Seen on various lists (please send any responses to the folks mentioned in the quoted text, not to rogueclassicism!):

‘Diodorus Siculus: shared myths, world community, and universal history’

An international conference at the University of Glasgow, 31st Aug. – 2nd Sep. 2011

Conference Website: http://ldab.arts.kuleuven.be/diodorus/

Diodorus Siculus, the most voluminous historian to survive from classical antiquity, is an important but neglected author. Not only is he our main source for significant periods of Greek, Roman and Sicilian history, he is also one of the few preserved ancient universal historians and one of the only two Hellenistic historians whose work is extant in any substantial part. Moreover, his /Bibliotheke/, because it is largely based on the works of his predecessors, is a source for the study of many lost Greek historians.

That he has rarely been studied in his own right, despite all of this, is the result of the traditional view that he was a slavish compiler of earlier works. Although Diodorus, like many other ancient historiographers, has been the subject of a (partial) rehabilitation, the question of his independence remains a controversial one.

This conference will be, as far as we know, the first international gathering on the author and our aim is to bring together scholars interested in the study of Diodorus in order to clarify our understanding of this crucial, but enigmatic and often misunderstood historian.

We welcome papers which – through either traditional or newer approaches – will increase our understanding of how and why Diodorus researched, organized and wrote the /Bibliotheke /: e.g. his views on history, myth, and the human condition, his relationship with his sources, his compositional and narrative techniques, his value as a historical source, his place within the tradition of ancient history writing, or any other issue that will enhance our comprehension of the /Bibliotheke/ as a work of Hellenistic historiography and Diodorus’ role as its author.

The conference proceedings will be published as a volume in the /Studia Hellenistica /series (Peeters publishers).

Confirmed keynote speakers:

John Marincola, Florida State University

Catherine Rubincam, University of Toronto

Kenneth Sacks, Brown University

Abstracts should be between 300 and 500 words.

Deadline for expressions of interest: 30 June 2010

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 30 September 2010

Abstracts should be submitted by email to one of the three conference organisers:

Lisa Irene Hau, University of Glasgow: l.hau AT classics.arts.gla.ac.uk

Alexander Meeus, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven: alexander.meeus AT arts.kuleuven.be

Brian Sheridan, National University of Ireland, Maynooth: brian.sheridan AT nuim.ie

Seen on Classicists (please send any responses to the folks mentioned in the quoted text, not to rogueclassicism!):

University of Liverpool

SACE Seminar Series

The School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology is pleased to announce
its research seminar programme for the summer term 2009/10. Seminars take
place at 5 – 6.30 pm in either the Bosanquet Seminar Room, 12 Abercromby
Square (BSR), the Shore Lecture Theatre, 14 Abercromby Square (SLT), or
M202, The Hartley Building. These are buildings 146, 147, and 253 on the
campus map: www.liv.ac.uk/maps.

Everyone is welcome. For further details please contact Shirley Curtis
(shirley.curtis AT liv.ac.uk).

22nd April
Maureen Carroll (University of Sheffield)
Porticus triplex and the sacred grove in Roman temple architecture: an
archaeological case study from Pompeii
(BSR)

27th April
Will Roebroeks (Leiden University)
Ebb and flow of regional extinctions: the character of neanderthal
occupation of northern climes
(M202)

29th April
Mark Molesky (Seton Hall University)
Primitive antiquity and the European imagination, 1850-1940
(BSR)

4th May
Andrew Gardner (University College London)
Violence, order, and Roman military culture
(SLT)

6th May
John Curran (Queen’s University Belfast)
Roman Judaea: the Herodian prism
(BSR)

11th May
Krzysztof Nawotka (University of Wroclaw)
Who wrote the Alexander Romance?
(BSR)

20th May
Francois Leclere (British Museum)
Egyptians and Greeks at the Saite frontier-post of Daphnae (Tell Dafana): a
reassessment
(BSR)

Seen on CJ Online (please send any responses to the folks mentioned in the quoted text, not to rogueclassicism!):

Call for Proposals: Classical Commentary Writers’ Workshop Georgetown University, October 14–16, 2010: Latin Texts

Proposals are solicited for participation in the sixth annual Classical Commentary Writers’ Workshop, to be held on October 14–16, 2010 at Georgetown University in Washington DC. The 2009 workshop will be devoted to Latin texts. The deadline for proposals is June 15, 2010.

The workshop will consist of five 3-hour sessions, each devoted to discussion of a single pre-circulated chunk of text and commentary. We work in an intensely practical, hands-on way, asking questions, making suggestions, working out problems, and the like. Our expectation is not that the group will examine the whole of anyone’s primary text, but that all participants will return in the end to their projects with fresh insights, ideas and questions, new bibliographic resources, and a sense of working within a supportive scholarly community.

Workshop sessions are open only to the conveners, S. Douglas Olson and Alex Sens; the five participants; and (by invitation) previous participants and occasional graduate student observers. Participants are expected to arrive late in the day on the 14th, and to stay for the entire proceedings, including a final dinner on Saturday night.

Projects should be well enough advanced to provide a substantial sample of text and commentary, but not so far along that the Workshop will be unlikely to affect the final shape. Proposals should consist of (1) a brief (maximum one-page) description of the project, its intended audience, and the expected publication venue; (2) a 10-page sample of text and commentary. Proposals should be submitted, preferably in PDF form, to the convenors at sdolson AT umn.edu and sensa AT georgetown.edu. Final Workshop samples will be due on Monday September 13, 2010, for pre-circulation to all participants.

Participants are asked to call first on their own research accounts and institutional resources to cover their transportation and housing costs. For those who lack such resources, the Workshop will provide up to $600 for travel and housing. All meals will be provided.

Support for the Workshop has been provided by the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, the Alexander Onassis Foundation, the Georgetown Provost’s Office, and the University of Minnesota’s Imagine Fund.

Folks on Aegeanet already know this, but the KOSMOS conference — which was adversely affected by that unpronounceable volcano — is going to be made available online for those who have been prevented from attending (and presumably others as well). Here’s something posted to Aegeanet if you’re interested:

Dear colleagues,

You can follow KOSMOS tomorrow, Wednesday at

http://ctr.hum.ku.dk/conferences/kosmos/

We start broadcasting Wednesday 21th April 2010 at 13:00-19:00 GMT

Scandinavia and Western Europe 14:00-20:00

Greece 15:00-21:00

Philadelphia 8:00-14:00

Austin 7:00-13:00

Melbourne 22:00-04:00

NB: Thursday and Friday we will start two hours earlier to make room for all the papers which you have sent!!

Summary of Video

Marie-Louise Nosch: Dear Colleagues and dear Aegeanists. We are very sorry that you cannot be with us here in Copenhagen. Fortunately you have been so generous to share your research results and your power points with us. We will now turn the Kosmos Conference into a global event on the internet. From Wednesday we will broadcast you presentations here from the University of Copenhagen. We cannot yet tell you what internet address you must use and how to enter – we will post this information later. Please follow CTR’s homepage (http://ctr.hum.ku.dk/), so you will know how to get access. We are very sorry for this, but on the other hand, this is a great opportunity to try a new way of communication and we hope to see you all another time.

Robert Laffineur: I am very disappointed, as you might imagine, not to be able to have you all with us here in Copenhagen. This is the first time in 30 years of personal activity in Aegean Research, that a conference has to be cancelled. Maybe we should have done as the organisers of car races, who never use no. 13! But it is not a reason to lament and we decided to turn the meeting into the first experience of virtual meeting in our field. Only the papers which have been sent to us will be presented, of course, and consequently there will not be the hundred papers, which we had anticipated, but the audience will be much greater, thanks to the online presentations. I would like to thank all the people who made this possible: Marie-Louise andher collaborators in the CTR, as well as the staff of the Computer Service of University of Copenhagen. Maybe this is the beginning of a new era and maybe Aegean Research has finally entered the 21st Century.

Marie-Louise Nosch: Please join us all on Wednesday when we start the broadcast of the Aegean research on the subject of KOSMOS, Jewellery, Adornment and Textiles. It will start at 13:00 in Greenwich time, 14:00 in Western Europe, 15:00 in Greece, 08:00 in the Philadelphia and 22:00 Wednesday evening in Melbourne.

We miss you and we really hope to see you soon somewhere else in the next year.

Robert Laffineur: Thank you.

[as a side note, I hope other conferences will take note at the logistics etc. of this (all done on very short notice, obviously) and perhaps ponder making conferences and/or sessions similarly available  … I've been hoping for this for years …]

Seen on Classicists (please send any responses to the folks mentioned in the quoted text, not to rogueclassicism!):

Oratory and Politics in the Roman Republic

Oxford, September 1st – 3rd, 2010

Organisers: Henriette van der Blom (Oxford) and Catherine Steel (Glasgow)

Speakers: Valentina Arena, Andrea Balbo, Henriette van der Blom, John Dugan,
Harriet Flower, Karl-Joachim Holkeskamp, Martin Jehne, Trevor Mahy, Ida
Gilda Mastrorosa, Robert Morstein-Marx, Henrik Mouritsen, Francisco Pina
Polo, Jonathan Prag, Cristina Rosillo Lopez, Amy Russell, Christopher Smith,
Catherine Steel, James Tan, Jeffrey Tatum, Elena Torregaray, Jaap Wisse.

Full details, including a registration form, are available at the conference
website, http://www.classics.ox.ac.uk/oratory/ and registration is now open.