Follow SCS News for information about the SCS and all things classical.
2019 Ohio State Classics Graduate Colloquium
A Crucible of Cultures: Cultural Exchange in the Ancient Mediterranean
In the wake of Hordern and Purcell’s The Corrupting Sea, there has been a renewed interest in studying the cultures of the Mediterranean as part of an integrated whole rather than in isolation. The annual OSU Classics Graduate Colloquium invites papers on a range of topics that explore the interconnections between peoples in and around the Mediterranean in the ancient world broadly conceived (Bronze Age to Byzantium/Carolingian Renaissance). Since most research has focused on relatively narrow archaeological concerns, we encourage papers that attempt to tackle big picture questions. Broad categories might include:
Panel 1: Reading and Writing the Classics in Antiquity and Beyond
The literature of ancient Greece and Rome has survived for thousands of years. As a result, Classical literary and philosophical works have served as a profound influence on the writings of subsequent time periods. Indeed, in many subsequent time periods, the ability to quote from Classical sources became a marker of status and intelligence. However, many works of ancient Greece and Rome are not wholly original, but in fact flaunt their use of source materials, citing earlier versions of myths and epics. Often, Classical and post-Classical authors would modify their source materials, and we are able to see them not only as writers, but as readers in their own right.
Here is the call for panels for the 17th annual ISNS conference, to be held in Ottawa on June 12-16, 2019, in conjunction with Dominican University College.
Anyone interested in organizing a panel at the conference should send a brief description of the panel along with its title and the name(s) and email address(es) of the contact person(s) to the conference organizers:
Mark Nyvlt <protrepticuseide@gmail.com>
Louise Rodrigue <lrodrigue@videotron.ca>
Suzanne Stern-Gillet <suzannesterngillet@gmail.com>
John Finamore <john-finamore@uiowa.edu>
Panel descriptions are due to us by January 21, 2019. I will email the list of proposed panels to the ISNS membership before February 4. Panel organizers are responsible for choosing and collecting abstracts for their panels. They should notify the organizers of their decisions by February 25. Abstracts should be no more than one page, single spaced.
We also welcome individual abstracts for papers that do not fall under any of the announced panels. Please send those abstracts (again, one-page maximum) to the four conference organizers above.
(The following is an excerpt from the National Humanities Alliance quarterly column sent to scholarly societies, and shared here with permission)
To highlight the public impact of the humanities in higher education, the National Humanities Alliance recently launched Humanities for All: a website that documents the past 10 years of publicly engaged humanities research, teaching, and programming in universities and colleges across the U.S. The website presents a cross section of over 1,400 projects, searchable, sortable, and illustrated with 51 in-depth profiles. When viewed together, these initiatives illustrate the broad impact of the humanities beyond higher education.
Humanities for All not only seeks to broaden narratives about the humanities in higher education but also to deepen the practice of public engagement in the humanities. We at NHA have a stake in encouraging more of this work, which provides more opportunities for members of the public to have humanities experiences and appreciate the significance of the humanities in higher education. In addition, when integrated into coursework, engaged humanities projects can provide meaningful and practical learning experiences that prepare students for the workforce. To this end, we present these examples as a resource for all who would like to begin or deepen their practice of public engagement.
IPS North America (https://ipsnortham.org/)
The second meeting of the North American Sections of the International Plutarch Society will take place 15-18 May 2019 at Utah State University in Logan Utah.
ABOUT THE EVENT
---
The Humanities Without Walls (HWW) Consortium is pleased to announce that the Call for Applications for the 2019 National Predoctoral Career Diversity Residential Summer Workshop is now available at the HWW website.
These workshops showcase opportunities beyond the walls of the academy and encourage humanities doctoral students to think of themselves as agents of the public humanities. In summer 2019, HWW is holding its second national, in-residence summer workshop for doctoral students interested in learning about careers outside of the academy and/or the tenure track system.
We invite applications from doctoral students pursuing degree in the humanities and humanistic social sciences to participate in this three-week, in-residence summer workshop. This is a limited-submission application. Eligible doctoral students must be nominated for this fellowship by their home institutions, and only one nomination may be made to HWW by each university. To be considered, interested doctoral students must submit their applications to their home universities’ humanities center director, graduate college dean, or equivalent by September 30th, 2018.
The Izmir Center of the Archaeology of Western Anatolia (EKVAM) is glad to inform you that an international symposium on oil lamps in Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, Roman and early Byzantine Anatolia, will take place on May 16-17, 2019 at the Dokuz Eylül University (DEU) in Izmir, Turkey. Ancient oil lamps, especially produced by clay, were found in relatively large quantities in entire Anatolia, where they were produced between the Bronze Age and Medieval periods. So far the study of this implement has been overlooked in Anatolia whereas there is still a huge amount of unpublished material from excavations, field surveys and museums in Turkey. Ancient Anatolian oil lamps can be categorized based on different criteria, including material (terracotta, bronze, glass, lead and stone etc.), production (wheel-made or mould-made), typology, fabric, decoration, production, use and distribution. During the Archaic and Classical periods (i.e. seventh to mid-fourth century B.C.) handleless, round, wheel-made terracotta oil lamps were produced locally especially in the western Anatolia or imported in large scale. During the Hellenistic and Roman periods Anatolian lamps were produced more frequently as mould-made and typologically they have numerous varieties. In these periods oil lamps were utilised for profane and religious purposes, especially as tomb votives. During the mid-sixth/early seventh century A.D. the form of lamps was changed in Anatolia radically.
by Roberta Stewart
Editor's Note: As we look forward to the 2019 Sesquicentennial meeting, Amphora is reprinting an article by 2017 Outreach Prize winner Professor Roberta Stewart of Dartmouth College about her work in developing book discussion groups on the Homeric poems with military veterans. Professor Stewart's long-running initiative is now a major collaborative project of Dartmouth College and New Hampshire Humanities, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. This article, re-printed here without change, was originally published in Amphora in 2015. Readers can find Professor Stewart's outreach prize citation here.
For the past seven years, small groups of combat veterans in the Upper Valley of New Hampshire and Vermont have been making Homer their own. This article details the particular value of these small book groups for the veteran, for the community, and for me as the academic facilitator.
The proposal for the book groups originated from the premise that literature is able to provide useful insight into life experience and, more specifically, that Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey provide valuable insight—2800 years old—into the problems of soldiers who individually and collectively experienced deep internal conflicts while deployed (Iliad) and who needed somehow to get home (Odyssey). Homer provides a salutary distancing and deflection that, I believe, allows the problems of homecoming to emerge more clearly as a historical problem of the human condition across cultures and political or social organizations: the problem of homecoming is a product of war.
The Homer book groups that I run are small (8-12 vets) but the ideas are large: life, or our daily lived experience, happens between the big events; and narratives, or figured worlds, conjure, create, and sustain lived experience (Holland and Skinner 1998); dialogic engagement with the text of Homer creates narratives, or figured worlds of return, and may help the daily experience of return and reintegration for combat veterans. Practically I bring the world of the liberal arts curriculum, namely philology as the art of reading slowly (Nietzsche), to a group outside of the liberal arts college. I teach veterans how to have a relationship with a piece of ancient literature and in the process I teach how to create a community that is founded upon a shared intellectual experience.
Eleatic Ontology: Origin and Reception is a multi-volume publication project supported by UNESCO and the Universidade de Brasilia.
The central idea of Eleatic Ontology: Origin and Reception is to gather in one editorial product a description of Eleatic ontology, its first developments, and its lasting and powerful influence on all western thought. The project will do this by inviting and drawing on scholarly articles from the international academic community.
The work is divided into 4 major periods. One volume will be devoted to each. We currently seek submissions of proposals for Volume One, Eleatic Ontology in Ancient Philosophy. Volume I will cover the period from Parmenides, Zeno, and Melissus through late antiquity.
We invite submissions of proposals. Authors are invited to submit extended abstracts (500-700 words, better if combined with a shorter abstract) in English as a .doc, .docx, or .pdf file prepared for blind review. Please, provide also information about your affiliation and contact details in a separate file. All of that should be submitted to eonvol1@gmail.com.
Proposal submission deadline: November 1, 2018
Proposals for papers and panels are now being accepted for the 40th annual SWPACA conference. One of the nation’s largest interdisciplinary academic conferences, SWPACA offers nearly 70 subject areas, each typically featuring multiple panels. For a full list of subject areas, area descriptions, and Area Chairs, please visit http://southwestpca.org/conference/call-for-papers/
Classical Representations in Popular Culture
Papers on any aspect of Greek, Roman, or Mediterranean antiquity in contemporary or popular culture are eligible for consideration.
Potential topics include representations of ancient literature or culture in:
