CFP: ANIMALS IN THE GREEK AND ROMAN WORLD

Seen on the Classicists list:

Animals in the Greek and Roman World

Chairs: Sarah Hitch (Bristol) and Chiara Thumiger (UCL)

To form a conference panel at the sixth Celtic Conference in Classics, Edinburgh, 28-31 July
2010.

From Homeric similes to recipes for fishcakes, descriptions and discussions of animals abound in
ancient sources in a variety of ways. This panel seeks to explore the multifarious roles of animals
in ancient imagination and culture, including:

ANIMALS AND THE IMAGINATION
– literature and drama: imagery and exempla; performative aspects
– iconography: contexts and styles of representation
– myth and folktale: animals, metamorphosis and animal-related mirabilia

DEFINING ANIMALS AND HUMANS
– animals in philosophy
– animals in biological and medical treatises

ANIMALS AND MATERIAL CULTURE
– diet, cuisine and culinary practices
– agricultural labour and husbandry
– animals as spectacle (games and sports, zoos, the Roman arena…)
– hunting and similar activities
– animals in warfare
– pets
– uses of animals in curative practices

ANIMALS AND RELIGION
– animals as gifts to the gods
– the association of animals with individual cults
– animals as intermediaries between man and god (e.g. prophecy, dreams, haruspicy)
– theriomorphism

We welcome proposals for a 20 minute paper on any of the above (or related topics). Please send abstracts of a maximum of 300 words by the 10th of October, 2009 to clssh AT bristol.ac.uk or c.thumiger AT ucl.ac.uk.

Sarah Hitch and Chiara Thumiger