Seen on Classicists (please send any responses to the people/institution mentioned in the post, not to rogueclassicism!)

The Network for the Study of Archaic and Classical Greek Song (http://www.let.ru.nl/greeksong) invites paper proposals for a conference to be held at Yale University, July 6–10, 2011 with the theme:

Authorship, Authority, and Authenticity in Archaic and Classical Greek Song

The conference will explore authorship-related aspects of all genres of archaic and classical song (choral and monodic melic; iambic and elegiac poetry). Questions to be addressed include (but are not limited to):
• How does a song’s re-performance and/or changes in the conditions of its reception affect its authorship?
• Is authorship assigned to a song or a corpus of songs a check on its distribution or a means of wider propagation?
• How does archaic Greek song culture compare with the wider issues regarding fakes, pseudepigrapha, and plagiarism in Greek and Roman literature?

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be sent by Dec. 1, 2010 as an e-mail attachment to Egbert Bakker (egbert.bakker AT yale.edu), Department of Classics, Yale University. Senders will be notified early in Jan. 2011 whether their paper has been accepted.

Seen on Classicists (please send any responses to the people/institution mentioned in the post, not to rogueclassicism!)

CINEMA AND ANTIQUITY: 2000-2011

The First J.P. Postgate Colloquium, University of Liverpool

12-14 July 2011

Keynote speakers:
Monica Cyrino, Pantelis Michelakis, Jon Solomon, Martin Winkler (tbc), Maria Wyke

The resurgence of cinema’s interest in antiquity that was triggered by the release of Gladiator in 2000 shows no signs of abating. In 2010 alone, five ancient world films are appearing on our screens (Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief; Clash of the Titans; Agora; Centurion; Eagle of the Ninth; not to mention the TV series Spartacus: Blood and Sand). The public appetite for films that deal with ancient history and mythology apparently remains strong, and ‘classics and film’ courses have established themselves in universities worldwide, leading the way in the increasing prominence of reception studies within classics and ancient history. The time is ripe for reflection on these developments. This major international conference seeks to explore the directions that have been taken in a decade of moviemaking and scholarship, and to advance the field by concentrating on issues too often overlooked. We invite papers on all aspects of ancient world films released between 2000 and the present, but would particularly encourage engagement with any of the following areas:

Ø The filmmaking process, including film design, editing, cinematography, music.

Ø Marketing and publicity.

Ø Assessing audience receptions.

Ø Actors and stars.

Ø Television and the ancient world, including documentaries.

Ø Animation in film and television.

Ø Future directions in ‘classics and film’ scholarship.

We now invite proposals for 20 minute papers. Please send a 300 word abstract to the conference organisers, Joanna Paul (Joanna.Paul AT liv.ac.uk) and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (L.Llewellyn-Jones AT ed.ac.uk). Abstracts must be received no later than 31 December 2010.

More details will appear on the conference website, http://sace.liv.ac.uk/cinemaantiquity, in due course.

Seen on Classicists (please send any responses to the people/institution mentioned in the post, not to rogueclassicism!)

Postcolonial Latin American Adaptations of Greek and Roman Drama

143rd Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association

January 5-8, 2012, Philadelphia, PA

Organized by Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos (Saint Joseph’s University)

Research on the reception of classical drama has focused on Europe, Northern America, Africa, and
Australasia, but has ignored, for no justifiable reason, Latin America. Greek and Roman tragedies
regarded as canonical in the West migrated to this region since the early colonial years and have
been rewritten, especially in recent decades, to suit modern social and political concerns. For
example, Griselda Gambaro’s Furious Antigone (1986) and Jose Watanabe’s Antigone (1999), two of
the many Latin American adaptations of Sophocles’ play, appropriate a seminal story of protest
against state oppression to discuss the issue of the desaparecidos, the thousands of “missing”
civilians who were abducted, tortured, and murdered in secret by military and paramilitary forces
during the Dirty War in Argentina and Peru respectively. Similarly, in Medea in the Mirror (1960)
Jose Triana blends motifs from Euripides and Seneca to comment on the social and racial
inequalities in pre-Revolution Cuba, whereas Jorge Ali Triana revisits Sophocles in his film Oedipus
Mayor (1996) to document aspects of the Colombian Civil War waged between the army and
peasant guerillas.

The attention that Latin American adaptations of Greek and Roman drama have so far received
from Anglophone classicists (Nelli 2009, 2010; Nikoloutsos 2010, 2011; Torrance 2007) is
disproportionate to their number and geographical spread. Seeking to raise awareness about this
important area of research, this panel–the first of its kind to be organized at a national level–
solicits papers that examine case studies and approach the topic from a variety of theoretical and
interdisciplinary perspectives. Questions to be discussed include, but are not limited to, the
following:

1. What is the artistic and sociohistorical context for these adaptations?
2. Are they direct derivates of the Greek or Roman original, or are there other texts or traditions
involved in this hybridization?
3. Are these rewritings dominated by or emancipated from the ancient prototype in terms of
narrative structure, character development, and ideology?
4. Does this blending of classical themes with postcolonial experiences leave room for indigenous,
mestizo, mulatto, or other mixed-race identities to be expressed?
5. What conclusions about the migration of ideological topoi and stylistic features across Latin
America can we draw from these adaptations?

Abstracts must be received in the APA office by February 1, 2011. Please send an anonymous
abstract as a PDF attachment to apameetings@sas.upenn.edu. Be sure to mention the title of the
panel and provide complete contact information and any AV requests in the body of your email. In
preparing the abstract, please follow the APA’s formatting guidelines for individual abstracts. All
submissions will be reviewed anonymously. Inquiries can be addressed to
Konstantinos.Nikoloutsos AT sju.edu.