seen on various lists:

See also our website at www.scapat.ca ; a poster (pdf) can be downloaded at http://www.scapat.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Affiche.pdf

Call for papers, Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity X, The Transformation of Literary and Material Genres in Late Antiquity

The tenth biennial Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity conference will take place at the University of Ottawa, Canada, 21-24 March 2013. The period of Late Antiquity (A.D. 200-700) witnessed great cultural changes on a number of levels, e.g. in the emergence of new literary genres (such as hagiography) or of new building types (such as churches) or of new objects of art (consular diptychs).

The aim of the conference is to explore what exactly these changes were, and how and why they came about: were they the consequence of long-term trends or developments? Or were they rather the result of external factors, the products of what was once termed ‘an age of anxiety’? We hope to receive proposals of papers concerning the many genres that came into being or were transformed during the period, whether they be literary genres, such as panegyric, rhetoric, historiography, chronicles, poetry, epistolography and hagiography, or material genres, such as architecture, epigraphy, and numismatics. The term ‘genre’ is thus interpreted broadly, and papers that bring together several genres to address this issue, e.g. to consider Procopius’ Buildings both as panegyric and as a source on images of the city in Late Antiquity, or to consider the portrayal of saints in both hagiographies and artistic representations, are particularly welcome.

Three keynote speakers will be taking part in the conference: Professor John Matthews of Yale University (U.S.A.), Professor Pierre-Louis Malosse, Université Paul-Valéry, Montpelier (France), and Dr Wendy Mayer (Australian Catholic University, Brisbane).

The deadline for proposals is 15 November 2012. Abstracts should be 200-300 words in length. Papers may be in English or French. Proposals from graduate students are welcome, but they should indicate on their submission whether they have discussed their proposal with their supervisor or not.

Proposals should be sent to: shiftingfrontiersx AT gmail.com

Seen on the Classicists list:

PRAISE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF CHARACTER IN LATE ANTIQUITY

A conference to be held at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, 10–11 May 2013

Imperial panegyrics, funeral speeches, liturgical hymns, saints’ lives: the act of praise was deeply woven into the literary and cultural fabric of late Antiquity. As these examples suggest, such acts belonged to a wide range of social situations and types of text, and participated in a variety of cultural discourses. Every act, however, was closely concerned with the construction of character, the creation of ‘image’: the object of praise (male or female, living or dead, human or divine) was formed no less than mirrored by the praise itself.

The aim of this conference is to explore the praise-literature of late Antiquity with particular emphasis on character-construction and image-creation. Questions which we seek to address include the following: To what extent is the character of the laudandus shaped by rhetorical traditions? How much is owed to representations of character in earlier texts and to ancient ideas of character? How important are exempla (positive and negative) in the construction of character, and how far is the object of praise him-/herself constructed so as to be exemplary? How significant are generic considerations? To what extent are specific images the product of precise historical circumstances? What kinds of function are served by textually constructed images, and how might such images impact on the behaviour of the laudandus or of readers? How important are the relationships between praise-giver, praised, and audience/readership in the construction of image? How far do praise-givers use eulogistic situations for purposes of self-promotion and self-fashioning?

Confirmed speakers:
Christopher Kelly (University of Cambridge) (keynote lecture)
Virginia Burrus (Drew University)
Marco Formisano (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Bruce Gibson (University of Liverpool)
David Scourfield (NUI Maynooth)
Michael Trapp (King’s College London)
Lieve van Hoof (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
Catherine Ware (NUI Maynooth/University of Liverpool)
Michael Williams (NUI Maynooth)

For further information, contact the organizers:
david.scourfield AT nuim.ie
catherine.ware AT nuim.ie
michael.williams AT nuim.ie