Society of Classical Studies 154th Annual Meeting
JANUARY 5-8, 2023
NEW ORLEANS
Call for Papers for Panel Sponsored by the International Plutarch Society
Disability in the works of Plutarch and his contemporaries
Organized by Daniel Leon (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) and Zoe Stamatopoulou (Washington University in St. Louis).
Recent scholarship has shed new light on disability in Plutarch’s works. Sparta’s alleged rejection of newborns who were deemed to be impaired (Lyc. 16.1-3) has featured prominently in discussions of ancient ableism (e.g., Penrose Jr. 2015). Furthermore, Agesilaus’ attitude towards his own mobility impairment in Plut. Ages. 2.2 and Plutarch’s discourse on military wounds (e.g., Sert. 1.8 and 4.3-4) have been central to studies of Plutarch’s aesthetics of virtue and leadership (Samama 2013; Meeusen 2017). This panel aims to advance further the study of impairment and disability in the biographical as well as the non-biographical works of Plutarch; it also aspires to contextualize Plutarch’s discourse and ideas by exploring how other intellectuals of the Early Empire conceptualize and discuss related issues. To this end, we invite papers that focus on impairment and disability in the works of Plutarch and other prose authors of the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, as well as on the history of scholarship on this subject.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- disability in Greek and Roman biography, especially in connection with power, virtue, and identity
- discussions of physical and/or mental impairment in philosophical treatises as well as in scientific and technical literature
- gender and disability
- physical impairment in sympotic literature
- the impaired body as a metaphor
- critical evaluation of scholarly approaches to the above
Abstracts should be sent electronically to Zoe Stamatopoulou (zoe.stamatopoulou@wustl.edu) by the extended deadline of March 15, 2022. Please follow the SCS Guidelines for Authors of Abstracts and plan for a paper that takes no more than 20 minutes to deliver. All abstracts will be judged anonymously. Membership in the International Plutarch Society is not required for participation in this panel, but all presenters must be members of the SCS.
Works Cited:
Meeusen, M. (2017), “Plutarch’s ‘Philosophy’ of Disability”, in C. Laes (ed.), Disability in Antiquity (London and New York), 197-209.
Penrose Jr., W.D. (2015), “The Discourse of Disability in Ancient Greece”, CW 108, 499-523.
Samama, E. (2013), “A King Walking with Pain? On the Textual and Iconographical Images of Philip II and Other Wounded Kings”, in C. Laes, C.F. Goodey, and M.L. Rose (eds.), Disabilities in Roman Antiquity: Disparate Bodies A Capite ad Calcem (Leiden and Boston), 231–248.