rogueclassicism

Saturday, March 20, 2004

CROSSING CULTURES: Identities in the Material World

The Bristol Institute of Hellenic and Roman Studies
Departments of Archaeology and Classics & Ancient History
University of Bristol
7-9 January 2005

http://www.afid.bris.ac.uk/CrossingCultures/

One of the most exciting developments within the study of classical
antiquity in the last decade has been the move from considering identities
in terms of polarities (man/woman, Greek/Roman, civilised/barbarian) to
thinking in terms of pluralities (the plurality of identities available
between those polarised categories, or indeed, within one individual).
Central to these more nuanced investigations has been the growing
acknowledgement of the dynamic role of material culture - not simply in
reflecting identities but in creating and transforming them. By providing,
often, a very different picture to that offered by the rhetoric of the
ancient literary sources, the study of the impact of objects moving into,
around or from the Greco-Roman world is allowing us to redefine and expand
our conceptual boundaries of that world. In dealing with these emergent
identities, scholars have drawn on a wide variety of methodologies and
approaches, from the psychoanalytical to the anthropological, visiting
literary theory and cultural criticism. In doing so, the complexities of
ancient identities have been seen in the light of a much wider
interdisciplinary discourse on the nature of "identity", currently being
debated in every field of the Humanities.

The aim of this conference is to celebrate that diversity by bringing
together researchers working on different kinds of identity (e.g. ethnic,
cultic, gendered) across the breadth of the ancient world from the Iron Age
to late Antiquity (eighth century BCE - sixth century CE). In bringing
together such widespread interests, the conference aims to encourage
delegates to share and examine the panorama of working practices. It will
provide an excellent opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration and,
it is hoped, will help to forge and identify new methodologies for dealing
with the complex Antiquity beginning to emerge.

The conference will be held in the Department of Archaeology at the
University of Bristol between 7 January and 9 January 2005. Papers will be
30 minutes in length.

Invited speakers include Prof. Carla Antonaccio, Prof. David Mattingly,
Prof. Robin Osborne, and Prof. Greg Woolf.

Abstracts are invited from anybody investigating the role of material
culture in forging identity, whether they do so through archaeology, art
history or literary criticism. Abstracts of no more than 400 words should
be received by 15th June 2004. For more information, contact either Shelley
Hales or Tamar Hodos at the addresses below.

Dr. Shelley Hales
Department of Classics and Ancient History
University of Bristol
11 Woodland Road
BRISTOL BS8 1TB
UK
shelley.hales@bris.ac.uk

Dr. Tamar Hodos
Department of Archaeology
University of Bristol
43 Woodland Road
BRISTOL BS8 1UU
UK
t.hodos@bris.ac.uk

... seen on the Classicists list

7:50:05 AM

CACW-CAPN Joint Conference 2005

Call For Papers

(Ir)rationality in Antiquity

The Classical Association of the Canadian West and the Classical Association
of the Pacific Northwest will be holding a Joint Annual Meeting in Victoria,
British Columbia on Friday, February 18 and Saturday, February 19, 2005.
Laurel Bowman and Gregory Rowe of the University of Victoria are the
conference organizers.

The theme of this conference is "(Ir)rationality in Antiquity": the
exploration of the rational and the irrational in the Greek and Roman
world - as practices, as discourses, and as ancient and modern conceptual
categories. Possible topics for sessions include - but are not limited to -
maps and itineraries (geographic and mythical), myth and history, myth and
philosophy, 'magic' and 'religion', oracles and divination, madness and
inspiration, and technical and scientific literature. Papers are
particularly encouraged on topics related to this theme. Submissions are
invited, however, on all subjects of special interest to classicists. The
organizers also welcome organized panels.

Abstracts of 100-150 words and a brief CV can be submitted online at the
conference website, http://web.uvic.ca/grs/cacwcapn

The deadline for submission is APRIL 15, 2004. (This date will allow the
organizers to submit a SSHRC grant proposal for the conference). Papers
should not be more than 15-20 minutes in length.

Abstracts of papers presented will be published on the conference website.
Detailed information regarding the conference schedule and accommodations
will also be made available on the website in the fall of 2004.

The organizers can be contacted at cacwcapn@uvic.ca or at
CACWCAPN Conference,
c/o Department of Greek and Roman Studies,
University of Victoria,
P.O. Box 3045, Victoria B.C. CANADA V8W 3P4.

... seen in the Canadian Classical Bulletin

7:49:26 AM

Ancient Narrative, call for papers: Orality and Representation in the Ancient Novel.
By Victoria Rimell

We invite papers that investigate the role and interrelationship of written
and oral modes of communication in the Greek and Roman novels. This is an
increasingly familiar topic in the study of ancient literature and literary
culture, and has been touched on by Scobie (1983), Hägg (1994), and recently
by Fowler and Kahane in Kahane and Laird's collected essays on Apuleius'
prologue (2002), by Rimell on Petronius (2002) and in a handful of articles
on letters, inscriptions and oral storytelling in the Greek romances
(recently by Sironen and Létoublon in Panayotakis, Zimmerman and Keulen
2003; by Nimis in Mackie 2004; Ruiz Montero in AN 2003 - the preliminary,
electronic version).

Thus far, discussion of the associations of and dialectic between oral and
written modes in the ancient novel has been rather neatly circumscribed: in
Apuleius' Metamorphoses, for example, the novel in which these modes are
perhaps most blatantly juxtaposed, analysis is fixated with the tortuous
prologue (that 'scrambled assemblage of the whisper and the scratch', as
Winkler puts it), yet does not go (much) further in picking apart how such
jostling operates through the text as a whole - whether in the countless
repetitions of the prologue's 'conversation', in the impact of written
rituals and silencing on Lucius/readers in the Isis book, in the 'oral'
rhythms of these sing-song tales, or in the stories' obsessions with
tongues, mouths, throats and fama. In Petronius' Satyricon, there is more to
be said on how the novel's self-representation confounds an opposition
between material book and transcendental poetic voice, and more generally,
on how an agonistic dialogue between Greek and Roman literary culture is
phrased in terms of literariness outsophisticating oral performance. So too
in the Greek novel, where there is much scope for examining the ideological
connotations of writtenness and voice (vision and hearing, prose and
poetry.), in terms of liberty, power, gender and identity. One of the
elements the (very different) Greek and Roman novels share is a tendency to
privilege writtenness while also playing out a series of oral games (whether
manipulating folkloric or Homeric orality, or dealing with the mouthy
pleasures of kissing, eating, talking), a move that perhaps epitomises their
'modernity'.

This volume will approach the metaphorics of speech and writing in the novel
in much broader and more imaginative terms than earlier studies, dealing not
only with questions of genre, oral poetics and traditions, but with how
various ways of pitting/collapsing modes of representation become loaded
articulations of wider world-views, of cultural and literary anxieties and
aspirations.

Thus far, an exciting group of young scholars has agreed to contribute:
Wytse Keulen (Groningen), Regine May (Durham), and Luca Graverini
(Siena/Arezzo) all propose papers on aspects of oral performance and
theatrical staging in Apuleius' Metamorphoses; Andrea Cucchiarelli (Pisa)
will write on mimesis and orality in Petronius' Cena, Kathryn Chew
(Princeton) on the interplay between orality and textuality in
representations of the divine in Heliodorus' Aithiopika, Jason König (St
Andrews) on orality and authority in Xenophon of Ephesus, and Stelios
Panayotakis (Groningen) on riddles, inscriptions and oral forms in the
Historia Apollonii regis Tyri.

Offers of papers, with a 150-300 word abstract, should be sent to the volume
editor Victoria Rimell (vr202@cam.ac.uk) by May 30th 2004, and selection
will be completed shortly thereafter.

You can reread this message on the website of AN. Go to
www.ancientnarrative.com and click on the first news item.

... sent by the Ancient Narrative folks

7:48:56 AM

CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE
FRIDAY 1st TO MONDAY 4th APRIL 2005

In 2005 the Department of Classics at the University of Reading will host
the annual conference of the Classical Association.

Conference practicalities
Reading is in a central location, approximately 25 miles from both London
and Oxford. The city has good road and rail links, and may easily be
reached from Heathrow airport. Accommodation, meals and academic sessions
will on the University Campus. Excursions will be arranged to places of
interest in the Thames Valley.

Academic sessions
Proposals for papers (20 minutes duration) on the topics suggested below,
or on any aspect of the Classical World, are invited; offers of co-
ordinated panels of papers are particularly welcomed, as are proposals
from graduate students and school-teachers. Title and an abstract (not
more than 400 words) should be sent to the address below (preferably by e-
mail) not later than 31st August 2004.