ANCIENT STUDIES -- NEW TECHNOLOGY III
 
         The third biennial conference on the topic of "Ancient Studies -- New Technology: The World Wide Web and Scholarly Research, Communication, and Publication in Ancient, Byzantine, and Medieval Studies" will be held December 3-5, 2004, at James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA. Topics of particular interest include 1) the digital museum; 2) the digital classroom; 3) the digital
scholar; and 4) theoretical issues such as "knowledge representation". 

         300-word electronic abstracts dealing with these issues and with other ways in which the WEB can help to promote classical, ancient, Byzantine, and medieval
studies may be directed to Ralph Mathisen, Program Chair, at ralphwm@uiuc.edu and ruricius@msn.com (snail-mail: Department of History, 309 Gregory Hall, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801). Deadline for receipt of abstracts is August 31, 2004. 

         Programs for previous conferences may be consulted at:
http://www.roman-emperors.org/program.htm (2000 Conference) and http://tabula.rutgers.edu/conferences/ancient_studies2002/conf_program.html (2002 Conference). The website for the upcoming conference is located at
http://www.cisat.jmu.edu/asnt3.

-- seen on various lists

8:49:21 AM    

SHIFTING FRONTIERS VI
The Sixth Biennial
SHIFTING FRONTIERS IN LATE ANTIQUITY CONFERENCE
"Romans, Barbarians, and the Transformation of the Roman World"
University of Illinois – Urbana/Champaign
17-20 March 2005

The Society for Late Antiquity announces that the Sixth biennial Conference on Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity will be held at the University of Illinois – Urbana/Champaign, March 17-20, 2005 on the topic of "Romans, Barbarians, and the Transformation of the Roman World" [ca. 200 - 700 AD].

Recent years have seen an explosion of symposia, conferences, and scholarship dealing with new ways of looking at interactions between Romans and barbarians and at the fate of the “Roman World” during the fourth through the seventh centuries AD. Old, established views have been challenged by newer models of cultural interaction, ethnogenesis, and the creation, modification, and evolution of barbarian and Roman identity. All too often, however, methodological, disciplinary, and even political lines have been drawn that inhibit a true interchange of ideas that might lead to a reconciliation between some of the different schools of thought.    Adherents of this or that thesis sometimes do not even attend the same conferences.
This conference will provide a forum for the discussion of the most up-to-date research and thought on the fate of the Roman world in the context of Roman and barbarian interactions. As in the past, we will be particularly concerned to bring together scholars who represent different methodological, disciplinary, geographical, and chronological perspectives. Possible contributions might deal with topics related to (1) The creation/evolution of barbarian and/or Roman identity; (2) The nature of the interaction between the Roman and barbarian cultural worlds (e.g. language, literature, religion, costume, material culture); (3) The interpretation of the evidence of both literature and material culture; (4) Issues of continuity/change with regard to social, political, and religious institutions; (5) the historiography of perceptions of Romans and barbarians and its significance for the modern world; or (6) Theoretical models that help to interpret the nature of barbarian-Roman interactions. New approaches that perhaps are not subsumed under any of these topics, or that incorporate several of them at the same time, are most welcome. We would be particularly happy to receive proposals from persons working in fields such as linguistics, physical anthropology, and art history, which have not yet been heard from very much in the context of the current debates and discussions.

Proposals should be clearly related to the theme of the conference. Proposals should clearly state both the problem being discussed and the nature of the new discoveries, insights, or conclusions that will be presented. Proposals that are clearly analytical will be preferred over proposals that are primarily descriptive. It is expected that proposals will relate to new work or discoveries that have not been previously presented at any conference. Abstracts of not more than 500 words for 20-minute presentations may be submitted via e-mail to Prof. Ralph Mathisen, ralphwm@uiuc.edu (Department of History, Univ. of Illinois – Urbana/Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA). Deadline for submission of abstracts is November 1, 2004. Please note that there is no travel funding available for participants, and that the submission of an abstract carries with it a commitment to attend the conference should the abstract be accepted.
 
For other matters relating to the conference, contact Prof. Danuta Shanzer, shanzer@uiuc.edu (Department of Classics, Univ. of Illinois – Urbana/Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA).

Conference Schedule:
November 1, 2004       Abstracts due
November 15, 2004     Program set and presenters notified
January 15, 2005          Pre-registration begins
March 17-20, 2005      Conference assembles 

-- seen on various lists

8:47:12 AM    

ante diem vii idus quinctilias

• ludi Apollinares (day 4)
• 118 A.D. -- Hadrian finally arrives in Rome as emperor
• 250 A.D. -- martyrdom of Anatolia

8:31:04 AM    

Reviel Netz, The Works of Archimedes: Translated into English, together with Eutocius' Commentaries, with Commentary, and Critical Edition of the Diagrams. Vol. 1:  The Two Books On the Sphere and the Cylinder.

Giancarlo Movia (ed.), Alessandro di Afrodisia e la "Metafisica" di Aristotele. Temi metafisici e problemi del pensiero antico.

Penelope Murray, Peter Wilson, Music and the Muses: The Culture of Mousike in the Classical Athenian City.

8:00:36 AM    

There's an interesting bit at Roadcycling.com about Roland Barthes' essay comparing the Tour de France to epic ... an excerpt:

Roland Barthes (1915-80), the great critic, was a French intellectual who took the Tour seriously as a cultural artefact.  In the mid-1950’s he wrote an essay with the title “The Tour de France as Epic.”  It remains one of the best appreciations of Tour’s significance beyond its importance as a mere sporting event.

The Tour is an epic, Barthes wrote, because its very route – its geography – is “entirely subject to the epic necessity of ordeal.”

“The Tour …possesses a veritable Homeric geography.  As in the Odyssey, the race is here both a  [circuit] of ordeals and a total exploration of the earth’s limits.  Ulysses reached the ends of the Earth several times.  The Tour, too, frequently grazes an inhuman world: on Mont Ventoux . . . the racers have already left the planet earth, encountering here unknown stars.  By its geography, the Tour is thus an encyclopaedic survey of human space….

Barthes had a rather interesting take on form, still invoked as the quality that determines a rider’s strength and hence his performance.  Barthes defined it as a “state more than an impulse, a privileged equilibrium between quality of muscles, acuity of intelligence, and force of character.” 

But he contrasted form with what he called jump – “a veritable influx which erratically possesses certain racers beloved of the gods and then causes them to accomplish superhuman feats.  Jump implies a supernatural order in which man succeeds insofar as a god assists him….”

Jump…One thinks of the Eddy Merckx in 1969 when he won the Tour by more than 17 minutes. Or of Lance Armstrong on the Pyrenean climb of Hautacam in 2000, when he put his main rivals well behind him in the general classification.

But Barthes pointed to another, not-so-nice side of jump:  “Jump has a hideous parody, which is called doping:  to dope the racer is as criminal, as sacrilegious as trying to imitate God; it is stealing from God the privilege of the spark.”

Barthes added ominously (well before, incidentally there were doping tests):  “God . . . knows how to take revenge on such occasions.” [the whole thing]

7:49:32 AM    

Canadians are often regaled with the concept of 'brain drain' -- the migration of Canadian academics to other countries, usually the U.S. -- and while this technically isn't an example of that (the central character is Italian), it seems clear that the University of Toronto has lost a rising star:

In an unusually quick ascent to tenure, Nino Luraghi will rejoin Harvard’s classics department just five years after first arriving in Cambridge as an assistant professor.

Luraghi left behind a tenured associate position at the University of Toronto and declined a full professorship at the University Konstanz in Germany following a heavy push from Harvard to win the onetime junior professor back.

Luraghi’s return to Harvard in the spring follows three semesters away at Toronto, where he headed after leaving Harvard in the fall of 2003. Luraghi is at Oxford University for the summer and was unavailable for comment.

Professor of Greek and Latin Richard F. Thomas said Luraghi’s talent was clear from the time Harvard first considered hiring him, about five years ago.

“We identified him as an obvious star in the applicant pool for the assistant professor level,” said Thomas, who is the chair of the classics department.

Thomas said that the department did what it could to keep Luraghi at Harvard after he arrived here in 1999—and that once he departed, Harvard was eager to get him back.

“We tried to promote him from within, but Toronto didn’t give him much time to accept or decline [in 2003],” Thomas said. “We tried to explore ways of accelerating the tenure process, which is somewhat difficult to do at Harvard.”

Luraghi was lured back to Harvard when Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby offered him the position of full professor. But Thomas said it was not easy convincing Luraghi to return.

“It was a challenge, because he and his wife were from Europe,” Thomas said. “And the honor of being offered a German professorship, where there is only one professor per discipline, is hard to turn down.”

In the spring, Luraghi will teach Greek 107, “Thucydides,” to a mix of graduates and undergraduates. The course will be conducted in Greek, Thomas said, but he said that students untrained in the ancient language should have the opportunity to enjoy Luraghi’s teaching in the future.

“He’s taught courses on translation in the Roman Republic, and whatever the Core morphs into, he’ll be a central player in teaching to the larger undergraduate community on Greek and Roman history,” Thomas said.

Luraghi’s specialty is ancient history and literature, especially in dealing “with the uses of theory for reconstructing historical realities,” Thomas said.

Luraghi has published work mainly on Greek tryanny, focusing on the Archaic Age, as well as on Greek and Roman historiography.

Luraghi’s wife, Susanne Ebbinghaus, will also be returning to Harvard. Ebbinghaus will work part-time doing curatorial work for the Sackler Museum, and will also teach Classical Archaeology 150, “Greek Sculpture,” in spring 2005, said department administrator Theresa T. Wu.

Luraghi was born and raised in Turin, Italy, and received his Ph.D from La Sapienza in Rome. He has pursued several post-doctoral fellowships with the Foundation Luigi Firpo, the University of Turin and the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung fellowship.

Luraghi’s most recent book—Helots and Their Masters in Laconia and Messenia: Histories, Ideologies, Structures, which he edited—was published in January.  [from the Harvard Crimson]

7:42:01 AM    

So ... what's the Greek opinion of the excerpt from Thucydides being excised from the preamble to the EU Constitution? Kathimerini tells us:

We remember well from our schooldays the definition of Athenian democracy which Thucydides attributed to Pericles: “We indeed live in a political system which does not seek to copy the laws of others; rather it is we who set an example for others to follow. Our political system is called a democracy because the state government is not in the hands of the few, but of the many.”

This definition, the heritage of European and Western civilization generally, had been proposed for the draft Constitution of the European Union by the former president of France, Valery Giscard d’Estaing. Last month, however, all senior representatives of the EU’s member states — except Greece and Cyprus — excised Thucydides from the text. Alexandrine Bouilhet’s observation in Le Figaro on June 16 that 21st century Europe no longer recognized itself in the century of Pericles, the cradle of modern democracy, was therefore apt.

The European powers-that-be invoked Pericles’ role as a leader of a colonial power such as Athens during the Peloponnesian War, and did not want any comparison with the EU of today. That is to say, they hauled out the rusty weapons of a long out-of-date, pseudo-Marxist critique of Athenian democracy. This critique, which has been used against specific geostrategic interests — at least during the past century — was aimed at trivializing whatever conflicted with current European directives. This is not to say that Athens in the fifth century BC was not a colonial power. But the model of Athenian democracy according to Pericles/Thucydides stayed alive and became a political value with everything positive accumulated over five centuries of contemporary European humanism and education. It is that European humanism which EU powers are rejecting. Never mind: We Europeans will keep Thucydides and let the pro-Europeans keep Charlemagne.

7:36:16 AM    

Ages ago I bewailed the lack of photos of the Apollo Sauroktonos recently acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art. A rogueclassicism reader (thanks CB-P) with a Live Journal site recently visited the  CMA and took some decent photos ... worth a look!

P.S. If you visit a museum with Classical stuff and have some photos to share, make sure you alert rogueclassicism!

7:21:34 AM    

The Evening Standard reports on the discovery of a section of Roman Road in/near London ... excerpts:

A £28million regeneration project on a London estate has been halted by the discovery of a Roman road.

The road, buried less than a metre underground in Leyton, may date back to the 1st century AD.

It had long been believed that there was a road, connecting London to Great Dunmow in Essex, based on projected route lines from previous discoveries. It would have been used to bring farm produce to sell at market, said Peter Moore, of independent archaeological company Pre-Construct.

[...]

Mr Moore said: "In one corner of the estate we dug down and found a cross-section of this road. It's about six metres wide and has ditches on either side that would have been for drainage.

"It's probably been repaired several times and there will possibly be some wheel ruts etched into the surface. It will be excavated in the hope of finding objects left by its former users."  [more]

7:01:19 AM    

AJA Managing Editor

   The Archaeological Institute of America seeks an experienced Managing
Editor for the internationally renowned scholarly quarterly The American
Journal of Archaeology.

The Managing Editor collaborates directly with the faculty Editor in Chief
and the authors on all matters relating to the preparation of manuscripts
selected for inclusion in the Journal.

   The Managing Editor in direct consultation with the Editor in Chief
oversees all aspects of journal operations, coordinating the copyediting
and production of each issue.  This involves supervision of the Associate
Editor, freelance contract copyeditors and proofreaders, and students;
management of the production flow; and acting as a liaison with the press
and other vendors involved in the printing and mailing of the Journal.

Specifically the Managing Editor copyedits, performs technical audits,
sizes and scans images, and typesets material.  He or she monitors the
manuscripts at all stages of pre-press through proofing and blue lines,
assuring that the AJA style and editorial guidelines are
followed.  Finally, the Managing Editor works with the AIA Electronic
Operations Manager and the Editor in Chief in the design and content of the
AJA website.

The successful candidate will have experience with scholarly publishing; a
background in archaeology and basic knowledge of ancient Greek, French and
German is preferred. He or she will be well organized, detail oriented and
able to work under the pressure of publication deadlines. The Managing
Editor will use electronic copyediting composition and layout software,
requiring familiarity with Microsoft Office software, Adobe's Creative
Suite and preflight software. The Managing Editor will be conversant with
technological advances in print production of the print version and with
opportunities for electronic distribution. A basic understanding of
SGML/XML is desirable.

The Managing Editor reports to the AIA Director of Publications and
Communications in direct consultation with the Editor in Chief and will
have the opportunity to work with a dedicated team of professionals.  The
position is fulltime at the AIA's offices in Boston and has an excellent
benefits package.  For more information about the AIA please visit our
websites, <http://www.archaeological.org/>www.archaeological.org or
<http://www.ajaonline.org/>;www.ajaonline.org.

Please send resumes and letters of application by email to aia@aia.bu.edu
or by mail to

Archaeological Institute of America
Managing Editor Search
656 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02215

Applications will be reviewed immediately and the search will continue
until the position is filled.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AJA Associate Editor

   The Archaeological Institute of America seeks an experienced Associate
Editor whose primary responsibility is to copyedit the AIA's renowned
academic quarterly The American Journal of Archaeology.

The successful candidate will be well versed in the basic standards of
editing and proofreading and be willing to learn and use the specific style
requirements of the Journal. The ability to edit onscreen in an electronic
workflow is required.

A general knowledge of archaeology and world history is helpful, as is a
working knowledge of ancient Greek, French and German; some experience with
desktop publishing software is preferred.

The Associate Editor reports to the Managing Editor and will have the
opportunity to work independently and with a dedicated team of
professionals.  The position is salaried part-time at the AIA's offices in
Boston.  It offers flexible work hours and an excellent pro-rated benefits
package.

For more information about the AIA please visit our websites,
<http://www.archaeological.org/>www.archaeological.org and
<http://www.ajaonline.org/>;www.ajaonline.org.

Please send applications and resumes by email to aia@aia.bu.edu or by mail
to

Archaeological Institute of America
Associate Editor Search
656 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02215

Applications will be reviewed immediately and the search will continue
until the position is filled.

-- seen on Aegeanet

6:51:27 AM    

8.00 p.m. |DTC|Rome: Power & Glory: The Rise
The beginnings of the Roman Empire are shrouded in mystery. Without
armies, palaces, or priests, the Romans conquered and ravaged the
best of other civilizations.

9.00 p.m. |DTC|Rome: Power & Glory: Legions of Conquest
At the height of military power, the Roman Empire stretched from
Scotland to the Sahara. Yet the same traits that created this vast
expansion eventually turned the Roman military into an unwieldy and
self-serving force of destabilization.

10.00 p.m. |DTC|Rome: Power & Glory: Seduction of Power
Trace the evolution of Roman politics from the world's first
representative government through the lives of Gracchi, Julius
Caesar, Nero, and Septimius Severus and into a tumultuous and
theatrical display of power over substance.

6:48:06 AM