小编按：近期古典学联络平台Liverpool Classics上发布了大量的论文征集通告，从这些通告中可以管窥当前学界关心的问题。
CALL FOR PAPERS: ‘New Voices on the Polis’, 17-18 May 2025 at the Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford
This year saw the important publication of Professor John Ma’s 'Polis: A New History of the Ancient Greek City-State'. It is the most recent attempt at a synoptic history of the polis throughout the ancient world, and will surely influence scholarship in many ways for years to come. We are therefore pleased to invite graduate students working on the polis, however broadly conceived, to submit abstracts for the conference ‘New Voices on the Polis’. The goal for this conference is to bring together graduate students from across different fields, including Ancient History, Linguistics, Epigraphy, Numismatics, and Archaeology, to present and discuss their research. We particularly aim to encourage discussion and cross-pollination between these different academic fields, which all have plenty to contribute to the study of the polis.
We invite Master’s and Doctoral students to submit abstracts for 20-minute papers in English relating to the polis, with a temporal scope from the Early Iron Age to Late Antiquity. Suggested topics may include but are not limited to:
• Citizenship, non-citizens and political marginalisation
• Political institutions and polis ‘stateness’
• Religion and worship in the polis
• Negotiation between elite and non-elite
• Archaeological approaches to the polis
• Relationships between poleis and with supralocal powers
• Ethnic and cultural identities, and the question of ‘Hellenisation’
• The language(s) of the polis
The conference will take place in-person in Oxford, at an accessible venue, on the 17-18th May 2025. The working language of the conference will be English. We intend to have fair gender representation in the speakers. Accommodation for speakers will be provided for two nights. Although speakers will be drawn from the international graduate community, attendance will be open to researchers and academics at any stage of their career — a sign-up link for attendees will be circulated in the coming months.
We can happily confirm that Professor John Ma (Columbia University) will be giving a keynote.
Please submit abstracts of 300 words and a short biography, including name and current institutional affiliation, to newvoicespolis@gmail.com, by 6th January 2025. Any queries should be directed to the same address. Information, including the schedule and registration form, will be updated on our website, https://newvoicesonthepolis.wo
Panel WAWIC 2025 - Visualizing Victory: Propaganda around Military Victories in Antiquity
Visualizing Victory: Propaganda around Military Victories in Antiquity
Warfare in the Ancient World International Conference (WAWIC 2025)
May 29–31, 2025 (Duluth, MN and Münster, Germany)
Throughout ancient history, both rhetorical and visual strategies have played a crucial role in shaping the perception of military victories, crafting compelling narratives for domestic and foreign audiences alike. This panel seeks to examine the techniques of visual propaganda used to
portray military triumphs in Antiquity. We define visual propaganda as an attempt to promote a military outcome through visual representation.
We invite contributions that explore how specific victories were depicted. Our goal is to analyze both the similarities and differences in visual propaganda across cultures and to explore how these narratives were shaped by their political, cultural, and historical contexts.
Contributions may also address the intersection between visual and written representations, analyzing how ancient authors described or utilized visual imagery in their accounts of military success.
We encourage proposals that address, but are not limited to, the following topics:
● Artistic depictions of victory in various ancient cultures (e.g., Near Eastern, Hellenistic,
Roman)
● The role of monuments, trophies, and other public displays in shaping narratives of triumph
● The use of visual propaganda in domestic and foreign policy
● Comparative studies of military victory representations across time and space
● Symbolism in the portrayal of military leaders and their accomplishments
● The use of material culture (e.g., coins, inscriptions) to propagate military success
Presentations should be no longer than 20 minutes. Please submit an abstract of 300 words, along with a brief bio that includes your full name, contact information, affiliation, and career stage, by January 10th, 2025 to Diego Suárez Martínez (diego.suarezmartinez@outlook.
For general questions regarding the conference, please contact Dr. Lennart Gilhaus (lgilhaus@uni-bonn.de).
The panel organizers plan to publish selected contributions in a peer-reviewed volume.
Additional details about the publication will be provided after the conference.
We look forward to your submissions and hope to see you in Münster or Duluth!
“A Memory More Powerful than Lethe’s Shores: New Approaches to Lucan’s Bellum Civile” University of California, Davis May 15 and 16, 2025
In the third book of Lucan’s Bellum Civile, Pompey is visited in a dream by a vision of his deceased wife. Furious that her husband remarried after her passing, Julia threatens future vengeance: “The oblivion of Lethe’s shores, husband, has not made me forgetful of you” (me non Lethaeae, coniunx, obliuia ripae/inmemorem fecere tui, 3.28-29). The idea that an emotion or remembrance can be so powerful as to make it impossible to forget – even when faced with the powers of the river Lethe – captures the effect that Lucan himself and his controversial poem have had since the 1st century CE.
This workshop aims to offer a forum in which Lucan’s work can be considered holistically in these terms – as a multifaceted and deeply impactful work whose relevance has only grown in recent years. As global anxieties surrounding political division and how the present and future can confront the challenges of the past have expanded in scale and complexity, for example, one might consider the Bellum Civile’s sorrowful raging, bitter reproach, and energetic demand to be heard especially timely. In order to explore widely the new avenues contemporary perspectives bring to the fore – and to confront head-on the rich and often contradictory multiplicity readers of Lucan have identified across various aspects of his poem – we welcome papers on any aspect of the Bellum Civile. We look forward to uncovering what new ideas and approaches come to light by examining the poem from multiple angles in a wide-ranging discussion.
The workshop will be held on Thursday, May 15 and Friday, May 16, 2025 at the University of California, Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory, located in Bodega Bay, California; accommodations and meals during the event will be provided. Our two-day conversation will be dialogic in structure, with each paper paired with a respondent whose remarks will provide a bridge to collective discussion. Papers should be 35 minutes in length.
Confirmed respondents include:
Neil Bernstein (Ohio University)
Timothy Joseph (College of the Holy Cross)
Francesca Martelli (UCLA)
Ellen Oliensis (UC Berkeley)
Stefano Rebeggiani (USC)
Andrew Zissos (UC Irvine)
Those interested should submit anonymized titles and abstracts of up to 300 words to both Kathleen Cruz (kancruz@ucdavis.edu) and Carey Seal (cseal@ucdavis.edu) by December 15, 2024; decisions will be shared by early January. Inquiries about the event may also be directed to either Dr. Cruz or Dr. Seal.
Female voices in a public context: authorial articulation and mimetic representation in ancient Greek literature
We would welcome proposals applying innovative and multi-faceted methodologies to the study of female-voiced poetry in the Ancient Greek world, combining anthropological and gender-studies approaches, with a strong focus on linguistic, textual and pragmatic aspects.
Possible themes would include papers focusing on:
– the foundation of the authority of female poetic voices in Ancient Greece within the perspective of pragmatic linguistics;
– the role of the gendered voice in the complex relationship between ‘performative’ and ‘literary’ genres, and on the interplay between female authoriality and male-authored mimetic representation;
– the role and effect of differently gendered authors/performers in the history of re-performance, transmission and transformation of the ‘female voice’;
– the meta-literary role played by the staging of poetic female voices in drama;
– the dynamics of preservation and dissemination of poetry voiced by women and of female poetic voices in the ancient Greek world from the Archaic period onward;
– the female poetic voice as a key model in re-creations of female voices in philosophical prose;
– the way in which Greek rhetorical theory provided a descriptive and normative analysis of the female poetic voice, based on an ideological construct of femininity;
– the reception of Greek women’s poetry in the Humanism and in early Renaissance literatures;
– later receptions, and the role of Greek female poetic voices in the contemporary debate on gender issues.
Place: University of Naples Federico II
Dates: June 24-26, 2025
Framework/Funding: PRIN 2022/EU.
PRIN 2022 (2022MYMSLK)
8th Open Conference of the Network for the Study of Archaic and Classical Greek Song (https://sites.rutgers.edu/
Organizing Committee: Giambattista D’Alessio, Luigi Battezzato, Cristina Pepe
Selection Committee: Giambattista D’Alessio, Luigi Battezzato, Nadine Le Meur, Cristina Pepe, Timothy Power
Organizing Secretary: Rita Saviano, Tiziano Presutti, Vittoria Vairo (convegnofemalevoices@
Proposals for 20-minute presentations in English, to be followed by 10-minute discussion, should be submitted to the Organizing Secretary (convegnofemalevoices@gmail.
The conference will take place on site, but links will be provided to view the presentations online (registration will be required). Speakers will be offered free accommodation, but no contribution can be made to travel expenses. Registration to attend the conference on site will be announced after the publication of the program.
Please note that this initial prospect may change according to the kind and amount of proposals.
Who Owns Antiquities? (AAH 2025, York, UK)
Session title: Who Owns Antiquities?Session convenor: Dr Erhan Tamur, University of York, erhan.tamur@york.ac.ukWho owns antiquities? Cultural, legal, economic, and political dimensions of this question continue to inform debates on the restitution and repatriation of antiquities, with immense repercussions for the fields of art history, archaeology and museology. This session invites papers on topics including but not limited to the future of “universal” and “encyclopaedic” museums; restitution-related case studies; the relationship between museology, archaeology and efforts of empire- and nation-building; antiquities and definitions of “decolonisation;” provenance research; indigenous archaeologies; and the antiquities market. We are interested both in critical engagements with the current state of our disciplines as well as informed analyses of future possibilities and challenges. We encourage papers across disciplines, periods, and geographies.We envision two sessions; each session will include 20-minute research papers, followed by a 20-min-long general discussion/Q&A.If interested, please email your title and abstract (250 words) to erhan.tamur@york.ac.uk by 1 November 2024.
SCIENTIA workshop Non-expert dealings with science - CfP
SCIENTIA conference - Call for papers
Non-expert dealings with science in the ancient and pre-modern Mediterranean
The sociology of science, including explorations of its audiences and the interactions with other knowledges and actors, has been an extremely productive area in the historiography of modern science in the last decades. The research group ‘SCIENTIA-Scientific Texts and Ideas in the ancient premodern era’ (Universitat de Barcelona) aims to bring to the fore discussions of these topics in the domain of the ancient, medieval, and pre-modern sciences, in which historiography has been traditionally centered on authors. Papers are welcome on the variegated themes related to these issues, comprising (not exhaustively):
• demarcation of scientific and mathematical discourses by philosophical and religious scholars
• establishment of curricula
• circulation of specialized, scientific knowledge and works in more general milieux
• discussion of the epistemological value of scientific disciplines and subdisciplines
• interactions between science and literature
• degrees of specialization/vulgarization in ancient scientific texts
• scientific compendia
• scientific intrusion (unqualified scientists acting as such)
• satire and humor on scientific topics
Place: Barcelona
Dates: 25-27 June 2025
Sending of abstracts: until November 15th.
Prospective speakers are asked to send a title and an abstract of up to 250 words to Cristian Tolsa (ctolsa@ub.edu). Please use the same address for requesting additional information.
Webpage (in construction): https://revistes.ub.edu/index.
The Mobility and Circulation of Ancient Coins and People – 2026 AIA Annual Meeting
Organized by Benjamin Hellings (Yale University Art Gallery)
The AIA Numismatics Interest Group invites submissions for the 2026 Archaeological Institute of America/Society for Classical Studies Annual Meeting, January 7-10 in San Francisco, CA for a panel session The Mobility and Circulation of Ancient Coins and People.
Coins provide unique insight into the ancient world. They inform us about political, cultural, historical, and economic conditions of the past and are critical primary sources. They are also a readily available, generally well-dated, studied, and an organized body of material evidence that can be placed into historical contexts. In the ancient past through to the modern era, ancient coins circulated and moved across the globe and thus are excellent proxies to trace the movement of people and practices.
This panel invites papers on the mobility and circulation of ancient coins and people across time and space. We welcome object biographies as well as discussions on agency, trade, the economy (hoards or single finds), migrations, and how the topic may inform current questions (e.g. political economy, local histories, gender norms, imperialism, and colonialism).
Questions and abstracts can be directed to Benjamin Hellings (benjamin.hellings@yale.edu).
Please send abstracts for a 15-20 minute paper by email before February 27, 2025, in order to allow time for anonymous peer review. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words and follow the AIA guidelines for individual abstracts (see the AIA Guidelines for Authors of Abstracts). Please do not identify yourself in any way in the abstract itself. A decision will be communicated to the authors of abstracts shortly after the deadline. All presenters must be AIA members in good standing at the time of the meeting.
Please distribute this call for papers to anyone you think may be interested in submitting a proposal.
CFP: Meta-sea. The Sea of the Gods: Circulation of cult and attendance of sanctuaries in the ancient Mediterranean, Macerata, 11th -13th June 2025
The Mediterranean Sea, understood as the “middle sea”, a meeting place and crossroads of connections and communications, has been a privileged space through which, since prehistoric times, people, goods, ideas, technologies, languages, and cultures have circulated. From the 12th century B.C. onwards, the Phoenicians, expert sailors and skilled merchants, exploited routes that remained active in later eras, becoming paths for commercial, historical, and cultural connections. The meta-sea (the “sea beyond the sea”, indicating a reality that multiplies beyond mere physical existence) highlights the aspect of circulation of individuals, goods, ideas, technologies, languages, and cultures in the ancient Mediterranean. At the same time, it identifies and designates a set of thematic areas covering a vast geographic space and a broad chronological span, enabling connections between regions that are very distant from one another, from East to West, from prehistoric times to the Roman era. As a crossroads of cultures and a vehicle for integration, the Mediterranean goes beyond the sea; it is the “place” of encounter, of “mediation”, and of relationships between all the civilizations facing its shores, but also the medium of material and immaterial cultural heritage.
The conference addresses the theme of circulation in connection to religion and is the occasion to observe the contribution of various civilizations in the definition of a Mediterranean identity in the religious and cultic sphere. This identity is the result of the historical layering of contacts and dynamic interactions between those crossing the sea from East to West and vice versa.
Particular attention will be given to deities, cults, sanctuaries, festivals, rituals. Religious motivations were at the root of long-distance journeys and crossings in antiquity. In some cases, moreover, literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence related to the sacred sphere provides a privileged lens for observing the creation and development of a “Mediterranean civilization”, which allows us to trace the persistence of various cultural components, phenomena of interaction, aspects of continuity, and the outcomes of transformation.
The interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary nature of the conference, derived from the composition of the Scientific Committee and the diverse backgrounds of the scholars involved (Orientalists, Phoenician-Punic Archaeologists and Epigraphists, Greek and Roman Historians, Greco-Roman Epigraphists, Classical Archaeologists, and Late Antiquity scholars), enhances the possibility of delving into specialized issues, which will be addressed in the various thematic sessions. Furthermore, a special session will focus on how this circulation is represented today through museum communication experiences.
A reflection on the following thematic lines is proposed:
Deities, cults, rites, with attention to the continuity and transformation of cults and ritual practices, as well as phenomena of assimilatio and interpretatio;
Sanctuaries, places of worship, focusing on the locations, the characteristics of their attendance, the models, and the persistence in sacred architecture;
Priests and cult actors, with an opening to both the political dimension of the priestly class and the role of different protagonists in both public and private spheres;
Cult of sovereigns, in its various forms depending on the geographical context and the chronological scope of investigation (from Eastern rulers to Hellenistic kingdoms and the recovery of the Greek practice of isotheoi timai, to the stratification of the imperial cult in Roman times).
Both presentations and a poster session are planned: for all contributions (including posters), publication is expected in Open Access mode in a volume published by EUM (Edizioni Università di Macerata). The Scientific Committee will be responsible of the appointment of a keynote speaker, who will deliver the opening framework speech of the Conference, and of proposals selection. The languages of the conference are: Italian, English, French, Spanish, and German.
Proposals must be sent no later than the 30th of November 2024, to the following address: simona.antolini@unimc.it.
Scientific Committee: Simona Antolini (UniMC), Massimo Botto (CNR), Sara Ferrari (La Rotta dei Fenici), Luigi Gallo (L'Orientale), Iosif Hadjikyriakos (Ciprus Inst.), Ana Maria Niveau de Villedary y Mariñas (Univ. Cádiz), Oscar Mei (UniURB), Tatiana Pedrazzi (CNR), Roberto Perna (UniMC), Luca Peyronel (UniMI), Jessica Piccinini (UniMC), Elisabetta Todisco (UniBA), Maria Turchiano (UniFG), Giuliano Volpe (UniBA).
Possibilities & Limits of Dialogue in a World of Political Populisms
The Journal of Dialogue Studies invites papers that explore the ways in which political populisms affect our world by drawing on insights from various dialogue theories and dialogue practices.
In recent years, the global political landscape has witnessed the rise of populist movements in various countries, challenging established political norms and institutions. These movements, characterised by their charismatic leaders and the appeal to the ‘common people,’ have brought about significant changes in the political discourse and decision-making processes. One of the central challenges they pose is the question of dialogue and communication in a world marked by polarisation and contentious rhetoric.
Call for Papers
The new issue of the Journal of Dialogue Studies on ‘The Possibilities and Limits of Dialogue in a World of Political Populisms’ seeks to bring together scholars, researchers, and practitioners from various disciplines to explore and critically examine the dynamics of such political populisms and their impact on dialogue and communication within and between nations. We invite contributions that address (but are not limited to) the following themes:
1 Populisms: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives
2 Populisms and international relations
3 Comparative Politics of Populisms
4 Digital Dialogues and Populisms
5 Religion and Populisms
6 Media, Communication, and Populisms
7 Populisms and Truth
8 International order, Institutions and Populisms
New Issue of the Journal of the Dialogue Studies and subsequent publications
Successful papers will be published in the new issue of the Journal of Dialogue Studies Vol: 12 (2024). There will also be a workshop in early spring where the authors of the published papers can engage with respondents and participate in broader discussions with other attendees. This potentially may lead to an edited volume featuring the original papers and additional contributions from responses and overall discussions. We expect this issue and the subsequent publications to attract high-calibre papers that significantly contribute to the field.
Editorial Board
• Dr Emma L. Briant, Monash University
• Dr Gwen Burnyeat, The University of Edinburgh
• Emeritus Prof Donal Carbaugh, University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Professor Emeritus Anne Gregory, University of Huddersfield
• Emeritus Prof Edward Abbott-Halpin, University of the Highlands and Islands
• Prof Simon Lee, Aston University
• Prof Karim Murji, University of West London
• Dr Jennifer Jackson-Preece, London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London
• Prof Matt Qvortrup, Coventry University
• Emeritus Prof Paul Weller, Universities of Derby and Coventry, and Regent's Park College, University of Oxford
Inquiries
Please send any queries to info@dialoguestudies.org.
Schedule for Submissions
• Full papers: Papers by 23rd October 2024. 4,000 words minimum – 8,000 words maximum, excluding bibliography. Submissions should also include an abstract (200–300 words maximum) and CVs (maximum two pages, including any personal statement and/or listing of publications or work experience).
• Review: Papers reviewed by the Editorial Board and classed as Accepted – No Recommendations; Accepted – See Recommendations; Conditional Acceptance – See Recommendations; Not Accepted by 18th November 2024.
• Revision: Authors to take peer review into account and resubmit articles by 2nd December. The outcome of the review (including any recommendations for revisions or improvements) communicated to the authors by 9th December 2024.
• Final Papers: Any final amendments to papers to be submitted by 16th December 2024.
• Outcome: The Journal will be published in December 2024/January 2025.
Full Paper Submission Procedure
Full Papers should be submitted in English only, as MS Word documents attached to an email to submission@dialoguestudies.
The first page of the manuscript should contain:
• The title
• The name(s) and institutional affiliation(s) of the author(s)
• The address, telephone, and the e-mail address of the corresponding author
• An abstract of 250 words
• A biography of 250 words
• Six keywords
Manuscripts should be 4,000 to 8,000 words, excluding the bibliography. Longer manuscripts will be considered only in exceptional circumstances. The members of the Editorial Board and external expert reviewers (Referees | Journal of Dialogue Studies) will review articles.
Manuscripts should be presented in a form that meets the requirements set out in the Journal's Article Submission Guidelines, provided here, and Style Guide, provided here.
Copyright
The copyright of the papers accepted for the special issue will be vested in the Dialogue Society.
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Beyond the Page: the Hidden Worlds of Ancient Science
7th and 8th March 2025
Graduate Conference at Johns Hopkins University
Much of our knowledge of ancient science – an activity characterized by processes such as ‘collection, prediction, and causal explanation’ (Jones and Taub 2018) – comes from surviving texts. It is therefore from the ‘page’ (or the tablet or book-roll), largely, that we determine the contours of what we call ‘science’ in antiquity. But can we move beyond the page to develop a more nuanced understanding of ancient science?
Who, for example, shared in the formulating of scientific ideas and theories? Can we get at the minds and bodies that lie hidden behind the great names? What messy practices, interactions or failures might lurk beneath the theory on the page, or around the margins of that page? What are the physical spaces in which scientific thought was developed and disseminated; are these spaces inert backgrounds, or did they play a more active role in shaping ideas? Can we hope to capture some of the ‘thingness’ of ancient scientific thought and practices, esp. through attention to the material objects, substances and media involved? How, ultimately, might a more sensitive awareness of the world of ancient science beyond the page complicate our understanding of the texts - and of science today? We invite papers that disrupt and/or expand upon a theory- and author-centric conceptualization of science in the ancient world. And we warmly welcome approaches from cultural traditions in addition to the Greek and Roman.
Keynote speakers: Prof. Claire Bubb (NYU); Dr Monika Amsler (Bern)
Suggestive topics (not exhaustive) include:
1) the physical production-sites of ancient science: ‘laboratories’, quarries, libraries, scribal schools, workshops, kitchens, observatories, classrooms;
2) the hidden labour involved in scientific inquiry;
3) the role of non-human resources in scientific practice, whether inorganic (e.g. minerals) or organic (plants, animals);
4) the role of the body, senses and emotions in the practice of science;
5) how scientific thought was shaped by its different media of communication (e.g. text, art, orality, scientific tools and artefacts);
6) transformations of scientific ideas beyond elite contexts of learning, e.g. among socially or intellectually marginalized communities;
7) modern approaches to ancient science that are ‘off the page’ – e.g. how might experimental reconstructions flesh out our understanding of science in the ancient world?
8) what pressures might be exerted on the development of scientific ideas by economic or political agendas; and how, in turn, might the transfer or exchange of knowledge in and among ancient cultures be understood in terms of the ancient economy?
9) how does a more nuanced understanding of the unwritten world of ancient science enhance our own critical response to scientific endeavour in our own society today?
Anonymous abstracts of 300-500 words should be submitted to classicsgradconf@jh.edu in clear PDF format no later than 1st December 2024. Papers should not exceed 20 minutes in length. Please include your name, institutional affiliation, and the title of your paper in the body of your email.
Questions may be addressed to the conference organizers Keisuke Nakajima and John Liao at classicsgradconf@jh.edu
Refs
[Jones, A. and Taub, L. (eds.), The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.]
Embodying Women's Colonial Experiences
Deadline: November 15, 2024 (submission guidelines below)
Organizers: Savannah Sather Marquardt and Maddalena Scarperi
Description:
Mortuary evidence from the necropoleis of Pantanello, Pythekoussai, and Morgantina such as funerary architecture, burial posture, jewelry, and tooth morphology, suggests that intermarriage between indigenous women and Greek-speaking migrants was a widespread practice among newly founded “Greek” colonies (Buchner 1975; Coldstream 1993; Becker 1999; Ziskowski 2008; Saltini Semerari 2016). Throughout the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions, the graves of non- elite women living in multicultural colonial environments are often the only evidence of these women’s lives. In death, these women continue the work they performed while living – developing, transmitting, and embodying new ways of being within the shifting cultural landscapes and intersectional power imbalances of ancient colonies.
For scholars of gender archaeology and history, the body has become a privileged site for the investigation of women’s lives in antiquity (Liston 2012; Shepherd 2012). Though potentially silenced, marginalized, or erased in narratives dominated by male voices and perspectives, women’s concrete experiences of and their contributions to the material and cultural world in which they lived still survive through the signs inscribed onto their bodily remains and the grave goods deposited with them. This is especially true for women required to move between worlds, carrying out much of the emotional, cultural labor necessary to creatively negotiate daily practices and relational dynamics among kin groups.
This virtual conference seeks investigations of the woman’s body (broadly defined to include anyone who identifies as such) and embodied experiences of womanhood in colonial, middle ground, and hybrid spaces, where what it meant to be ‘woman,’ ‘man’, ‘Greek,’ 'Roman,' or 'barbarian' was subject to constant, creative negotiation and redefinition. Inspired by developments in modern Black and North American indigenous feminisms (Jackson 2020 and Barker 2017, among many others), we ask how ancient (indigenous) women challenged naturalized Greek notions of “civilized” womanhood and the feminine body and shaped new articulations of womanhood across and beyond the Greek-speaking world. How has the role of women in colonial contexts been represented, silenced, erased or marginalized in the extant evidence and in modern scholarship? How and under which conditions or with which limitations can the bod(il)y (of) experiences of these women be recovered, reassembled, or re-membered?
In this conference we invite papers from scholars working on various corpora of evidence and from a variety of theoretical perspectives which contribute to ‘embodying women’s colonial experiences’ in the Graeco-Roman world. Potential topics may include, but are not limited to:
Examples of (indigenous) women resisting, manipulating, negotiating or creatively reinterpreting normative cultural categories and practices (gender related or otherwise)
Examples of ancient women code-switching and acting as cultural negotiators in colonial contexts, contributing to the creation of middle ground and hybrid spaces.
Processes of (de)constructing the relationship between biological sex and gender in antiquity; analyses of the frictions that can arise when different cultural constructions of gender coexist in colonial environments
Self-fabrication and the crafting of womanhood through textile, costume, domestic arts, graffiti, vase painting, and other material acts
The contributions of women to local economies and processes of production; relationship between women and labor
Gendering mortuary contexts (challenges and biases, evolution of the practice, and implications for reading scholarly literature)
The intersection of the bioarchaeological and the biopolitical in the study of women in the ancient world (theoretical underpinnings, problematic implications, potential positive contributions and possibilities)
Microhistorical, multiscalar, and biographical approaches to the study of (indigenous) women in ancient colonial contexts
Comparative and ethnoarchaeological approaches to the study of women's experiences of, participation in, and contribution to the (social, cultural, political, economic, gendered) construction of colonial contexts
Issues of terminology (how should we talk about gender, ethnicity, indigeneity, and the mixing of practices, bodies, aesthetics, customs with reference to ancient colonial contexts? What possibilities and limits are inscribed in these terms? Are there possible ways - words - forward?)
Tensions, productive and otherwise, that arise from the application of modern postcolonial and de-colonial theory to ancient contexts
Critical fabulations and other means of engaging with the silences and erasures in the archive (Hartman 2008, Foucault 2003, Trouillot 1995)
Submission Guidelines:
Please submit your anonymized abstract as a PDF file to mscarp@sas.upenn.edu or savannah.marquardt@yale.edu
If you have questions, please email savannah.marquardt@yale.edu or mscarp@sas.upenn.edu
Offences between (blood) Relatives: Family Justice in Ancient Greece & Rome
We would like to remind you of our Call for Papers (please see the link below) for the cross-disciplinary workshop 'Offences between (Blood) Relatives: Family Justice in Ancient Greece & Rome', organised by Prof. Paul Du Plessis (University of Edinburgh), Luca Fiamingo (University of Verona) and Serena Barbuto (University of Milan). The event will take place on 24th January 2025, 10am - 5pm, at the 'Edinburgh Law School' - University of Edinburgh (Moot Court Room, Old College, EH8 9YL).
The Workshop explores the legal attitude towards “blood offences” between relatives in Greece and Rome. We particularly welcome proposals that investigate specific aspects of the so-called “family justice” from a Greek or Roman legal perspective, analyse the similarities and/or differences between Greek and Roman homicide laws, or explore the linguistic codification and the social or religious perception of blood offences from both a general (i.e. society) and a specific (i.e. family) point of view.
Interested scholars (PhD students, Postdocs, Early Career Researchers) are invited to submit their proposals (in pdf. format) containing a title and an abstract (max. 500 words, bibliography excluded) by 15th November 2024.
Proposals should be sent to the e-mail address workshop.
Further information can be found here: https://www.law.ed.ac.uk/news-
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Romancing Rhetoric: Imperial Fiction and Late-Antique Rhetorical theories and practices
Ghent University, Belgium, September 25-26, 2025.
Whereas overlaps between rhetoric and Latin and Greek fiction from the Imperial era have long been identified and discussed, most of the work done so far has examined how fiction adopts and builds on rhetorical concepts. This conference proposes instead the opposite route and examines to what extent and how Imperial fiction itself, given its rhetorical nature, contributed to shaping rhetorical theory and practice in the 4th to 6th centuries.
In particular, we are interested in seeing how the practices of ancient fiction in Imperial times (for instance, but not limited to, the extant and fragmentary novels, both so-called ‘pagan’ and early Christian fictional(ized) biographies, imaginative travel accounts, paradoxography, collections of letters, etc.) may have influenced the theory, practice and/or teaching of rhetoric in Late Antiquity (treatises, declamations, orations, progymnasmata, letters, panegyrics, ekphrases, etc.). We hope to reach a better understanding of the narrative and fictional qualities of late-antique rhetorical writing, of the late-antique reception of Imperial fiction, and of rhetoricians as readers of fiction. We invite papers that explore the presence of fiction in late-antique rhetorical writing and welcome case studies from a range of texts in Greek and Latin, as well as theoretical approaches.
Confirmed speakers: Gianfranco Agosti, Richard Flower, Fotini Hadjittofi, Delphine Lauritzen, Laura Miguélez-Cavero, Lieve Van Hoof, Ruth Webb.
300-word abstracts for 20-minute papers can be sent to Nicolo.DAlconzo@ugent.be or
Do not hesitate to contact us for any information.
Nicolò D’Alconzo, Koen De Temmerman
Language and Cultural Interactions in the Roman World: The Impact of Inscriptions
Call for Papers
OIKOS Research Group Cultural Interaction in the Ancient World
Conference "Language and Cultural Interaction in the Roman World: The Impact of Inscriptions"
Date: March 6-7, 2025, Groningen
Organizers: Valentina Vari (Sapienza Università di Roma - University of Groningen), Caroline van Toor (University of Groningen), Dr Saskia Peels-Matthey (University of Groningen), and Prof. Dr Onno van Nijf (University of Groningen).
Invited speakers: Prof. Dr Alex Mullen (University of Nottingham), Prof. Dr Bruno Rochette (Université de Liège), Prof. Dr Silvia Orlandi (Sapienza Università di Roma, president AIEGL).
Background
The expansion of the territories controlled by Rome came with increasing contact between the conquerors and the local populations, with different outcomes depending on socio-political circumstances and geographical factors. Inscriptions constitute immediate evidence of this interaction. While onomastics aid the identification of the various socio-cultural groups involved in erecting the monuments, language and linguistic choices can reveal insights into the shared knowledge and mutual relations of these groups. In this context, inscriptions do not simply constitute the outcome of cultural interaction. Rather, they were actively used for communicative anchoring - to reconcile the new (intercultural contact) with what was already familiar. In this way, inscriptions can be considered a means to manage the common ground, and thus to negotiate intercultural relations.
With “common ground”, borrowed from cognitive grammar, we mean the domain of knowledge that is shared among the participants, negotiated and updated between the parties during the communication act. Unlike speech events, the information provided by inscriptions is fixed, and can not be updated in accordance with a specific interlocutor. However, inscriptions also aim to resonate within a specific cultural context, for example through the use of specific words, a certain language, or even the monument itself. Despite being immovable objects, inscriptions interact with the passers-by creating perpetual mechanisms of inclusion or exclusion.As such, comparative approaches to inscriptions can show the impact of cultural interaction on the epigraphic record. The choice of a new or old language, the social position of its users, the context in which they chose to use this language, and changes in such choices over time, can allow insights into the (changing) nature of the relations between the parties involved. This applies not only to the people mentioned in the inscriptions, but also to the relationship between the commissioner(s) and the possible audience of the texts. Thus, the way in which the inscriptions could function is an important factor in our evaluation of the use of the language(s).
Zooming in, a closer look at the language can also reveal its user’s preferred way of self-representation. In order to entangle more intricate aspects of cultural interaction, it can be especially fruitful to study the use of a foreign language by a non-native speaker. The adoption of Latin and Roman epigraphic habits could, for example, be used as a tool of (elite) legitimization of the local population. The other way around, the use of languages other than Latin by the Romans, could be a way to anchor themselves into local practices. In both examples, it is possible to find signs of non-native competence, e.g. in the form of misspellings, errors, and anomalous palaeographical features. Syntactic irregularities or translations of idioms or formulae may point to different ethnic identities or preferences on behalf of the inscribers. The fact that it is often hard to know whether certain choices were made consciously or not shows that cultural interaction takes place on different levels, and can therefore be blurry.Our aim is to explore the topic of cultural interaction through the lens of inscriptions. The conference focuses on language and on how the choice of language functioned in its original context as a way to manage the common ground, and thereby the mutual relations, of the parties involved. The Roman provinces and the Italian Peninsula, roughly between the 3rd c. BCE and the 3rd c. CE, constitute the spatial and temporal scope of this conference.
Questions
Questions addressed include, but are not limited to:
- How can inscriptions help us to better understand cultural interaction in the ancient world?
- How can linguistic choices and linguistic change express cultural identity and changing reflections on them?
- How are social and cultural relationships negotiated in inscriptions in consideration of language, scripts, and overall appearance of the inscribed monument?
- To what extent can we distinguish deliberate acts of communicative anchoring (i.e. active common ground management) from accidental uses of language and form?
- How can the appearance and use of a new language be documented by the epigraphical record, and develop in a certain community or region?
- How do local languages interfere with new languages, like Latin, and vice versa, and what does that tell us about the interaction between the users of these languages?
- What is the relationship between the inscribers and the audience of inscribed monuments? Who would be able to see the monument?
- How do Roman and local traditions merge on inscribed monuments and how can such changes be interpreted?
Practicalities and deadlines
We invite both junior and senior scholars to submit an abstract to present a paper at the conference. Proposals of no more than 500 words should be submitted no later than Monday, October 21st, 2024. We intend to publish the proceedings of the conference. Proposals as well as any questions can be sent to v.vari@rug.nl (Valentina Vari) and c.j.toor@rug.nl (Caroline van Toor).
Space and Oppression in the Roman World
King’s College London, 10th–12th June 2025
George Oliver & James Corke-Webster
Space and power have always walked hand in hand; it is thus no surprise that space was integral to imageries of power and narratives of oppression in Graeco-Roman literature. In early Christian texts – our richest and best-preserved accounts of Roman repression – space was a key part of accounts of persecution. To take only the most famous example, the Neronian “persecution”, it was an abuse of space – their apparent culpability for the destruction of the city in the Great Fire – that justified Christians’ condemnation. And space is equally integral to their punishment, as Christians were publicly paraded and displayed in Nero’s gardens and the Circus. But the Roman use of space to empower elites and exclude minorities was not exclusive to early Christians. Roman law and culture set strict guidelines for how women could exist in “private” and “public” spaces. The Greek novels use romance and geography to work out the consequences for Hellenic identity of the Roman conquest. Jewish rebellion is motivated by the abuse of – and punished by the erasure of – space.
Spatial theory conventionally holds that space is produced by power, whether states or their elites (e.g. Harvey 1973; Holston 1989; Lefebvre 1991). But recently new frameworks have emerged that reconsider the ability of “ordinary people” to actively produce space. Perera 2016 reframes ordinary people from “victims” to “survivors in space”, who do not passively submit to spaces imposed on them, but actively occupy, resist and transform them. Similarly, the mobility turn (Sheller and Urry 2006; Todres and Galvin 2010; Light and Brown 2020) views spaces as impermanent and mobile, constantly changing in meaning as human bodies move in, out, and around them. These frameworks provide new means to approach multiple agents’ production of space in narratives of oppression.
This conference proposes to explore the spatial strategies used to both impose and respond to oppression in the Roman world. We invite papers that do so via any of the myriad of identities and communities of the Roman world, from any of its territories, and from the earliest period of expansion up to and including Late Antiquity.
Submissions
Abstracts of 300 words should be submitted to george.oliver@kcl.ac.uk by 17.00 on 19th December 2024.
Location & Dates
The conference will take place at King’s College London from the 10th to the 12th June 2025.
Keynote Speakers
Keynote lectures will be delivered by Prof. Diane Spencer (University of Birmingham) and Prof. Harry O. Maier (Vancouver School of Theology).
Select Bibliography:
Harvey, D. (1973) Social Justice and the City. Baltimore
Holston, J. (1989) The Modernist City: An anthropological critique of Brasilia. Chicago
Lefebvre, H. (1991 [1974]) The Production of Space. Oxford
Light, D. and L. Brown (2020) "Dwelling-mobility: A theory of the existential pull between home and away", Annals of Tourism Research 81: 1-10.
Perera, N. (2016) People's Spaces. Abingdon
Sheller, M. and J. Urry (2006) "The New Mobilities Paradigm", Environment and Planning: A Economy and Space 38(2): 207-226.
Todres, L. and K. Galvin (2010) "'Dwelling-Mobility': An existential theory of wellbeing", International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being 5(3): 1-6.
Greek entities in Roman Times: Peoples, Communities, and Cities
The Rodopis Association and the Dipartimento di Studi Letterari, Filologici e Linguistici of the University of Milan are jointly organising the Workshop “Greek Entities in Roman Times: Peoples, Communities, and Cities”, which will take place at the same University on March 6th-7th, 2025.
The meeting aims at fostering discussion among early career researchers (postgraduate students, PhDs, postdoctoral research fellows, and young researchers) working on Greek communities and peoples in the Mediterranean world and the areas of the Hellenistic kingdoms over Roman times.
The workshop will investigate the interaction and mutual influence between the Greek and Roman worlds, and how they affect the public sphere of local communities.
We invite paper proposals on the following aspects:
• The relationships between local entities and/or between them and Rome
• Political praxis and participation
• Institutional bodies and administrative forms
• Citizenship, sense of belonging, civic virtues
• Social mobility, the relationships between different social strata, marginal figures
• Trade relations and productive activities
• Religious life and public rituals
• Military organisation and practice
Papers should focus on possible further developments of the presented topic.
We welcome papers on historical, archaeological, numismatic, epigraphic, and papyrological subjects. We are particularly keen to receive proposals that adopt interdisciplinary methodologies and approaches.
The keynote speaker of the event will be Prof. Takashi Fujii (Kyoto University).
Each paper will last 20 minutes and will be followed by a discussion. Presentations will be in Italian, English, German, and French.
To submit a paper proposal please send an abstract of up to 300 words by November 22nd, 2024 to grecia_roma@libero.it. Proposals will be evaluated by a specially established scholarly committee. The outcomes of the selection will be announced by the end of 2024.
We strongly encourage in-person presentations; however, in light of duly substantiated reasons, we may allow a limited number of papers to be delivered remotely.
For further information, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
