Skip to main content

Society for Classical Studies 157th Annual Meeting
JANUARY 7-10, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO

Call for Papers for an Organizer-Refereed Panel

The Postclassical Maghreb

Organized by Kyle Khellaf (University of California, Riverside) and Sonia Sabnis (Reed College)

In recent years, the field of Classical Studies in its most inclusive form has once again sought to reorient its emphasis on Africa as a vital, primary object of inquiry. Since the 2019 SCS Annual Meeting, Eos Africana has organized a number of panels (most recently, “Classics and Black Feminist Traditions” in 2023 and “Black Athena before Black Athena” in 2022). During this same period, the Archaeology of North Africa Interest Group (ANAIG) has organized panels for the corresponding AIA Annual Meeting (including “Mobility, Migration, and Connectivity in North Africa” in 2024 and “Decolonizing Archaeology: Perspectives from North Africa” in 2023). Many books have been concurrently published on these topics (e.g., Parker 2017, Derbew 2022, Hitchner 2022, Asante et al. 2022, Ehret 2023), bringing much needed attention to the longstanding work of numerous scholars who for the past half-century have played a central role in the ongoing process of decolonizing the Classics from an Afrocentric perspective (e.g., Snowden 1970, Bernal 1987, Greenwood 2010, McCoskey 2012, to name only a few).

However, amidst all of these reorientations, Maghrebi classical receptions have received far less attention. To be sure, there are exceptions (Abdel-Jaouad 2002, Oulebsir 2004 and 2011, Porra 2006, Bettenworth 2018, Effros 2018a and 2018b, Quinn 2018, and Gronemann 2020 and 2021). Even so, for a geographical region that has witnessed continual foreign occupation since the time of the Phoenician settlements—a fact that did not go unremarked in the “Global 19th Century” by the Americans, British, and French who viewed the region as central to their commercial interests and colonial imaginings—the extensive presence of these “postclassicisms” in North Africa remains disproportionately understudied. This becomes even more evident when one considers the significant number of Greco-Roman authors either from Africa or who featured the “Third Continent” in their writings, leading in turn to a persistence of classical mythologizing in both the colonial and postcolonial Maghrebi imaginary (e.g., “l’éternel Jugurtha,” including Rimbaud 1869, Amrouche 1946, and Déjeux 1982; the Berber Augustine, from Bertrand 1914 through contemporary authors, on which see the works of Bettenworth, Gronemann, and the essays in Römische Quartalschrift 115, 2020, 1-2).

This panel aims to examine this assemblage of Maghrebi classical receptions, whose deeply layered epistemologies frequently find themselves in a doubly colonial and postcolonial dialectic that includes scholarly dialogues, ideological deconstructions, and numerous creative reimaginings. We therefore welcome any paper that proposes to engage with the postclassical legacy in North Africa in its broadest possible conception. We likewise define “Maghrebi” broadly to include any work of global authorship that in some way prioritizes the region in its representations.

Questions that papers might address include:

  • How have Maghrebi writers sought to dislodge myths from their overly Eurocentric, Greco-Roman territorializations? (e.g., Camus 1938 vis-à-vis the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, on which see Sharpe 2016; Mellah 1988 contra Virgil Aeneid 4)
  • Have receptions in Arabic added an additional cultural-linguistic means of distancing or else repositioning classical receptions away from their Romance language counterparts? (e.g., al-Faituri’s Sereeb and Berenice of Cyrene, per Mattawa 2007, 265)
  • Why do cinematic representations of the Maghreb employ antiquities or classical receptions? (e.g., Roman ruins in Djebar 1979; Antigone as a Quebecois diasporic Kabyle in Deraspe 2019)
  • To what extent do ongoing contemporary events involving Maghrebi communities, such as the Mediterranean refugee crisis, invite dialogues with antiquities? (e.g., Mattawa 2008)
  • What role does gender play in postclassical constructions of North Africa? (e.g., Flaubert’s Salammbô and its numerous receptions; Dido/Elissa in the longue durée)
  • How do queer and gender non-conforming individuals open up the pluralisms inherent in Maghrebi identity formations to further complexifications via engagement with classical antiquities? (e.g., Sénac 1989; Eberhardt 1990)
  • Has the classical and postclassical Maghreb been overlooked in spite of its contributions to literary and cultural theory employed by the West? (Amrouche 1946; Said 1978)

Please send abstracts for a 15-20 minute paper by Friday, February 28, 2025 to info@classicalstudies.org with the subject heading “The Postclassical Maghreb.” 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.

Bibliography

Abdel-Jaouad, H. (2002) Rimbaud et l’Algérie. New York and Tunis.

Amrouche, J. (1946) “L’éternel Jugurtha: Propositions sur le génie Africain.” L’Arche 13 (February 1946): 58-70.

Asante, M. K. O., D. van Schoor, and K. Ackah, eds. (2022) Decolonizing Classics in Africa: History, Strategies, Challenges, and Prospects. BICS 65.1 (June 2022).

Bernal, M. (1987) Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. New Brunswick.

Bertrand, L. (1914) Saint Augustin. Trans. V. O’Sullivan. New York.

Bettenworth, A. (2018) “Mind the Gap: The Reception of Antiquity in Maghrebian Novels on the Ancient World.” In Engaging Classical Texts in the Contemporary World: From Narratology to Reception. Ed. L. Pratt and C. M. Sampson. Ann Arbor: 213-28.

Camus, A. (1938) “Noces à Tipasa.” In (1939) Noces. Paris.

Déjeux, J. (1982) “De l’éternel Méditerranéen a l’éternel Jugurtha. Mythes et contre-mythes.” Studi Magrebini 14: 67-162.

Deraspe, S. (2019) Antigone. Montreal.

Derbew, S. F. (2022) Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity. Cambridge UK and New York.

Djebar, A. (1979) La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua. Algiers.

Eberhardt, I. (1990) Écrits sur le sable: Œuvres Completes. Vol. 2 (Nouvelles et roman). Ed. M.-O. Delacour and ‎J.-R. Huleu. Paris.

Ehret, C. (2023) Ancient Africa: A Global History, to 300 CE. Princeton and Oxford.

Effros, B. (2018a) Incidental Archaeologists: French Officers and the Rediscovery of Roman North Africa. Ithaca NY and London.

———. (2018b) “Colliding Empires: French Display of Roman Antiquities Expropriated from Postconquest Algeria, 1830-1870.” In Objects of War: The Material Culture of Conflict and Displacement. Ed. L. Auslander and T. Zahra. Ithaca NY and London: 50-77.

Greenwood, E. (2010) Afro-Greeks: Dialogues between Anglophone Caribbean Literature and Classics in the Twentieth Century. Oxford and New York.

Gronemann, C. (2020) “Rewriting antiquity: Saint Augustine as Mnemonic Figure in Francophone Texts of the Maghreb.” Études Littéraires Africaines 49: 189-204.

———. (2021) “Augustine of Hippo in Colonial and Postcolonial Texts: Entangled Memory.” In Entanglements of the Maghreb: Cultural and Political Aspects of a Region in Motion, ed. J. Dihstelhoff, C. Pardey, R. Ouaissa, and F. Pannewick. Bielefeld: 113-36.

Hitchner, R. B., ed. (2022) A Companion to North Africa in Antiquity. Hoboken.

Mattawa, K. (2007) “Dispatches from Benghazi.” PMLA 122: 264-70.

———. (2008) “East of Carthage: An Idyll.” In Amorisco. Port Townsend, WA.

McCoskey, D. E. (2012) Race: Antiquity and Its Legacy. London and New York.

Mellah, F. (1988) Elissa, la reine vagabonde. Paris.

Oulebsir, N. (2004) Les usages du patrimoine: Monuments, musées et politique coloniale en Algérie (1830-1930). Paris.

———. (2011) “From Ruins to Heritage: The Past Perfect and the Idealized Antiquity in North Africa.” In Multiple Antiquities – Multiple Modernities: Ancient Histories in Nineteenth Century European Cultures, ed. G. Klaniczay, M. Werner, and O. Gecser. Frankfurt and New York: 335-64.

Parker, G., ed. (2017) South Africa, Greece, Rome: Classical Confrontations. Cambridge UK and New York.

Porra, V. (2006) “Jugurtha in der französischsprachigen Literatur des Maghrebs: Von der Konstitution zur Fragmentierung einespolitischen Mythos.” In Mythos No. 2: Politische Mythen. Würzburg: 145-63.

Quinn, J. C. (2018) In Search of the Phoenicians. Princeton and Oxford.

Rimbaud, A. (1869) “Jugurtha.” Reprinted in (1963) Œuvres Completes. Ed. J. Moquet. Paris.

Said, E. W. (1978) Orientalism. New York.

Sénac, J. (1989) Ébauche du père: pour en finir avec l’enfance. Paris.

Sharpe, M. (2016) “‘In joy we prepare our lessons’: Reading Camus’ Noces via their Reception of the Eleusinian Mysteries.” CRJ 8: 375–403.

Snowden, F. M., Jr. (1970) Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience. Cambridge MA and London.