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By Urmila Mohan and Courtney O’Dell-Chaib
Scholars of religion have developed a framework for exploration of interactions between religion and tangible objects called "material religion." Over the past two decades, the focus within the study of material religion has emphasised object agency, aesthetics and networks. Disseminated in part by the journal Material Religion, a materialised study of religion explores religiosity as inseparable from a matrix of components including people, divine forces, institutions, things, places and communities. However, what still remains to be unpacked is a focus on the way material religion takes place globally. That is not merely editing case studies from different parts of the world based on theory generated in the West, but trying to see how vectors of bodies, affect, objects and ecologies might generate new theoretical approaches and data based on close cultural or ethnographic analyses.
(From the University of Mississippi's website)
Former University of Mississippi professor Lucy Turnbull will always be remembered as a beloved educator who could make her curriculum both easy to understand and infinitely interesting to her students, a mentor and a champion of civil rights at Ole Miss.
Her enthusiasm for the classics was contagious, which propelled her students to success in her art history, archaeology, mythology and classical civilization courses. Turnbull, 87, of Oxford, joined the university faculty in 1961 and taught until 1990. She died Sunday (April 21).
Dewey Knight, recently retired UM associate director of the Center for Student Success and First-Year Experience, was one of Turnbull’s friends. He entered the university as a freshman in 1966 and found himself in one of her classes that year.
“She walked into the classroom that first day,” Knight said. “There were about 25 of us, and we were immediately very afraid of Professor Turnbull. She was incredibly intelligent. She could read Greek like we read English.
“We all were in fear of her, but we had the ultimate respect for her, because it was very obvious she was brilliant.”
Università degli Studi di Bari “Aldo Moro”
19th-20th December 2019
Keynote speaker: Prof. Therese Fuhrer (Ludwig-Maximilians-
Exactitude is the third of the Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino (Cambridge MA, 1988). According to Calvino ‘exactitude’ is a «well-defined and well-calculated plan for the work in question; an evocation of clear, incisive, memorable images [...]; a language as precise as possible both in the choice of words and in the expression of the subtleties of thought and imagination». The aim of Prolepsis’ 4th International Conference is to reflect on Calvino’s definition applying it to the Classical, Late-Antique and Medieval Worlds. This year the conference will be particularly keen on – but not limited to – the following topics:
- Accuratio vel ambiguitas in speech, argumentation and narration.
- Ambiguous, inaccurate and disconcerting communication from the author, and potential reader response.
- Metrical and musical exactitude and its limits.
- Exactitude in treatises (scientific, rhetorical, grammatical).
- Quoting, misquoting and misplacing.
- Accurate and inaccurate titles, and their transmission.
- Limits in the material evidence (manuscripts, papyri, inscriptions, formation of corpora, mise en page, stichometry).
Destructions, Survival, and Recovery in Ancient Greece
May 16-18 American School of Classical Studies at Athens
Organizers: Sylvian Fachard and Edward M. Harris
From the Trojan War to the sack of Rome by Alaric, from the fall of Constantinople to the bombing of European cities in World War II and now the devastation of Syrian towns lmed by drones, the destruction of cities and the slaughter of civilian populations are among the most dramatic events in world history.
Sources documenting destruction and slaughter in the Greek World are plentiful. The fear of being attacked, ruined or annihilated was so real that almost all poleis increasingly built city-walls to protect their populations and economic assets. In spite of the deterrent potential of forti cations and their real force, however, the ancient historians report that ancient Greek cities continued to be besieged, stormed, “looted,” “destroyed,” “annihilated” and “razed to the ground.” For instance, Herodotus (6.101.3) states that the Persians burned down the sanctuaries of Eretria in 490 BC and took away all its citizens as slaves. According to Livy (45.34.1-6) in 167 BC, the Romans destroyed 70 towns and enslaved 150,000 people in Epeiros, an act of destruction with few parallels in the ancient world.
(From the Cornell Chronicle)
Classics scholar David Mankin, beloved by Cornell students for his inspiring and idiosyncratic teaching style, compassionate mentorship and the signature black sunglasses he wore to class, died April 24 after a brief illness. He was 61.
Mankin, associate professor emeritus of classics, was the longtime instructor of Greek Mythology, a perennially oversubscribed course with an enthusiastic following. Many students described it as one of the most memorable and meaningful courses of their Cornell careers.
He was a scholar of Latin prose and poetry, with publications including commentaries on the “Epodes of Horace” (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and on the concluding book of Cicero’s “On the Orator” (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
“Dave Mankin’s knowledge of Latin authors and scholarship was superb, and he was strongly committed to undergraduate teaching; students took his classes in droves, and recommended them to their friends,” said Hunter R. Rawlings III, Cornell president emeritus and professor emeritus of classics. “In this era of declining enrollments in humanities courses, Dave Mankin countered the trend with remarkable success.”
"The Landscape of Rome's Literature"
Seminar at the annual conference of the Association of Literary, Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW)
Oct. 3-6, 2019
http://alscw.org/events/
This call for papers is for the seminar "The Landscape of Rome's Literature," one of many seminars that will occur during the ALSCW 2019 annual conference.
May 16–18, 2019
"The Roman Republic in the Long Fourth Century" investigates the transformation of the Roman Republic from the sack of Rome in 387 BCE to the war against Carthage in 264 BCE. As has long been recognized, this crucial moment saw the formation of the Republican state's political structures. Less acknowledged is that this political transformation accompanied radical changes in Rome’s society and economy, as well as in the very character of its cultural production. The aim of this conference is to offer a timely reassessment of state formation in this period and to relate this dynamic process to a wider context of change. The result will be a more holistic view, highlighting the period’s significance for our understanding of the Roman Republican history and providing a basis for future study.
Call For Papers (ENGLISH)
The LARNA project (Lived Ancient Religion in North Africa), based at the Institute of Historiography ‘Julio Caro Baroja’ (University Carlos III of Madrid) and funded the Autonomous Community of Madrid, invites researchers of ancient history, history of religion, archaeology, anthropology, classical studies, and further related fields to discuss the topic of “Lived Ancient Religion in North Africa”.
Multi-Society Statement on Proposed Cuts at the University of Tulsa
The undersigned associations urge the University of Tulsa to reconsider and rescind its recent recommendations calling for the elimination of undergraduate majors in philosophy, religion, theater, musical theater, music, languages, law, and of several graduate and doctoral programs, including those in anthropology, fine arts, history, and women’s and gender studies and to eliminate undergraduate minors in ancient languages and classical studies.
The new Classics Everywhere initiative, recently launched by the SCS, supports projects that seek to introduce and engage communities all over the US with the worlds of Greek and Roman antiquity in new and meaningful ways. During the first round of applications, the SCS funded 13 projects, ranging from performances and a cinema series to educational programs and inter-institutional collaborations. In this blog post, we aim to highlight three programs in which Classicists are sharing the joy of studying Greece and Rome with their communities..
