Preliminary notice: Engendering Reception: From Penelope to Atwood’s Penelopiad
University of Toronto, April 24-25 2010The Classics Graduate Student Association of the University of Toronto
invites abstracts for a graduate conference on the theme Engendering
Reception, to be held in Toronto on April 24-25, 2010. Our keynote
speaker will be Susanna Braund, Canada Research Chair in Latin Poetry
and its Reception, University of British Columbia.This conference aims to consider the role gender plays in reception
both within antiquity and beyond. What does it mean when Catullus and
Horace imitate Sappho? How are epic heroines and villains portrayed in
other genres? How is gender played out in later imitations of Greek
and Roman literature (e.g. Racine’s Phèdre)? What are the issues
facing contemporary women writers (such as Margaret Atwood or Anne
Carson) who deal with classical topics? Our conference hopes to
explore these questions, as well as more broadly theoretical issues.Potential topics could include, but are not limited to:
• Intertextual heroines in antiquity
• The reception of female authors in the ancient world
• The use of a “female voice” by male authors
• The interaction of historical and literary female characters
• Women and the history of classical scholarship
• Women and the acquisition of Classical education in the 19th and
early 20th centuries
• Gender and the contemporary reception of the classicsWe welcome submissions from students of all areas of classical
studies, as well as students from other disciplines, including art
history, history, archaeology, philosophy, comparative literature,
religious studies, women’s and gender studies, drama, and politics.A conference website will be set up shortly, and interested students
are invited to join the conference’s Facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=112388917878This is a preliminary notice. A call for papers and a submission
deadline will be circulated in the fall. Queries and indications of
interest should be directed to the conference coordinators:
Cillian O’Hogan, cillian.ohogan AT utoronto.ca
Melanie Racette-Campbell, melanie.racette.campbell AT utoronto.ca
Month: August 2009
This Day in Ancient History: ante diem vii ius sextiles
ante diem vii ius sextiles
480 B.C. — Death of Leonidas at Thermopylae (according to one reckoning; not sure of where they got it)
44 A.D. — Death of Herod Agrippa (according to one reckoning; ditto)
117 A.D. — the emperor Trajan dies at Selinus (in Asia Minor) as a result of a stroke (some sources give the date for this as August 9)
Muziris Update (?)
Not sure there’s anything new in this item from the Calcutta Telegraph:
A village in Kerala’s Periyar delta may be the site of a port that has remained untraced for centuries although ancient Indian and Greek texts had described it as an Indian Ocean trade hub, researchers have said.
Archaeological excavations at Pattanam, about 25km north of Kochi, have yielded an abundance of artefacts — a 2,000-year-old brick-layered wharf, a wooden canoe and hundreds of fragments of Roman and West Asian pottery, including wine jars.
The findings of three years of excavations suggest that the Pattanam site may have been part of Muziris, a port city mentioned in an ancient Tamil text, Akanunuru, as well as in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a navigational guide from ancient Greece describing ports along the Red Sea and in India. Historians have dated both texts to the first century AD.
“Pattanam may be the oldest port with a large amount of evidence of Roman contacts outside the traditional boundaries of the Roman empire,” said Parayil John Cherian, the director of the Kerala Council of Historical Research and research team leader.
Cherian and his colleagues have published their findings in the latest issue of Current Science, a peer-reviewed journal published by the Indian Academy of Sciences. “The artefacts suggest this was a major trading port,” Cherian told The Telegraph.
The excavations revealed a six-metre-long wooden canoe, a wharf with wooden bollards to hold boats and fragments of Roman pottery that appear to contain material from southern Italy as well as shards of Egyptian and Mesopotamian pottery. Scattered alongside in a waterlogged area near the wharf were grains of black pepper, cardamom and rice.
The researchers said the findings provide strong circumstantial evidence that Pattanam was part of the port of Muziris because they match descriptions of the ancient port in Tamil literature from about the first century AD.
“The text mentions a port named Muchiri where ships arrived with gold and jars of wine and returned with pepper,” said Veerasamy Selvakumar, a team member from the department of epigraphy and archaeology at Tamil University, Thanjavur.
“We now have evidence for spice trade from this site, and the Roman Amphora fragments point to wine jars,” Selvakumar said.
Scientists at the Institute of Physics in Bhubaneswar who helped the archaeologists date some of the materials discovered at the site found that wood from the wharf was about 2,000 years old — between the first century BC and the first century AD.
The researchers believe ships would sail from a port on Egypt’s Red Sea coast into the northern Indian Ocean and into Muziris. “We’ve estimated that the voyage would have taken about 70 days,” Cherian said.
He said the discovery of jars from Mesopotamia and turquoise-glazed pottery from a layer at the archaeological site where no Roman amphora was found suggests that some West Asians may have predated contacts with the Romans.
The excavations suggest the site was first occupied about 1,000 BC and remained active until about the 10th century AD. During that period, it engaged in extensive trade with cultures from the Mediterranean, West Asia and even Southeast Asia.
There has been semi-regular coverage of the research going on at Muziris — here, here (threatened by development), here, here (threatened again) … The article referenced in the above report doesn’t really mention much from the period of our purview …
This Day in Ancient History: nonas sextiles
nonas sextiles
CFP: 2010 AIA Annual Meeting
Seen on various lists:
The second submission deadline for the AIA’s 111th Annual Meeting, to be held in Orange County, California, January 6-9, 2010, is today. The schedule for submission of sessions and papers has been revised from past years. Please note that no new Colloquia may be submitted at this time.
Deadline for Submission
The schedule for submission of sessions and papers has been revised from past years. There are now two deadlines. The first deadline was in March for all colloquia (including joint AIA/APA sessions) and any workshop- or open-session presenters who required an early decision. This will allow all accepted presenters adequate time to apply for funding and for any non-U.S. Resident to apply for a visa. The second deadline is in August and is for all other open session paper and poster submissions and resubmission of provisionally accepted colloquia. We have also implemented a two-week grace period for both deadlines. Submissions will still be accepted for two weeks following each deadline but with an administrative fee of $25.The second deadlines are Monday, August 3, 2009 and Monday, August 17 (Grace Period Ends) This deadline is applicable for all workshops, open session paper and posters submissions, and any provisionally accepted colloquia that are resubmitting.
The submission system will be open through August 17, 2009. If you expect to be in the field without internet access you may submit your abstracts early, but you will not be notified of the PAMC’s decision until late September.
The full Call for Papers and submission instructions are available on the AIA website (www.archaeological.org/annualmeeting). Please be sure to review these instructions prior to submitting your abstract or session. All submissions must be made by means of online submission via the AIA website. All submissions, of course, must pass the PAMC’s vetting process to be put onto the program. As with past meetings, all submissions must be made electronically. The online submission forms and supporting documents are available on the AIA website.
* View the 2010 Call for Papers – http://www.archaeological.org/webinfo.php?page=10453
* Online Submission Forms – http://www.archaeological.org/webinfo.php?page=10193
rogueclassicism 