“Digitizing Imperial Rome: A computerized Approach to the
Architectural History of the Roman Imperial Forum”

Professor Emeritus James Packer, Northwestern University.
King’s Anatomy Theatre Lecture Hall, King’s College London, The
Strand, London. UK
29th of October 2010, commencing at 6 PM.
There will be a reception afterwards at the adjacent Old Anatomy Museum.

ABSTRACT
Although each year millions of people visit the Roman Forum – the
center of Rome’s former remarkable empire – they find only one or two
partially preserved structures and piles of architectural fragments.
Most of the ancient buildings, apart from the few converted into
churches, collapsed after centuries of neglect, leaving their remains
to be quarried by later generations. The details of the individual
buildings are still not widely understood, and the Forum has never
been studied as a unified architectural composition. Moreover, owing
to new archaeological studies and advances in computer technology in
the last fifteen years, it is now possible both to reconstruct the
Forum’s monuments accurately and, with these new reconstructions, to
comprehend the design and meaning of the whole site. These
considerations led my colleague, Professor and Architect Gilbert
Gorski, and me to undertake our new, digitally based study of the
Forum.

Our work clarifies the design of the buildings around the Forum’s
central core. It collects, for the first time in English; the most
important material related each of the major monuments and shows
visually their structure, size and original appearance. Over a period
of nearly forty years (29 B.C. – A.D. 10), Augustus rebuilt the site,
and thereafter, in material, size structure and decoration, its
buildings related clearly to one another. Together they impressively
represented the power and prestige both of Augustus own regime and
that of the Mediterranean Empire it governed.

With some missteps (the short-lived colossal equestrian state of
Domitian, the unfortunately situated, enormous, gaudy Arch of
Severus), later emperors carefully maintained Augustus’ design and
structures, even as they rebuilt many of the monuments after
disastrous fires. The late third century A.D. additions of Diocletian
maintained this tradition but added a fashionable, new architectural
framework that expressed that emperor’s optimistic hopes for the
future of his recently reassembled Empire. Only the end of Rome as an
imperial capital doomed the site to neglect, ruin, transformation and,
from the 18th century on, to the investigations of modern excavators.

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

IMAGINING EUROPE – PERSPECTIVES, PERCEPTIONS AND REPRESENTATIONS FROM
ANTIQUITY TO THE PRESENT

REMINDER: CALL FOR PAPERS – LUICD Graduate Conference 2011

Leiden University Institute for Cultural Disciplines
27 and 28 January 2011

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Professor Edith Hall, Royal Holloway, University of London
Professor Jonathan Israel, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
University

THE CONFERENCE

‘Qui parle Europe a tort. Notion géographique’. Otto von Bismarck’s
elliptic remark, scribbled in the margin of a letter from Alexander
Gorchakov in 1876, would go on to become one of the most often-quoted
statements about Europe. But was Bismarck right? Is Europe nothing but a
geographical notion? Even the briefest glance at history shows that more
often than not perceptions and definitions of Europe go beyond the mere
geographical demarcation of a continent. In 1919, for instance, Paul
Valéry imagined Europe as a living creature, with ‘a consciousness
acquired through centuries of bearable calamities, by thousands of men of
the first rank, from innumerable geographical, ethnic and historical
coincidences’. Of course this is only one of a multitude of different
representations. Europe has always signified different things to different
people in different places – inside Europe as well as outside. Europe
meant, for instance, something different to Voltaire, l’aubergiste
d’Europe, at Ferney in the 1760s than to Athanasius Kircher in Rome a
century earlier or to Barack Obama in Washington today.

This conference explores the different ways in which Europe has been
imagined and represented, from inside as well as outside Europe and from
classical antiquity to the present day. This wide scope reflects the
historical range of the LUICD’s three research programmes (Classics and
Classical Civilization, Medieval and Early Modern Studies and Modern and
Contemporary Studies) as well as the intercontinental focus of many of the
institute’s research projects. The conference aims to present a diachronic
perspective of some of the many images of Europe, with particular
attention to the historical, cultural and economic contexts in which these
images were created and the media and genres in which they have been
presented.

Although the emphasis of the conference lies on different and changing
perspectives, perceptions and representations, it also wants to explore
the notion of similarity – are there any aspects that keep recurring in
the different visions, aspects that might even be said to be intrinsically
European?

The conference aims to provide a platform for graduate students in the
humanities, from Leiden as well as other universities in the Netherlands
and abroad, to present and exchange their ideas in an international and
interdisciplinary environment. The organising committee is honoured that
Professor Jonathan Israel and Professor Edith Hall have accepted our
invitation to act as keynote speakers and participate in discussions
during the conference.

PROPOSALS

The LUICD Graduate Conference aims to reflect the institute’s
interdisciplinary and international character and as such welcomes
proposals from graduate students from all disciplines within the
humanities, from universities from the Netherlands as well as abroad. The
conference wants to present a variety of different perspectives on Europe
(from within as well as outside the European continent) and those working
in fields related to other continents are particularly encouraged to
submit a proposal.

Subjects may include historical events, processes and discourses, textual
and/or visual representations, literary or art canons, colonial and post-
colonial relations, philosophical developments and political issues.
Questions that could be raised include: how did (and do) oppositions such
as barbarism versus civilization, Christianity versus paganism or old
versus new worlds relate to the conceptualization of Europe? What role
does (perceived) cultural superiority play in these oppositions? What
ideas might be regarded as predecessors of or alternatives to the concept
of Europe? In what ways did (and do) forms of universalism and regionalism
compete with identity formation on a continental level? How have
individual artists represented Europe? How do different (literary) genres,
such as travel literature, historiography or letters, construct a
particular image of Europe or Europe’s relations with other cultures? Is
it possible for art collections to imagine Europe or to question existing
perceptions of Europe? How do migrant literature and cinema reflect the
changing identity of Europe today?

Please send your proposal (max. 300 words) for a 20-minute paper to
C.Maas AT hum.leidenuniv.nl .  The deadline for the proposals is 1 November
2010 – you will be notified whether or not your proposal has been selected
before 15 November 2010.

After the conference, the proceedings will be published either on-line or
in book form. More information on this will follow in due course.

A conference website ( http://hum.leiden.edu/icd/imagining-europe ), with
more information about the programme, speakers, accommodation and other
conference matters, will be launched later this autumn, but if you have
any questions regarding the conference and/or the proposal, please do not
hesitate to contact us at the above e-mail address.

The organizing committee:

Drs. Thera Giezen
Drs. Jacqueline Hylkema
Drs. Coen Maas

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

The Association for the Study and Preservation of Roman Mosaics (ASPROM)
will be holding its winter symposium at King’s College London on Saturday 4
December, 2-5.30 pm. All are welcome to attend (see below for booking info).

Programme:

Ellen Swift – Non-figurative mosaics in domestic houses: context and function

Jeffery Leigh – Roman gold glass tesserae in Britain: the Southwick Three
and Marlipins Four

Stephen Cosh & David Neal – Completing the Corpus: the final volume and a
review of the project

Update on British mosaics

Venue: King’s College London, Strand Campus, King’s Building K2.31

Booking fee: £10 members, £8 student members, £15 non-members
Sandwich lunch available beforehand, £5
Full details & booking form at http://www.asprom.org/news/symposium63.html.
Contact: Dr Will Wootton, King’s College London (will.wootton  AT kcl.ac.uk).

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

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,
liebe Kolleginnen und Kollegen,

der 14. Internationale Kongress für Griechische und Lateinische
Epigraphik wird auf Einladung der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften und der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in Verbindung mit
dem Deutschen Archäologischen Institut vom 27. bis zum 31. August 2012
in Berlin stattfinden. Die Internetseite des Kongresses ist unter

http://www.congressus2012.de

zu erreichen. Über den jeweils neuesten Stand der Kongressvorbereitung
wird mit einem Newsletter informiert werden. Bitte melden Sie uns unter

http://www.congressus2012.de/de/newsletter.html

dass Sie den Newsletter erhalten wollen; auf diese Weise erhalten wir
auch ihre neueste E-Mail Adresse. Die Anmeldung für den Newsletter ist
noch keine Anmeldung zum Kongress.

Wir wären Ihnen sehr dankbar, wenn Sie diese E-Mail an alle
Interessenten und Institutionen weiterleiten würden, besonders an
jüngere Kollegen und solche, die über keinen eigenen E-Mail-Anschluß
verfügen. Falls diese uns entsprechend schreiben, werden wir ihnen die
Informationen auf normalem postalischem Weg zusenden.

Wir bitten um Entschuldigung, falls Sie diese E-Mail mehrfach erhalten
sollten.

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

Dear colleagues,

Please find below the Semester 1 programme of Classics Research Seminars at Edinburgh. All seminars take place on Wednesdays at 5 pm in the Sydney Smith Lecture Theatre, 2nd floor, Medical School, Teviot Place, unless otherwise stated. All are welcome to attend. For further information please contact Ursula Rothe (ursula.rothe AT ed.ac.uk).

Semester 1:

29th September
Prof. WILLIAM HARRIS (Columbia)
‘Approaches to Roman poverty’

6th October
Prof. ØIVIND ANDERSEN (Oslo)
‘Herakles in the Odyssey’

13th October
Prof. JAN BREMMER (Groningen)
‘Ancient necromancy – fact or fiction?’

20th October
Dr. EMMA STAFFORD (Leeds)
‘Herculean tasks: writing about Herakles in the 21st century’

3rd November
Dr. CALUM MACIVER (Edinburgh)
‘Rereading Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe’

10th November
Prof. THOMAS HARRISON (Liverpool)
‘Herodotus on Persian royal ideology’

17th November – 5.30 start!!!
Prof. DAMIEN NELIS (Geneva)
‘Vergilian futures in the Georgics’

24th November
Dr. COLIN MACDONALD (Edinburgh)
‘Aspects of excavation and research in and around the Bronze Age Palace of Knossos’