CfP: “Class before Capitalism?: Social Structure and the Ancient World” (Deadline: January 1, 2020)

Saturday, March 28, 2020

Keynote speaker: Johanna Hanink (Brown University)

The graduate students at Harvard University’s department of the Classics invite abstract submissions for the upcoming graduate student conference, “Class before Capitalism?: Social Structure and the Ancient World”.

Socio-economic status and the intergenerational structures which maintain it have been a persistent source of tension across the world and across history. In the influential tradition of thought following Karl Marx, class has been seen as a fundamental agent of socio-political change and an inescapable force that conditions the production of literature, art, and other cultural materials. The application of ideas formed in a post-industrial, capitalist age to pre-modern societies presents some significant methodological challenges, however, and has been the source of an intense scholarly debate which continues to this day.