Society for Classical Studies 157th Annual Meeting
JANUARY 7-10, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO
Call for Papers for Panel Sponsored by the Vergilian Society
Contemporary Issues and the Interpretation of Vergil
Organized by Randall Ganiban, Department of Classics, Middlebury College
Vergil’s poetry is particularly powerful because it treats momentous questions and does so against the tumultuous Roman backdrop of civil war, politics, and cultural change. The answers are not always easy, but their complexity reflects the complexity of the times.
So many of the issues raised by Vergil are of course still resonant today, even if in different forms and guises. As teachers and scholars of Vergil, we are therefore aware that our contemporary experience of such issues can affect our reading of his poetry, but we are also aware that his poetry and its concerns might influence or enrich the way we think about contemporary debates.
For the January 2026 meeting of the Society for Classical Studies in San Francisco, the Vergilian Society invites papers that explore how Vergil’s poetry can be read to provide insight into issues of contemporary importance. For example:
- The morality and ethics of war
- Immigration
- National identity
- Sex and gender
- Race and ethnicity
- Political ideology and partisanship
- Social equality
- Climate change
- Environmentalism
- Colonialism
- Human Rights
- State vs. Individual
- The role of art in society
We hope that these papers will give us a heightened sensitivity to the interaction between Vergil and our contemporary world and might thus provide new or different ways to think about and perhaps even teach his poetry.
Please send abstracts for a 15-20 minute paper by February 22, 2025 to Zara Torlone (torlonzm@miamioh.edu), preferably with the subject heading “abstract_SCS2026.” Abstracts should be 500 words or fewer (excluding bibliography) and should follow the guidelines for individual abstracts (see the SCS Guidelines for Authors of Abstracts). The abstracts will be judged anonymously and so should not reveal the author’s name, but the email should provide name, abstract title, and affiliation. Decisions will be communicated to the abstracts’ authors by the end of March, with enough time that those whose abstracts are not chosen can participate in the individual abstract submission process for the upcoming SCS meeting.