Society of Classical Studies 156th Annual Meeting
JANUARY 2-5, 2025
PHILADELPHIA
Call for Papers for Joint Panel Sponsored by the American Society of Greek and Latin Epigraphy and the American Society of Papyrologists
Organization, Display, and Transfer of Knowledge
Organized by James Sickinger (Florida State University) and Christelle Fischer-Bovet (University of Southern California)
The panel aims to explore how epigraphical and papyrological documents organize, display, and disseminate knowledge and information in the ancient societies of the Mediterranean and the Near East. While, on a most basic level, epigraphical sources serve to display information and papyrological ones allow for its transfer and dissemination, both partake in its organization and can also serve multiple functions. Our two scholarly associations seek to bring together papers addressing specific aspects of these broad problematics from either papyrological or epigraphical perspective, or both, to offer a more nuanced understanding of variations, influences, and local adaptations.
We invite abstracts that engage with – but are not limited to – administrative or legal practices, whether institutional or private; economic and accounting procedures and issues of transparency; memory, local history and archives; the transfer or display of cultural and religious knowledge and values; the relationship between archives, material culture, and the intersection between different material supports, i.e., what types of knowledge or information are displayed or archived, how and where, and with what sorts of outcomes or limitations? In sum, we envision inquiries that explore how the perspectives of epigraphy and papyrology interact: do they complement or contradict one another?
Papers should deploy evidence that is preserved either epigraphically (on stone, metal, or other durable material) or on papyri, ostraka, or wooden tablets, and that is written in Greek, Latin, Coptic, demotic Egyptian, Arabic, or other pertinent languages. Papers that engage with a combination of different materials (e.g., inscriptions and papyri) or take a comparative approach, as well as multi-authored papers pairing epigraphers and papyrologists, are also welcome.
Please send abstracts that follow the guidelines for individual abstracts (see the SCS Guidelines for Authors of Abstracts) by email, as a Word or PDF e-mail attachment, to James Sickinger at jsicking [at] fsu [dot] edu or Christelle Fischer-Bovet at fischerb [at] usc [dot] edu by February 15, 2024. Abstracts should be a maximum of 500 words (excluding bibliography) and suitable for a 20- minute presentation. Ensure that the abstracts are anonymous. The organizers will review all submissions anonymously, and their decision will be communicated to the authors of abstracts by mid-April, with enough time that those whose abstracts are not chosen can participate in the individual abstract submission process for the upcoming SCS meeting. Please note that authors submitting abstracts must be SCS members in good standing and will need to register for the 2025 meeting.