorbonne Université), Athanassios Vergados (Newcastle University), Arnaud Zucker (Univ. Côte d’Azur, France).
This international conference, to be held in Sienna in April 2025 aims to attract researchers, mainly philologists, linguists and philosophers interested in ancient practices of etymologizing in Ancient Greek and Byzantine literature. It is promoted by the International Association ETYGRAM (http://www.cepam.cnrs.fr/
The 4th Conference will focus on common vocabulary (i.e. excluding toponyms, theonyms, anthroponyms), a lot of work having already been done on the etymology of proper names. the conference will address the following issues, without excluding other relative topics:
- What is used as etymological material and how is etymology used in intellectual and scientific debates?
- What role etymology plays in educational texts and contexts ?
- How is etymological analysis elaborated in literary instructive contexts, such as didactic poetry and rhetorical training?
- How are etymologies transmitted and modified over time in the different sources?
The organizers welcome proposals (in French, English, Greek, German, Spanish or Italian). Note that a written version of the papers, in English, will be rapidly submitted to De Gruyter, in the series Trends in Classics, where a book Ancient and Medieval Greek Etymology. Theory and Practice I (2021) is already published, and a second volume in press (2024). Conference papers will be 25 minutes, with 10 minutes for discussion.
Interested scholars from all academic levels are invited to send an abstract of no more than 500 words to etygram2025@univ-cotedazur.
Participants will be notified in November 01, 2024. Accepted papers will be presented on an equal footing with invited speakers. Accommodation and meal expenses will be covered by the organization.
7. XVIII Melammu Symposium: Knowledge Transfer between and across Ancient Empires (5-7 Sept 2025, Changchun)
Date: 5–7 September 2025
Location: Institute for the History of Ancient Civilizations (IHAC), Northeast Normal University (NENU), 5268 Renmin Street, 130024 Changchun
CfP deadline: 15 December 2024
Paper confirmation: 15 January 2025
Submissions or questions shall be sent to: Prof. Dr. Sven Günther, svenguenther@nenu.edu.cn
The communicative turn historical studies have seen in recent years has also reshaped the way we understand information flow and knowledge transfer. It is not anymore a simple sender-receiver-model that is applied to examine ancient sources, but a full acknowledgement of the complex dynamics of communication with all the accompanying, enabling, and limiting political, social, legal, economic, and religious-cultural frameworks that matters in transferring, that is, transmitting and receiving formal and tacit knowledge between persons and across times. In the XVIII Melammu Symposium, we aim at connecting the topic of knowledge transfer to the imperial framework.
Paper proposals are invited from all ancient studies disciplines and might address, but are, of course, not limited to, questions of the languages, ways, forms, agents, possibilities, ideologies, limits etc. knowledge was transferred through, both between contemporaneous and across consecutive ancient empires; but also those cases where knowledge was not transferred, intentionally or by chance, and potential feedback of these (non-)transfers on the respective systems.
3–4 travel bursaries are available for doctoral students.
8. Special Issue: Multilingual Literary Practices in a Multicultural world, from Archaic Greece to the Byzantine Empire
We are seeking contributions for an upcoming thematic issue of the Journal of Literary Multilingualism published by Brill.
https://brill.com/view/
This special issue acknowledges the inherently multilingual and multidialectal nature of the ancient Greco-Roman and Byzantine worlds.
We bring together researchers, methodologies, and sources with the objective of developing a more integrated approach toward multilingual practices in the ancient Greco-Roman world up to the Byzantine Empire. The general goal of the volume is to understand better what the linguistic repertoire of multilingual speakers and writers looked like, how and why writers brought together features (ranging from specific linguistic patterns to larger and more abstract cultural forms such as genres) from different cultural traditions, and what the intended effect was, or, vice versa, why they consciously resisted them.
• Contributions might include but are not restricted to the following questions and topics:
• Systematic studies of multilingualism in the ancient Greek and Byzantine worlds:
• Consideration of different forms of multilingualism (translations, “errors” in translations, lexica, etc.)
• Studies of linguistic varieties in different literary genres (such as dialectal varieties) as forms of multilingualism
• Analysis of multilingual lexica/grammars
• Studies of private writings and others meant for public consumption to determine levels of multilingualism
• Considerations of multilingualism in literature in conjunction with multiculturalism (lexical and social variations, multilingual literary practices alongside multicultural ones)
• Insights into the reception of ancient texts through translations.
Informal queries are welcome. Please direct queries to Eleni Bozia, University of Florida (bozia@ufl.edu). The submission deadline is October 2024.
Articles should be 6,000 to 8,000 words in length. Acceptance of the final versions of articles is subject to double-anonymous peer review. Please send articles as email attachments to Eleni Bozia (bozia@ufl.edu), Klaas Bentein (klaas.bentein@ugent.be), and Chiara Monaco (chiara.monaco@ugent.be).
9. The Values of Language(s) in the Ancient World
Reminder: Call for Papers
Penn-Leiden Colloquium on Ancient Values XIII:
The Values of Language(s) in the Ancient World
Leiden University, 12-14 June 2025
The poet Ennius used to say that he had three hearts, because he knew how to speak Greek, Oscan, and Latin (Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 17.17.1). Language is who we are and who we want to be: this is true in ancient times as well as in the contemporary world. While language as such is crucial for human communities to survive, language diversity can be a cause of dispute: the story of the Tower of Bable has never lost its significance. In the ancient Greek world, reflections on the nature and power of language can be found from the poems of Homer and Hesiod onwards. Logos was one of the most prominent objects of research for the presocratic philosophers, sophists, Plato, Aristotle, and Stoics; Greek and Roman grammarians, rhetoricians, and critics thought about language as a system of signs, as a method of communication, and as a tool for persuasion.
This conference will examine the ways in which Greeks and Romans valued language in general, their own languages, and other languages. What values are connected with Greek and Latin terms like λόγος, γλῶσσα, διάλεκτος,
Lucretius complains about the poverty of the Latin language (patrii sermonis egestas). How did Romans think about the language of the Greeks, and how did Greeks evaluate Latin? What are some of the Greek and Roman prejudices about ‘barbarian’ languages? What policies were adopted to discourage the use of languages other than Greek or Latin, such as Syrian, Hebrew or Etruscan? How did language values structure understandings of racial and ethnic difference, of class difference, and of gender? In what circumstances was it acceptable for Romans to speak Greek? What narratives were told about migrants who struggled to speak the language of their hosts, or about people who were fluent in two or more languages, like Ennius? How did anthropocentrism shape the understanding of language in the ancient world? Through these and further questions the conference will examine how language and languages were valued in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds.
Papers may address ancient perspectives on the languages of gods, human beings, animals, and even nature. They may discuss the values of written, spoken and body languages, ancient reflections on the nature, origins, and histories of languages, and ancient views on bilingualism, multilingualism, language diversity, and hierarchies of languages or dialects. We are interested in literary, philosophical, and rhetorical approaches to language, but also in ancient language politics, including regulations for the use of language in contexts of law, education, religion, migration, and administration. ‘The Values of Language(s)’ is a highly relevant topic in our contemporary society, in which questions of languages are contested issues. Examples include the call for linguistic integration of minority groups and the debates about the use of English at Dutch universities.
This conference will not only celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Penn-Leiden Colloquia on Ancient Values, but also pay tribute to professor Ineke Sluiter, co-founder (with Ralph Rosen) of the Penn-Leiden Colloquia. Ineke Sluiter is co-organizer of many of the colloquia, co-editor of many volumes, and one of the world’s leading scholars of ancient views on language.
We invite abstracts of 300 words (maximum) for papers (25 minutes + 10 minutes discussion). We hope to bring together junior and senior researchers in all areas of ancient world studies, including literature, philosophy, linguistics, history, and visual and material culture. Selected papers will be considered for publication by De Gruyter Brill. Unfortunately, the organizers will probably not be able to recompense travel expenses. They hope, but cannot promise to be able to offer some assistance for accommodation.
Please send your abstract (in English) by 1 October 2024 as email attachment to the organizers:
Casper de Jonge (c.c.de.jonge@hum.leidenuniv.
Rita Copeland (rcopelan@sas.upenn.edu)
10. Radicalism and its Uses in Late Roman History
I hope to organise a session for the 2025 International Medieval Congress at Leeds (7–10 July) on the topic of “Radicalism and its Uses in Late Roman History” and invite your proposals for relevant papers.
Radicalism, as a form of sociopolitical thought or action that aims at fully upturning the roots (radices) of a problem, must necessarily pose some threat to the status quo. The late Roman and/or Byzantine status quo is generally regarded to have been particularly impervious to such threats. One dominant narrative of Christianisation is that the ‘oppositional radicalism of the early church’, especially the radical potential of its social ethics, was defused in the rapprochement with mainstream Roman society and gave way to a non-radical ‘establishment outlook’ (Harper 2016, 141). This was, for some, unavoidable: ‘as Christianity was progressively identified with the Empire’, Christian ideas ‘gradually lost their radical character’ (Merianos & Gotsis 2017, 205). For others, it was a conscious counter-radical project, as ‘upper-class Christian leaders’ learned ‘to accommodate the Bible’s most radical social critiques… into something less threatening’ (Maxwell 2021, 158). Either way, the consequence is a model of Christian Roman society that affords little space for radicalism, even at the margins, over a thousand-year period.
This model is under challenge. The editors of the 2018 Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium criticise the field’s ‘persistent tendency… to subordinate individuals to normative ideas’ and to assume that late Romans ‘could not conceive a particular radical, heterodox, or supposedly modern idea because they could not think outside the box of their imperial-Orthodox framework’ (Kaldellis & Siniossoglou 2017, 18). “Radicalism” is one lens through which historians might meet this call for more generous study of the non-conformist elements of late Roman/Byzantine intellectual and political culture. Yet while our overarching scholarly narratives of late Roman history are just beginning to admit the possibility of “radicalism”, the terms “radical” and “radicals” have always appealed to any historian who wishes to emphasise moments of difference or divergence. We hear, for example, of the ‘radical Christian ascetics’ (Cullhed 2016, 352) who made a ‘radical rejection of normal life’ (Hezser 2018, 20), though their movements perhaps safely diverted the more threatening anti-wealth instincts of some Christians. We hear of ‘religious radicals’ (de Wet 2018, 74) and ‘guerilla… radical[s]’ (Drake 2002, 229) who made use of violence to advance their cause. We even hear of radical emperors pursuing ‘radical administrative reform’ (Bell, 2013, 165). And the late Roman past, whatever radical ideas it gave rise to itself, is productive ground for public-facing historians who think through inequality and capitalism, perhaps with a radical instinct of their own (e.g. Paolo Tedesco in Jacobin). For a society traditionally thought to have been un- or counter-radical to its core, its modern historians are eager to make claims for the radicalism of their chosen subjects.
In light of the above, the session organiser invites proposals for ambitious papers that critically interrogate the concept(s) and historiographical uses of “radicalism”, and seek to furnish the term with a sharper analytical utility. Papers may treat any aspect of late Roman or Byzantine history, conceived very broadly in time and space. They might explore any or more of the following:
The definition(s) of radicalism in different late Roman/Byzantine contexts: what was “radical” in the late Roman or Byzantine world?
Case studies of specific late Roman/Byzantine ideas and behaviour that are usefully described as, or were perceived at the time as, radical (or counter-radical);
Late Roman/Byzantine attitudes to radicalism (philosophical, social, political, religious, etc.);
Radical or counter-radical traditions of thought and/or action in the late Roman/Byzantine world;
The conceptual utility of the terms “radical” and/or “counter-radical” for understanding aspects of the late Roman/Byzantine world;
Previous scholarly uses of (or choices not to use) the term “radical” in a late Roman/Byzantine context that might be productively rethought;
Radical approaches to the study of late Roman/Byzantine history.
Scholars of any career stage are welcome to propose a paper. To do so, please send a title and brief description of the paper, around 100 words in length, to matthew.hassall@liverpool.
Warm wishes,
Matt
—
Dr Matthew Hassall (he/him)
Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow
Department of History, University of Liverpool
