CFP: The Little Torch of Cypris: Gender and Sexuality in Hellenistic Alexandria and Beyond

Seen on the Classicists list:

The Little Torch of Cypris: Gender and Sexuality in Hellenistic Alexandria
and Beyond
When: 2-4 September 2013
Where: Monash Campus, Prato, Italy

The workshop aims to investigate the definitions of gender and sexuality in
Hellenistic Alexandria and its major impact on Latin literature as well as
later genres of European literature that viewed the city as a symbol of
cosmopolitan self-expression. Alexandria provided the setting for the
development of a new definition of Greekness emanating from the city’s
multi-cultural basis. In addition, Alexandrian poetry seems to project a new
sense of the individual as a sexual being. From Meleager, the author of bold
love epigrams, to Sotades, the writer of obscene satirical poems, a number
of less known and less studied Hellenistic poets that have, nevertheless,
excited the imagination of Latin and later Europeans authors and sealed
their understanding of the Greek cultural produce.
The crux of our investigation is double on both ends: to untangle the
tensions between the classical Athenian definitions of gender and the
emerging sexual identities that are shaped at Alexandria and, regarding the
reception of Hellenistic literature, to highlight which of these
descriptions were understood to represent classical Greece or the
Hellenistic period. We warmly invite papers that examine:

1 The definition of gender in Hellenistic Alexandria and the numerous
traditions that shaped it (i.e. perceptions of Egyptian/ Jewish sexualities)
2 The reception of Alexandrian homosexuality in Latin literature.
3 The relationship between ancient Alexandria and modern European histories
of gender and sexuality.

Submission deadline: please, send your abstracts of 600-800 words to Eva
Anagnostou-Laoutides (eva.anagnostoulaoutides AT monash.edu.au) and Daniel
Orrells (D.Orrells AT warwick.ac.uk) by the 28th of February 2013.

Depending on the coherence of the papers, the convenors will approach a
quality publishing press as soon as the program for the workshop is
finalized. This should speed up the process of a one-volume publication
anticipated by the end of 2014.

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