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The Ancient Worlds, Modern Communities initiative (AnWoMoCo), launched by the SCS in 2019 as the Classics Everywhere initiative, supports projects that seek to engage broader publics — individuals, groups, and communities — in critical discussion of and creative expression related to the ancient Mediterranean, the global reception of Greek and Roman culture, and the history of teaching and scholarship in the field of classical studies. As part of this initiative, the SCS has funded 111 projects, ranging from school programming to reading groups, prison programs, public talks and conferences, digital projects, and collaborations with artists in theater, opera, music, dance, and the visual arts. The initiative welcomes applications from all over the world. To date, it has funded projects in 25 states and 11 countries, including Canada, UK, Italy, Greece, Spain, Belgium, Ghana, Puerto Rico, Argentina, and India.
This post centers on two projects that employ Greek and Roman literature in innovative ways to deal with contemporary issues. The first project draws inspiration from Euripides’ Trojan Women to facilitate the expression and sharing of intense experiences between students in the University of California and female prisoners, while the second project adapts Ovid’s Metamorphoses in a one-woman show that explores the role of women in our post #MeToo era.
QUEEN: REIMAGINING POWER FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE PRESENT
Ancient queens established a powerful public presence through visual and material culture, and their legacies continue to shape and impact the ways we express ideas about race, gender, and identity.
QUEEN: REIMAGINING POWER FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE PRESENT is an interdisciplinary, virtual symposium hosted by NYU Gallatin on September 23-24, 2021. This symposium integrates scholarly and creative knowledge production from different perspectives that broaden the stakes and widen the impact of historical work. The symposium will model collaborative, critical, and public approaches to history and art by including the expertise of students, artists, performers, and educators beyond the university alongside the work of scholars and curators. Spanning two days, the symposium comprises seven panel discussions, five keynote talks, one performance, and an interactive website featuring public engagement, student work, and more.
Multiple Explanations in the Ancient Greek and Roman World
Virtual seminar series, 2021-2022
Call for Papers:
XR and the Humanities: Virtual Education in the 21st Century
“What Has Antiquity Ever Done for Us?” The Vitality of Ancient Reception Studies, Now
An international virtual conference presented by Antiquity in Media Studies (AIMS)
15-18 December 2021
Deadline for submissions: 15 October 2021
The officers of Antiquity in Media Studies invite proposals for presentations that illuminate the ongoing vitality of antiquity in recent discourses. Despite decades of institutional disinvestment in the study of antiquity, a venerated deep past figured as a powerful shared imaginary remains a perennial, emotionally evocative, even highly lucrative concept in myriad contemporary media, around the world and across all manner of identity lines. Among antiquities, of particularly widespread interest has been the millennia of history centered on the Mediterranean and dubbed “classical” among successor societies, both self-appointed and colonized. From Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey to Luis Alfaro’s Mojada, from Hideki Takeuchi’s Thermae Romae to Pat Barker’s Silence of the Girls, to politicians' and pundits' invocations of the Persian Wars and the fall of Rome, each year produces more receptions of this antiquity. Beyond the Greco-Roman-centered past, all antiquities mobilized for such cultural work today are welcome at this ancient reception studies conference.
(Published on behalf of Werner Reiß)
Dear colleagues,
It is with great pleasure that Professor Werner Riess and his team announce the launch of the new database TheDefix (Thesaurus Defixionum), which replaces the earlier version TheDeMa (Thesaurus Defixionum Magdeburgensis). TheDefix is an open access Heurist database hosted by the University of Hamburg, Department of Ancient History, and can be reached at the following link:
As its predecessor TheDeMa, TheDefix seeks to collect all published curse inscriptions from the ancient world, providing the original texts, data on their material textual features as well as bibliographical information on each tablet.
Users are welcome to contact us if they need any support in the usage of the database or to suggest any improvement at the following addresses:
Prof. Dr. Werner Rieß: werner.riess@uni-hamburg.de
Dr. Sara Chiarini: sara.chiarini@uni-hamburg.de
August, 2021
Below is a list of the most recent NEH grantees and their Classically-themed projects. The NEH helps fund a number of SCS initiatives, and their support affects the field of Classics at a national and local level.
Grantees
- Julie Montione (Valencia College) - "Timeless Parallels: Classical Literature and Veteran Experiences"
- Lauren Ristvet (University of Pennsylvania) - "Eastern Mediterranean Gallery"
- Clifford Ando (University of Chicago) - "Roman Statutes: Renewing Roman Law"
Welcome to Auia loca: New Paths in Classics, a new series launched by the SCS Communications Committee! Taking inspiration from Lucretius as he wanders through remote and unfrequented paths (auia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante | trita solo, DRN 4.1–2), Auia loca seeks to spotlight new initiatives which themselves represent new and untrodden paths for Classics, as both a discipline and an academic field.
To kick off the series, it is my pleasure to introduce Hesperides, a new scholarly organization devoted to the study of Classics in Luso-Hispanic Worlds. Hesperides recently gained Category II affiliate status with the SCS, an affiliation which entitles the organization to a panel or paper session at the annual meeting. It joins a host of other SCS affiliated groups which likewise focus on the rich and complex receptions of the ancient Mediterranean across modernity, including Eos and the Asian and Asian American Classical Caucus (AAACC).
Content advisory: this post includes an anti-Black epithet in the recounting of a personal experience.
I have always been interested in history. In high school, I took two history courses that drew my attention to the field. One was required, the typical AP U.S. History, and one was an elective, AP European History. Both courses involved the discussion of slavery and how it affected the development of different world powers. I was not interested in the rise of nations or how they acquired power. The individuals who were used, abused, and marginalized are what I find fascinating about studying history. From high school, my path was clear: study history and, more specifically, study the history of slavery.
The sudden rise of Latin novellas might come as a surprise to anyone outside of high-school classrooms. This genre, which didn’t exist seven years ago, now counts over a hundred published works. These novellas are largely written by and for those outside the world of higher ed, but they should be of interest to the larger scholarly community—not just because they will increasingly form the background and expectations of Latin students coming into college, but also because they are one part of a larger pedagogical movement that is in the midst of transforming the teaching of Latin.
