CFP: NOCTURNAL GREECE AND ROME

An organizer-refereed panel of the 2005 meeting of the American
Philological Association, in Boston.

Organized by James Ker (Harvard University) and Timothy O'Sullivan
(Trinity University).

Classical scholarship has always been attuned to the subject of time,
both as a literary and artistic theme and as a condition of our
distance from ancient culture.  Recent works have renewed interest in
the cultural specificity of time and temporality (e.g. Allen on the
waterclock as an instrument in the politicization of time in classical
Athens; G&R 1996, 157-68).  One institution, the Roman calendar, has
been studied from multiple angles: its coordination of public and
private rhythms (Rüpke, Kalender und Öffentlichkeit), its literary
reinvention in the Fasti of Ovid (e.g. Feeney, in Literature and
religion at Rome), and its reproduction in pictorial and codex form as
a device of cultural pedagogy in late antiquity (Salzman, On Roman
time).  The diversity of these approaches demonstrates that time is a
topic with unusual potential to bring scholars of different classical
disciplines into contact.

The subject of this panel is one aspect of ancient time: the night. The
category of night allows us to experiment with 'periodizing' ancient
culture in an unfamiliar way and to pose specific questions about time
as a medium of organization and as a setting for human experience.  We
invite papers that explore the ancient experience of night, or that
focus on its social, mythical, or literary associations.  What
distinguishes the ways in which night is measured, perceived, and
navigated?  What are the cultural practices and phenomena that occur
during this time?  Are there specific modes of speech or categories of
activity associated with the night (e.g. ritual, legal, military,
sympotic, seditious, erotic)?  What is the relationship between
nighttime and social status?  Are there explicit associations between
experiences of night and conceptions of gender?  Are the conditions of
knowledge for the nocturnal sciences of astrology or dream
interpretation different from those for other sciences?  How are
specific cities or topographies experienced at night?  What is the
iconography of night in Greek and Roman visual culture, and how do
nocturnal conditions modulate the usual practices of viewing?  What are
the literary or metaphorical associations of night, or of personified
Night?  Are there specifically nocturnal texts or genres, and how does
night influence the conventions of narrative?  What are the differences
between the Greek and Roman cultures of night?  These questions by no
means exhaust the possibilities: contributions are invited on any
aspect of night that promises to develop our understanding of ancient
time and culture.

Abstracts must be received by February 2, 2004. Please send two copies
of Form C as well as four copies of an abstract, 500-800 words in
length, indicating time and any audiovisual equipment needed, to:
American Philological Association, 292 Logan Hall, University of
Pennsylvania, 249 South 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6304.  All
abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by the panel organizers.

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7:15:21 PM    

CONF: Feminism & Classics IV "Gender and Diversity in Place"

The web site for the Feminism & Classics  IV Conference, "Gender and
Diversity in Place" University of Arizona, Tucson, May 27-30, 2004,
including program and registration information, is up:
http://www.coh.arizona.edu/classics/fc4/.
Keynote speaker is Anne Haeckl, on the Fayum portraits of Roman Egypt,
and several conference papers focus on the ancient Near East and Egypt.
Please visit the site and we hope to see you in Tucson at F&C IV.

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7:14:33 PM    

CFP: Fashion, Trend, and Novelty 
7th Annual UNC-Duke Graduate Colloquium in Classics

March 27, 2004
Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Keynote Speaker:  Joy Connolly, Stanford University

Consciousness of style, whether novel or traditional, is pervasive in
both classical literature and the plastic arts.  Homer sings the aoidê
neôtatê, Horace his carmina non prius audita.  Several periods of
classical literature define themselves by intertextual reactions or
allusions to earlier authors, and we are left with a diachronic
impression of ancient literary vogue.  In the realm of material culture,
discussions of style have always shaped our understanding of art and
architecture, and contemporary criticism highlights the ancients'
alertness to competing fashions.  Ultimately, of course, a poem's or
statue's canonization and consequent preservation is a matter of the
taste and fashion of succeeding generations.

This colloquium invites papers that consider fashion and
fashions, literary or artistic, whether in specific or in abstract,
including depictions of and attitudes towards (un)fashionable styles of
speech and writing, philosophical methods, historical styles, and
architectural and plastic representations.  When - and how - do certain
trends in literature and history become fashionable or passé?  What is
the value of aesthetics in the ancient world?  How does novelty stand in
opposition to conservatism in different periods and locales?
Submissions may also examine influences on stylistic evolution and
ancient attitudes towards this evolution: to what extent can we see an
awareness of the changing fashions?   What do ancient fashions tell us
about the cultures they reflect? How do the ancients struggle to define
themselves within and in reaction to the fashions of their day?

The colloquium will take place on Saturday, March 27, 2004 in
Murphey Hall, on the campus of the University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill.  We encourage the submission of papers that reflect a variety of
diverse and interdisciplinary approaches, as well as traditional
approaches.  Please submit one-page anonymous abstracts by January 23,
2004 to colloquium@unc.edu or by mail to the address below.  Please
include in the body of your message (or on a separate sheet of paper)
your name, email address, phone number, paper title, and academic
affiliation.

UNC-Duke Classics Colloquium
Department of Classics
CB #3145, 212 Murphey Hall
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3145

Please direct further inquiries to Erika Zimmermann, zimmermann@unc.edu,
or see the colloquium website at http://classics.unc.edu/colloquium.

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7:13:11 PM    

CFP: TRANSLATION AND 'THE CLASSIC':

Call for papers for a book to be published in 2005 edited by Alexandra Lianeri and Vanda Zajko.

The recent growth of interest in translation studies and classical
reception has led to greater attention being paid to the question of
translation. Yet no work has yet focused on the implications of
translation for the definition and evaluation of  'the classic'. In this
volume we seek to explore this subject from a number of perspectives by
bringing together scholars from classics, translation studies, literary
theory and philosophy. To this end we seek contributions addressing the
following and other relevant questions:

- Translation and the Classic proposes a framework in which the classic
figures less as an autonomous entity than as the result of the interplay
between source text and translation. What are the consequences of this
hypothesis for defining the classic text?

- What is the role of translations in the reception of classic texts? Can
we approach reception as a translation process? How does this metaphor
modify current views of the classic?

- How can translation qualify our conceptions of meaning and
interpretation of the classics? Can we define translatability without
referring to the binary opposition between 'fidelity' and 'infidelity'?

- How does translation illustrate the variability of aesthetic, moral, and
political standards that underlie the shaping of the canon, ancient and
modern?

- Can we redefine the classic by investigating the institutional, cultural
and political processes through which it is (re)constructed?
Alternatively, does the notion of the classic present a challenge to certain
representations of history?

- How have translations of classic texts reinforced class, gender, and
race divisions? Can they also provide a means of resistance to oppressive
political discourses?

Anyone interested in contributing should send a proposal of 500 words to
Dr. Alexandra Lianeri (Darwin College, Cambridge, al379@cam.ac.uk) and Dr.
Vanda Zajko (University of Bristol, v.zajko@bris.ac.uk) by
the end of January 2004.

Final submission length: 7,000-8,000 words.
Submission deadline 30 September 2004.
If you have any further queries, please get in touch with either or both
of the editors.

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7:11:33 PM    

CFP: Challenging Traditions: The Social and Political Function of the Minor
Genres of the Early Roman Empire

Over the last three decades scholarly attention has increasingly turned
to the problem of assessing the interrelationship between a genre and
its social and political function; this is especially true of the major
genres in both Greek and Latin, i.e., tragedy, epic, comedy, and
history. In our panel we propose to focus instead on the so-called
lesser genres of Latin poetry – e.g., satire, epigram, fable – during
the early Empire in order to (re)assess the interplay of the genres’
forms and functions within a specific social, historical, and political
framework, especially in reaction to the social/political function
traditionally expected of the major genres.

Indications that the minor genres had taken on the traditional
functions of the higher genres are easily found in the ancient texts
(e.g., Hor. Serm. 1.4; Pers. Prol.; Phaed. 3.Prol.; Mart. 4.49). Recent
scholarship (e.g., Gleason 1995, Habinek 1998, Hoffer 1999) also
suggests that the increasing interest on the part of the elite in
producing – and more importantly, disseminating – literature led to
intensified competition around the valuation of literature and literary
prowess. This is especially true in the minor genres, which were
traditionally considered less connected to public (i.e., political)
life and so potentially safer venues for competition and
self-expression in uncertain times. Thus could the landed classes,
while still engaged in public life and espousing in a politically safe
public dialogue, give expression to a private dialogue.

We invite papers that address how authors used these minor genres to
comment upon or navigate the contemporary social and political
landscape, especially as opposed to epic, history, and drama. We are
especially looking for papers that treat the ways the minor genres
explicitly subsumed or appropriated the traditional function of major
genres – namely, making meaningful criticism and comment on social and
political conditions. Abstracts may address the general issue of
politically safe ways of communicating via literature, or examine the
way a specific author or genre from the period created a private
dialogue. Abstracts should be received by the APA office by February 6,
2004. Please send two copies of Form D as well as two copies of an
abstract (following the directions in the APA newsletter insert),
500-800 words in length, including time and a/v equipment needed for
presentation, to: American Philological Association, University of
Pennsylvania, 292 Logan Hall, 249 S. 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA
19104-6304. All submissions will be refereed anonymously by the panel
organizers.

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7:09:57 PM    

CONF: Second International Conference on Athenaeus'Deipnosophists

The final program of the second International Conference on
Athenaeus' Deipnosophists (Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France,
18-20 December 2004, Petit Auditorium) is available online at the
following urls:

http://www.revues.org/calenda/nouvelle3662.html
http://www.fabula.org/actualites/article6955.php

Please feel free to forward this info to all your colleagues and
students who could be interested in this Conference. There is no
registeration fee.

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7:06:31 PM    

CFP: Hittites, Greeks and Their Neighbors in Ancient Anatolia
An International Conference on Cross-Cultural Interaction
Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University
Sept. 17-19, 2004

Cross-cultural interaction in ancient Anatolia between indigenous groups,
such as the Hattians, Indo-Europeans, including Hittites and Greeks, and
Near Eastern cultures, particularly the Hurrians, resulted in a unique
environment in which Anatolian peoples interacted with, and reacted to,
one another in different ways. These cultural ìinterfacesî occurred on
many levels, including political, economic, religious, literary,
architectural and iconographic. The rich and varied archives, inscriptions
and archaeological remains of ancient Anatolia, North Syria and nearby
islands offer much material for study and discussion.

Emory University will host a multi-disciplinary international conference
on Sept. 17?19 2004 at the Michael C. Carlos Museum on the mechanisms and
results of interaction between the peoples and cultures of ancient
Anatolia. The aim is to encourage dialogue among archeologists, historians
and philologists in the Classical, Near Eastern and Anatolian traditions.

The conference seeks papers (30 minutes in length) especially on
adaptation and change or continuity of culture over time and space, and on
the construction of ethnic identities in the multi-cultural area of
Anatolia. Textual, archaeological, art historical, philosophical,
anthropological and philological approaches will be considered. Papers
dealing with the second millennium through the sixth century B.C. are
welcome.

Keynote speaker:
 Walter Burkert, Emeritius Professor for Classical Philology,
 University of Z¸rich.

Invited speakers include Calvert Watkins, Itamar Singer and Stefano de
Martino.

Abstracts (up to 400 words), should be emailed by attachment to

 Billie Jean Collins (bcollin@emory.edu)
 Ian Rutherford (i.c.rutherford@reading.ac.uk)
 and Mary R. Bachvarova (mbachvar@willamette.edu)

by March 21, 2004. Please provide name, email and regular mail address,
title of paper and university affiliation in a separate file. If an email
submission is impossible, please post typed abstract and cover page to
Billie Jean Collins, Department of Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian
Studies, Emory University, S312 Callaway Center, Atlanta, GA 30322.
 
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7:05:25 PM    

CONF: Ancient Letters

Hulme Hall, University of Manchester, 1-3 July 2004

A major international conference on letters and letter-writing in
Ancient Greece and Rome, from Greek Tragedy to Late Antiquity.

Speakers will include:

Brad Inwood
John Henderson
Stanley Hoffer
Jason Konig
Roger Rees
Ruth Morello
Jennifer Ebbeler
Andrew Morrison
Andy Fear
Penelope Goodman
Joel Christensen
Isabelle Torrance
Annelise Freisenbruch
Owen Hodkinson

To register or obtain further details visit www.art.man.ac.uk/clah or
contact the organisers:

Roy Gibson (roy.gibson@man.ac.uk)
Andrew Morrison (andrew.morrison@man.ac.uk)

Dept. of Classics and Ancient History
University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester
M13 9PL

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7:04:35 PM