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Psychogeographies in Latin Literature.

London, 8-9 July 2013

Conference organised jointly by the Department of Classics, KCL and the Centre for the Reception of Greece and Rome, Royal Holloway, University of London

Far from mere dots on a map, places are products of the interrelationship of humans and their natural environment. They are constructs in a material environment, having a materiality as products, but they also have a producing capacity in the interaction between person and place. That interaction is multi-sensory, but often represented in narrative, sets of stories that make a place and embed a place in time and collective experience. That experience and interaction with place creates psychogeography.

The experience of urban spaces, with their itineraries, neighbourhoods, monuments, gardens, theatres and crowds are important to authors as diverse as Ovid, Tacitus, Martial, Juvenal, Catullus, Horace and Cicero. Genres such as satire, comedy, epigram and elegy have their own particular orientations to space. For some authors it is itineraries, and for others (Pliny, Statius, Lucretius) it is the views and vistas that matter. Public spaces are reclaimed for other uses by Ovid, and viewed with suspicion by Seneca, while imperial space is contained and framed in the Odes of Horace. The cubiculum, the forum, the trivium, the Via Sacra and other locations all have their own topoi and associations. Literary works create their own models of space (closure, enjambement, digression and the like). How do these ‘spatial’ aspects of the literary work relate to, or even compete with, exterior spaces? And how can work in other areas of classical studies (archaeology, art, history) be brought to bear on literary texts?

Modern theoretical work has also offered multiple possible ways in which to reinvigorate our perceptions and reception of the spatial in literature. For example, the distinction between space (espace) and place as a locale (lieu), central to Michel de Certeau’s work, allows distance to be generated between the stable reception of meanings generated from a hegemonic political culture and the enacted meanings that are performed at street level. Similarly, perceived spaces, as Henri Lefebvre suggests, are laden with socio-political significance, and they can be deployed to challenge mainstream strategies of meaning by, for instance, rendering places of ceremony and order into sites for the performance of pleasure and carnival, and subverting official monuments with unorthodox cultural memories. Iconic amongst those strands of scholarship that seek to reenergise the reader’s relationship with space in literature is the figure of the flâneur (as reflected by Walter Benjamin), the stroller in the city, or away from it, who re-imagines space through often aberrant itineraries.

This conference will bring together scholars interested in all aspects of this topic to share different kinds of material and approaches and to discus the agendas and potential of this topic as a whole.

Confirmed speakers include:

Richard Alston (RHUL), Catherine Edwards (Birkbeck), Therese Fuhrer (Berlin), Jared Hudson (Berkeley), David Larmour (Texas Tech), Maxine Lewis (Auckland), Ellen Oliensis (Berkeley), Shreyaa Patel (RHUL), Victoria Rimell (Rome), Diana Spencer (Birmingham), Efi Spentzou (RHUL),

Conference organisers:

William Fitzgerald (william.fitzgerald AT kcl.ac.uk)

Efi Spentzou (e.spentzou AT rhul.ac.uk)

Seen on the Classicists list:

CALL FOR PAPERS
AD MEA TEMPORA
Ovid in Ovidian Times
A graduate-student colloquium
Saturday, March 9th, 2013
Warburg Institute, London

It is by now a critical commonplace to observe that the last 30 years have
seen a dramatic reversal in Ovid’s critical fortunes. From a maligned
harbinger of Silver Latin, Ovid has moved to the centre of Latin literary
criticism and classical reception studies. This critical reappraisal can, of
course, be understood as a reversion to a periodic historical norm, with
Ovid returning to the high esteem in which he was held for much of the
Middle Ages and Renaissance. At the same time, the recent Ovidian revival
seems to follow, almost inevitably, from contemporary cultural conditions:
Ovid’s irony and wit, the kaleidoscopically intertextual texture of his
poetry. his fascination with change, and his continual juxtapositions of sex
and politics are all highly congenial to the interests and aesthetics of
modern and postmodern literary and intellectual culture. The turn of the
twenty-first century, then, has not only been a good moment for Ovid, but
also a very Ovidian moment.
But what does it mean to describe a period, genre or work as Ovidian? This
one-day graduate colloquium – a pendant to the Warburg Institute and
Institute for Classical Study’s The Afterlife of Ovid
(http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/colloquia/afterlife-of-ovid/)– aims to
bring together graduate students working on Ovid and his reception to
explore and discuss the nature and boundaries of the Ovidian. Do different
readers of Ovid invariably create their own versions of the poet, or can the
Ovidian be understood as a transhistorical aesthetic category? Do literary
and critical contexts in which Ovid holds a prominent position – including,
but not limited to, the present moment, late 16th century England, and the
latter half of the Augustan principate – share distinguishing cultural and
aesthetic conditions? What are the relations between the Ovidian, the
Augustan, the Classical?
We welcome submissions from graduate students working on the afterlife of
Ovid in all periods and in all media. Papers that seek to understand the
Ovidian inheritance in terms broader than those supposed by source and
intertextual criticism, as well as theoretical considerations of Ovidianism
and reception studies, are also very welcome. Please submit a 300-350 word
abstract for a 20 minute presentation to admeatempora AT gmail.com by January
1st. Please include your abstract as an attachment, with the title as the
file name, but without your name anywhere on the document or in the title.
And please include the title of your work in the body or subject of your
email. Please do be in touch if you have any questions.

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Movement in Ancient Economies: Archaeological Approaches to Distribution
With Keynote Speaker Gil Stein

An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference
Sponsored by the University of Michigan Collaborative Archaeology Workgroup

Date: February 15-16, 2013
Where: University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, MI

Studies of the economy are often divided into three segments:
production, consumption, and
distribution. Of these, distribution is of vital importance for
understanding the social interactions,
economic organization, and political strategies which condition how
and why materials move.
Distribution has at times been discussed monolithically, with
political systems or cultural zones
classified as redistributive or market societies. New models for
detecting and interpreting
distribution in the past have stressed economic diversity and the
coexistence of different
distribution systems for different materials. This conference will
bring together graduate students
and faculty to present some of these new perspectives on distribution
and its role in
understanding economic, political, and social dynamics in the past.

We are calling for papers of 20 minutes in length that deal with the
importance of
distribution to material studies of the past. We hope to receive
papers that address the
following questions with specific case studies: How do we detect
distribution in the material
record? How do distribution systems articulate with existing/emerging
social and political
systems? How do distribution systems change? How variable are
different kinds of economies
(such as market or redistributive)? What is the impact of regional
identity on distribution
networks that cross multiple regions? How can we track intra-site
movement of materials, and
what can these movements tell us about economic, political, and social
organization?

Participants are asked to submit a paper copy (10-12 double-spaced
pages) of their presentation
ten days before the conference to allow panel discussants to prepare
comments (February 5).

Abstracts of no longer than 200 words should be submitted by January 5, 2013.

Please submit abstracts and direct questions to CAW-2012 AT umich.edu.

Although travel stipends will not be available for this conference,
accommodations (with
Michigan archaeology graduate students) for Friday and/or Saturday
night(s) will be arranged
upon request. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner will be provided on the day
of the conference.

The Collaborative Archaeology Workgroup (CAW) is a group of graduate
students from several
departments at the University of Michigan (including Anthropology and
Classical Art and
Archaeology) who share an interest in archaeological research, theory,
and methods. We are
dedicated to promoting interdisciplinary research and facilitating the
exchange of information
among all students interested in studying the past through
archaeological techniques.

The conference is co-sponsored by the Rackham Graduate School,
International Institute,
Museum of Anthropology, Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, and
Interdepartmental Program in
Classical Art and Archaeology.

King’s College London Classics Postgraduate Conference:

Identity and Representation in Antiquity

14 June 2013, London

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Irene Polinskaya (KCL)

Abstract Submission Deadline: 28 March 2013

The Classics Department of King’s College London is delighted to announce the second Postgraduate Conference on Identity and Representation in Antiquity. The conference will take place on Friday 14 June, 2013 at Strand campus, KCL.

Graduate students at all levels of study are invited to present working research on identity or representation within the classical or the late antique world. This might involve a variety of different conceptualizations of identity and representation–including, but not restricted to, personal, imperial, social, collective, or religious. The organisers are happy to receive abstracts on relevant topics from reception studies.

The following head topics from the last conference may be developed further, while new topics are also welcome:

1. Epigraphic and Literary Representations in the Ancient World

2. Aspects of Greek Civic and Religious Identity

3. Syncretisms and Projections of Identity and Culture from the Hellenistic period to the Imperial Age

4. Augustus as Restorer and Preserver of Roman Religion: Topography, Numismatics, and Poetry

5. Religious Identity and Secular Power in Late Antiquity

By gathering together postgraduates at all stages of research and across a wide purview of historical context, the organisers hope to stimulate productive dialogue and to gain for all participants a more nuanced perspective on the importance of identity and representation in the ancient world.

An email regarding registration will be sent out with a program at a later date.

Presentations are limited to twenty minutes in length. Abstracts of about 250 words should be submitted by e-mail: kclclassics AT gmail.com

Members of the Organising Committee: Thomas Coward, Yukiko Kawamoto, Sangduk Lee, Aikaterini-Iliana Rassia

DEADLINE EXTENDED! Deadline for abstract submission extended to Friday, December 14, 2012!

Call for Papers: (Re)Constructing the Past: Abandonment and Renewal in the Ancient World

Graduate Student Conference, February 22-23, 2013
Department of Classical Studies, University of Michigan

Keynote Speaker: Professor Karl Galinsky, University of Texas at Austin

Modern conceptions of the ancient world are often dominated by images of destruction and abandonment, concretized in the ruins of ancient structures or fragments of lost texts. But ruin in the ancient world is almost always accompanied by eventual renewal, a regeneration or remembrance of the thing lost, abandoned, or destroyed.

The 2013 interdisciplinary conference in Classical Studies is open to graduate students studying the history, literature, art, and archaeology of the ancient Mediterranean and will focus on cycles of desertion, ruin, and rebuilding in the ancient world. We invite papers on the abandonment of cities, buildings, and regions, the abandonment of literary genres and styles, the abandonment of ideas and religious practices and beliefs, and the modern abandonment of interpretative theories, as well as the memory of and responses to such abandonment. We welcome papers addressing how and why deserted objects and ideas are reconstructed, as well as the effects of rebuilding on individuals, society, material culture, and literature. Potential topics also include the historical and literary trope of moral or artistic decline, the literary topos of abandoned women, themes of regret and nostalgia, and the subject of exile. Submissions dealing with issues of reception and adaptation, including the reuse and reappropriation of abandoned buildings, objects, texts, laws, or ideas are also encouraged.

Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words by December 14, 2012 via email as a PDF attachment to classicsgradconference AT umich.edu. In your email please include the presenter’s name, institution, email address, phone number, and any A/V needs. Please omit identifying information from the actual abstract document. Accepted presenters will be notified in early January 2013. Food and lodging will be provided for presenters.