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

… seen on the Classicists list:

THEATRUM MUNDI: LATIN DRAMA IN RENAISSANCE EUROPE

12-14 September 2013

Magdalen College, University of Oxford

Organized by the Society for Neo-Latin Studies in tandem with the Centre for Early Modern Studies, Oxford, the conference will bring together scholars to discuss early modern Latin drama, a form pivotal to the development of educational practice and literary composition across Europe. Culturally conspicuous, often ideologically engaged, original Latin plays were the pedagogical lifeblood of Renaissance schools, colleges, academies and universities. Scholars of Renaissance drama tend to focus on vernacular plays while overlooking the fact that many dramatists honed their talents at, for instance, institutional theatres constructed at the Elizabethan universities or nurtured at the French Jesuit colleges by the ancien régime. Our conference aims both to remedy such oversight and to stimulate new thought about this pan-European dramatic phenomenon.

Confirmed speakers include Thomas Earle (Oxford), Alison Shell (UCL), and Stefan Tilg (Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, Innsbruck). Proposals are sought for twenty-minute papers on any aspect of early modern Latin drama, which might discuss but are not limited to the following topics:
Student life – Religious conformity and dissent – Philosophical engagement – Relationships between Latin and vernacular plays – Pedagogy and rhetorical training ? Patronage and support

Please send your proposal and any questions about the conference to Sarah Knight, University of Leicester (sk218) by December 31, 2012. Proposals should include a provisional title, approx. 150-200 words outlining your paper, and contact details.

Postgraduate and post-doctoral bursaries may be available, and some accommodation has been pre-booked at Worcester College, Oxford: if you would like to be considered either for a bursary or for college accommodation, please indicate this when you submit your proposal.

Seen on the Classicists list:

Aeneid Six and its Cultural Reception

The Villa Vergiliana in Cumae, Italy

June 25-27 2013

Outside of the Bible, no text has had as profound an impact on Western Culture as the Aeneid, and within the Aeneid, no book has been as influential as Aeneid Six. Ovid was perceptive enough to recognize its profound novelty, when his Sibyl refers to Vergil’s underworld as novissma regna mundi (Met. 14.111). By the time of Servius the novissima regna had been arranged according various intellectual disciplines such as historia, philosophia, and theology with numerous scholiasts commenting on the many cruces posed by the text. The novelty and intellectual expansiveness of the Book allowed the text to have a number of reincarnations and afterlives. As Aeneas moves through the underworld Vergil constructs a literary space that has spawned countless literary and artistic responses. The ecphrastic program of the journey offered to later generations a storehouse of images, which could be articulated in painting, relief and literature. The philosophical and theological incorporation of Orphism, Pythagoreanism, Platonism, and Stoicism raises important considerations about the ontology of the soul and the poetics of eschatology, which could be harnessed by Christian Theologians for their own ends. The blurring of genres in Aeneid Six—of Epic, Tragedy, Comedy, Ethnography—along with the movement from fabula to historia during Aeneas’ journey inaugurated a new poetic aesthetic. It changed how cultures evaluated and understood poetic inspiration. Its ambition and scope changed what literature was and what it would become. Vergil responds to the entirety of Greek and Roman literary and intellectual achievement as he circumscribes it within the domain of the Aeneid and in so doing he provides a roadmap for later artists, poets and thinkers to achieve similar ends, but for different purposes. It is not an overstatement to suggest that Western Culture and significant aspects of its development hinge and pivot along the literary, religious, and philosophical lines of Aeneid Six.

The central problem of the text is how do researches confront the scale of this work and its various iterations? It is a humble truth to recognize that Aeneid Six as an act of cultural reception is beyond the knowledge and scholarly skill of a single individual. Its reception necessitates scholarly conversation and investigation in an interdisciplinary and international context. From this perspective Aeneid Six is a perfect test case for theoretical and practical applications of reception, and it allows scholars to think about the underlying causes for the rise of reception studies over the last two decades. It is the primary aim of the conference to come to a new understanding of reception as a process of continuity and change from the Classical era to the present. How does conceiving of Aeneid Six as a product of reception as well as a catalyst for other receptions illuminate receptions studies? How does Vergil channel the vast complex of prior literature, philosophy and religion into his poem and how does this contribute to the meaning of the Aeneid? Does Vergil create a coherent eschatology or does the polyphony of traditions result in contradictory stances? How do later thinkers and artists respond to Vergil’s artistic vision? How and why was Aeneid Six established as a central text for reception, and just as importantly why has it been displaced within the last few generations?

Participants include: Alessandro Barchiesi (keynote speaker), Philip Hardie, Joseph Farrell, Alison Keith, David Quint, Alessandro Schiesaro, Damien Nelis, Maggie Kilgour, Miguel Herrero, Renaud Gagné, and Sarah Spence.

Under the auspices of the Vergilian Society scholars and students are invited to submit abstracts of 300-500 words on Aeneid Six and its reception. In particular, abstracts on following issues will be especially welcome:

*The reception of prior Greco-Roman art and thought.
*The meaning of Aeneid Six within Vergil’s poetic output and its immediate impact on Roman literature and culture.
*Studies on the scholastic tradition from Servius to Norden.
*The reception of Aeneid Six from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern period.
*Papers on the place of Aeneid Six in religious, philosophical and intellectual history.
*Analyses of Aeneid Six in light of archaeological findings, material culture and art history.
*Discussions on the theoretical underpinnings which inform reception studies.

Papers should aim to be no more than 30 minutes in length. Papers in languages other than English are more than welcome. Abstracts should be submitted no later than November 30th 2012. Notification of acceptance will follow soon after. Please send abstracts as a PdF attachment to charles.gladhill AT mcgill.ca.

Seen on the Classicists list:

EXETER CLASSICS AND ANCIENT HISTORY RESEARCH EVENTS, TERM 1 2012-13

Time: Thursday 5-7 pm. Venue: Amory 105.

Research Seminars are followed by drinks in the Leventis Room (Amory 271) and, in the case of outside speakers, by dinner in a local restaurant.

All are welcome to attend the seminars, and the drinks and dinner afterwards. If coming from outside Exeter, please contact one of the seminar

organisers or the Classics Dept office to check the seminar/lecture is being held as advertised.

Seminars associated with the Leventis-funded research programme on the impact of Greek on non-Greek culture are indicated by IGC below.

Seminar Organisers: Boris Chrubasik (b.chrubasik AT exeter.ac.uk), Daniel King (D.King AT exeter.ac.uk). Classics Administrator: Charlotte Rushforth, c.rushforth AT exeter.ac.uk.

PROGRAMME for TERM 1:

Week 1, September 27:

Professor Flora Manakidou (Democritus University of Thrace), ‘Callimachus’ Iambi: Modes of Travelling and Politics’. (IGC)

Week 1, September 27-8:

Cultural F(r)ictions in Hellenistic Literature Conference. Amory Building. (Please contact Dr. Karen Ni-Mheallaigh for further details (K.Ni-Mheallaigh AT exeter.ac.uk).

Week 2, October 4:

Professor Robert Parker (New College, Oxford): ‘Religion in Greco-Roman Anatolia: Myth, Ritual, Structures’.

Week 3, October 11:

Dr. Matthew Wright (Exeter): ‘Greek Tragedy and Quotation Culture’.

Week 4, October 18:

Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy: “Snatched from fire and sword’ – Cicero, Catiline and Political Violence in the Late Republic’ (CA Lecture). Venue: Lecture Theatre 1, Queens Building.

Week 5, October 25:

Dr. Joshua Billings (Yale): ‘The Bacchae as Palinode’. (IGC)

Week 6, November 1:

Stuart Thomson (Corpus Christi College, Oxford): ‘Clement of Alexandria and Greek Paideia’. (IGC)

Week 7, November 8:

Dr. Martin Pitts (Exeter): ‘Alien cities: consumption and the origins of urbanism in Roman Britain’.

Week, 8, November 15:

Professor Barbara Borg (Exeter): TBC (CA Lecture). Venue: Lecture Theatre 1, Queens Building.

Week 9, November 22:

Professor Tony Woodman (Virginia), ‘Tacitus and Germanicus’.

Week 10, November 29:

Dr. Cressida Ryan (Merton College, Oxford), ‘Playing Games with Longinus: Burke’s Classical Heritage’. (IGC).

Week 11, December 6:

Dr. Charles B. Watson (Appleton WI), TBC.