Society of Classical Studies 154th Annual Meeting
JANUARY 5-8, 2023
NEW ORLEANS
Call for Papers for Panel Sponsored by the Women’s Classical Caucus
Women and the Ancient Economy: Past, Present, and Future
Organized by Christy Q. Schirmer, University of Texas at Austin
Title:
Women and the Ancient Economy: Past, Present, and Future
Call for Proposals:
The Women’s Classical Caucus invites abstracts for the 2023 WCC Panel on Women and the Ancient Economy: Past, Present, and Future. The paper presentations for this panel will examine both the influence of women on the economy in Mediterranean antiquity and the contemporary role of female scholars in the study of the ancient economy.
In our ancient sources, signs of women’s influence on their local surroundings are everywhere, from the bricks produced from the estate of Domitia Lucilla Minor to the “For Rent” notices painted outside the Praedia of Julia Felix in Pompeii and images on reliefs and vase paintings depicting women tavern keepers, fruit sellers, and oil vendors. It is clear from both the material and literary evidence that women participated in a range of industrial activities and influenced the economic landscape in critical ways (e.g., Holleran 2013; Kennedy 2014; Becker 2016), yet they are often underplayed or go unmentioned in ancient sources.
The increased attention on women in the ancient economy has coincided with the rise of female scholars working on the social and economic history of the ancient world. This demographic shift has already generated some discussion (Bowes 2021) about the ways we approach social and economic history and whether changing perspectives and approaches can yield new insights. Although the number of women in leadership roles in archaeology is slowly climbing, it is not keeping pace with the growing number of women who are joining the field, on excavations and in graduate programs (Hamilton 2014).
This panel will include papers that explore women’s roles in the ancient economy and also the female scholars today who study the ancient economy. The former—from laborers working in or out of the house to wealthy women who finance public buildings—provide a rich landscape of underexplored
data (artifacts, inscriptions, documentary texts). The latter—on the growing number of women working on ancient economic studies, traditionally a male-dominated field—prompts us to reflect on how emerging voices can steer the field in new directions.
We invite submissions that focus on (but are not limited to) topics such as:
- Evidence for ancient Greco-Roman women in trade, retail, and workshops (iconography, literature, graffiti, legal texts, inscriptions)
- Ancient women’s involvement in in agricultural labor or domestic production
- Comparative approaches to studying the ancient economy
- Identifying women in the material record
- Interpreting archaeological data, including using techniques such as osteological analysis
- Women in the field of archaeology, economic history, etc.
- The roles of women on excavations and in the publication process
Abstracts must be no more than 500 words (excluding bibliography) and follow the SCS guidelines for authors of abstracts. In addition to following these guidelines, the abstract file attachments themselves must be anonymous to be considered, so please do not reveal yourself in your abstract or in the file name. We encourage you to review carefully the SCS guidelines for authors of abstracts before submitting.
Please submit your anonymized abstract as a PDF file attachment by email to wccofscs@gmail.com with the subject line: “2023 WCC Panel: Women in the Ancient Economy.” The deadline for submission is February 18, 2022 (Friday). The organizers will review all submissions anonymously, and their decision will be communicated to the authors of abstracts by March 4, 2022, with enough time that those whose abstracts are not chosen can participate in the individual abstract submission process for the upcoming SCS meeting.
Works Cited:
Becker, H. 2016. “Roman women in the urban economy: occupations, social connections, and gendered exclusions.” In Women in Antiquity: Real Women across the Ancient World, edited by Stephanie Lynn Budin and Jean MacIntosh Turfa, 915-931. Rewriting Antiquity. London: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315621425.
Bowes, K. 2021. “When Kuznets Went to Rome: Roman Economic Well-Being and the Reframing of Roman History.” Capitalism:
A Journal of History and Economics 2 1: 7–40. doi:10.1353/cap.2021.0000.
Hamilton, S. 2014. “Under-representation in contemporary archaeology.” Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 24 1: 1–9.
Holleran, C. 2013. “Women and Retail in Roman Italy.” In Women and the
Roman City in the Latin West, 313–330. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. doi:https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004255951_017.
Kennedy, R.F. 2014. Immigrant women in Athens : gender, ethnicity, and citizenship in the classical city. Routledge studies in ancient history ; 6. New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315817774.