Calls for Papers

last updated 2 February 2010

To submit items for this page, please send announcement as attached files to Robin Mitchell-Boyask, robin@temple.edu

International conference on Greek and Latin syntax

 

Paris, November 26-27, 2010

 

Université Paris-Sorbonne, École Normale Supérieure

 


The LALG research group (Langues anciennes et linguistique générale) of the Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris 4) is organizing a two-day international conference on Greek and Latin syntax on the 26th and 27th November 2010, in the Maison de la Recherche de la Sorbonne and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. This conference has the support of the École doctorale 1 « Mondes anciens et  médiévaux », the Équipes d’accueil 1491 « Édition et commentaire des textes grecs et latins » and 4080 « Centre Alfred Ernout : linguistique et lexicographie latines et romanes », the Université Paris-Sorbonne, as well as the Département des Sciences de l’Antiquité of the ENS Paris  and the Équipe de recherche « Sciences des textes anciens » of the UMR 8546 « Archéologie d’Orient et d’Occident et textes antiques ».

The purpose of this meeting is to promote syntactic studies in the field of Latin and Ancient Greek languages, in any theoretical framework. Every aspect of syntax can be considered: simple and complex sentence structure (noun phrase, verb phrase, adverbial phrase, negation, and subordination), macro-syntax (information structure, text syntax), the syntax-semantics interface, and the description of syntactic structures in terms of synchronic functions and diachronic changes. We hope the conference will provide an opportunity for scholars from different countries and various theoretical frameworks to meet each other, and will be the basis for a more thorough dialogue between the fields of Latin and Greek languages.

Submission guidelines: Anonymous abstracts about 3500-7000 characters long (including spaces, examples and references) should be sent in .pdf, .doc or .rtf to the following address: abstracts.sgl2010@gmail.fr. Abstracts and oral presentations may be in French or in English. Each presentation will be allotted 30 minutes, plus 10 minutes for discussion. The body of your email message should include your name, affiliation and contact information. The following elements should appear in the abstract: an explicit title, the theoretical framework, and the corpus. The deadline for abstract submission is April, 30th 2010. Each abstract will be anonymously reviewed by at least two members of the scientific committee. Notification of acceptance will be given by the end of June 2010. After the meeting, the speakers will have the possibility to submit a complete paper for publication.


Important dates:
Abstract submission: 30 April 2010
Notification of acceptance : 30 June 2010
Meeting dates: 26-27 November 2010

Invited speakers:
Egbert J. Bakker (Yale University)
Colette Bodelot (Université Blaise Pascal de Clermont-Ferrand)

Scientific committee:
Nicolas Bertrand (Université Paris-Sorbonne)
Colette Bodelot (Université Blaise Pascal de Clermont-Ferrand)
Bernard Bortolussi (Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense)
Richard Faure (Université Paris-Sorbonne)
Frédérique Fleck (École Normale Supérieure)
Frédéric Lambert (Université Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux 3)
Arthur Ripoll (Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense)
Liliane Sznajder (Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense)
Jesús de la Villa (Université autonome de Madrid)

Organizing committee:
Nicolas Bertrand (Université Paris-Sorbonne)
Richard Faure (Université Paris-Sorbonne)
Frédérique Fleck (École Normale Supérieure).

Contact:
nicobertrand@free.fr
faurerichard5044@neuf.fr
frederique.fleck@ens.fr

 

Graduate Archaeology at Oxford and the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford invite the submission of proposals for papers and posters to an interdisciplinary conference titled "Death, Disasters, Downturn. The Archaeology of Crises." Oxford, 24-25 April 2010.

"From plagues to economic collapses, natural disasters to the deaths of loved ones, crisis, in its social, economic, psychological, biological, and  ecological manifestations has indelibly shaped human existence. Since it is often in the breakdown of societies that the structures which composed them become clearest, crises provide an especially good window onto how groups have functioned historically.  It can affect entire communities or single individuals; it can be confined to a singular time and space or it can reoccur episodically. As some of the most fascinating moments in human history, isolated cases or forms of crisis have been much-discussed among scholars within single fields. Rarely, however, have such debates crossed the boundaries of specific disciplines to be  studied in a wider, over-arching context."

The goal of this conference is to start a discussion about the archaeological study of crises from across disciplines: sciences, archaeology, anthropology, ancient history.  The questions we will raise are manifold: what constitutes a crisis? Which groups in the past have been most affected by crises?  How can the archaeological record shed light on crises of various magnitudes? Most importantly, how can the archaeology of crisis be used to shed light on societies past and present?

Participation is restricted to graduate students.
Abstracts should not exceed 500 words in length and should be sent as attachments (in PDF format) to: gao@arch.ox.ac.uk <mailto:gao@arch.ox.ac.uk>
Deadline for abstract submission: Sunday, 28 February 2010.
Selected papers will be published as part of the GAO monograph series.

For further information visit: the GAO website (http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/conferences/articles/gao-annual-conference.html

 

Primer encuentro nacional de Iconografía en el mundo antiguo:

La sociedad a través de la imagen/ Society through the image.

UNED- UCM –MNAR

Madrid, 15, 16 y 17 de abril de 2010.

Las propuestas deberán incluir un título y un resumen que no

exceda las 500 palabras. Las propuestas pueden ir firmadas por uno o varios autores. Se admitirán propuestas relacionadas con aspectos relativos a Iconografía y sociedad en cada una de las cuatro secciones del Coloquio/ Submissions must include the title and a 500-word abstract and can be signed by one or more authors. We welcome submissions related to Iconography and Society in the four sections of the Colloquium:

 

1. ORIENTE, EGIPTO y ETRURIA/ Middle East, Egipt, Etrury

2. GRECIA Y MUNDO HELENÍSTICO/ Greece and the Hellenistic World

3. ROMA Y ANTIGÜEDAD TARDÍA/ Rome and the Late Empire

4. PENÍNSULA IBÉRICA / The Iberian Peninsula.

 

Deben enviarse a iconografia.ucm@gmail.com, antes del 15 de

febrero de 2010. Junto a la propuesta de presentación de poster cada autor/es indicarán: apellidos y nombre, institución a la que pertenecen, dirección electrónica y título del poster. Se comunicará la aceptación del trabajo antes del 28 de febrero de 2010.

Please submit the abstracts by 15 February 2010 to this e-mail: iconografía.ucm@gmail.com . Include in the body of your e-mail your name, poster title, institution and e-mail address. For general questions about the colloquium or the abstracts, please contact Isabel Rodríguez at musabel@gmail.com or Pilar Fernández Uriel at pfuriel@yahoo.es . We will plan to notify those submitting abstracts of our up to 28 February 2010.

 

The Ancient Borderlands International Graduate Student Conference

Beyond Borders: Ancient Societies and their Conceptual Frontiers

April 16-18, 2010


 The Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group at the University of California at Santa Barbara invites graduate scholars of any discipline to submit abstracts for papers addressing the question of ancient borderlands, both physical and conceptual.  The conference will be held at the beautiful campus of UCSB, home to the first Ancient Borderlands research group.  Limited travel funds are potentially available for those who cannot procure department funding from their home institution.
 

Tentative Panels:

  • Destruction, Reappropriation and Memory in Urban Space
  • Migration and Diplomacy: Responses to Population Movement and Growth
  • Violence in the Construction of Identity in Late Antiquity
  • The Monstrosity of Others: Representations of Friends and Foreigners
     



 Borderlands, loosely defined, are frontier zones lying along given boundaries, limits beyond which something, a discipline, an ethnic group, a "nation" transforms into something else.  The creation, maintenance, and even transgression of identity occurs in these borderlands, tangible and intangible.   The Ancient Borderlands Graduate Conference is intended to apply borderland theories and concepts to the ancient world. Further, since the nature of borders themselves includes a variety of perspectives, the study of borderlands fosters an interdisciplinary approach.  With this focus in mind, we encourage, although do not require, papers that respond to a recent monograph adopting this approach, Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Christianity and Islam, by Thomas Sizgorich.
 
 Greg Fisher, Assistant Professor of Classics at Carleton University will deliver the keynote address. Professor Fisher's research interests focus on the Roman and Sasanian Empires in Late Antiquity. He is particularly interested in political and cultural change, especially amongst the peoples who found themselves at the limits of imperial power but affected by the many pressures which arrived with clientship, military service, and incorporation into local religious or political practices.

We particularly welcome papers focusing on the following temporal and geographical areas, although papers with a thematic focus on Borderlands in other contexts may also be considered:
 

  • The Mediterranean world up to the 8th century CE
  • India up through the Huna Conquest (5th century CE)
  • Japan through the Nara Period (794 CE)
  • China from prehistory through the end of the T?ang Dynasty (907 CE)
  • Southeast Asia up to 1431 CE
  • The Americas up to and including early European contact
  • North Africa through 750 CE
  • Sub-Saharan Africa through the Askumite Empire (947 CE)
     
     Please send your 500 word abstract to ggoalwin@umail.ucsb.edu by February 1, 2010 and include "UCSB Ancient Borderlands" in the subject of the email.
     
     For information about the 2008 conference, visit http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/research/borderlands-conference.html.

 

Integration and identity in the Roman Republic
Manchester, 1-3 July 2010

The project ‘Integration and identity in the Roman Republic’ is currently carried out by Saskia Roselaar at the University of Manchester. It aims to clarify the processes of integration between Italians and Romans in the period 340-91 BC. The issue of integration has been studied mainly in the context of the Romanization of Italy and the formation of identities in Italy, which are considered the result of increased contact between Romans and Italians. However, it still remains unclear in what contexts Romans and Italians came into contact with each other. The project's aim therefore is to study the points of contact between these groups: before we can say anything about the cultural and linguistic consequences of integration, we must know where and why exactly Romans and Italians met.


The project studies these contacts in three broadly defined spheres:


-Geographical: To establish what points of contact existed between Romans and Italians, we must first find out where these groups lived. The project will focus specifically on the landscape of the colonies founded by the Romans throughout Italy, which are usually assumed to have played a large role in the Romanization of Italy. Although it is sometimes assumed that Italians were expelled from their lands, recent research has suggested that Italians often lived in the colonies or their territories. A more detailed reconstruction of the colonial landscape is therefore in order.
-Political and administrative: Italians sometimes received full or partial Roman citizenship, which would have brought them into contact with Romans on a regular basis. Other Italians were governed directly by Roman state officials. Regular contact with Roman government may have been an important factor in the integration of Italians; the project seeks to explore the relations between political and administrative contacts and the economic and cultural developments in various Italian areas.
-Economic: Contacts between Romans and Italians could occur for various economic reasons. It appears that trade occurred in a variety of contexts, which must be studied in more detail. Furthermore, it is well known that Italians conducted trade outside Italy, with the assistance of the Roman state. Thus, increased contacts with Rome may have been beneficial for the Italian economy.
The study of these possibilities for contact between Rome and the Italians will shed light on the process of Romanization as it occurred in Republican Italy: it will be possible to establish in more detail exactly how much contact existed between Rome and the various Italian peoples, and what modes of contact existed. Research into political integration will also shed light on the concept of Roman identity in the Republic: the study of political rights shows which rights the Romans were willing to share with the Italians, and thereby their level of inclusion into Roman society.

We welcome papers on any aspect of integration and the formation of identity in the Roman Republic. We would particularly like to invite archaeologists and linguists, since it is clear that integration and identity cannot be studied by ancient historians alone. Some suggested topics are:


-Colonial landscapes
-Legal barriers for integration
-Ideas about integration among Romans and Italians
-Different modes of integration for various social classes
-Regional variations in the methods and results of integration


 Confirmed speakers include:
 
Guy Bradley (Cardiff)
Tim Cornell (Manchester)
Altay Coskun (Waterloo, Canada)
Elena Isayev (Exeter)
David Langslow (Manchester)
Kathryn Lomas (UCL)
John Patterson (Cambridge)
William Rees (Oxford)
Saskia Roselaar (Manchester)
Nathan Rosenstein (Ohio State University)
Roman Roth (Cape Town, South Africa)
Tesse Stek (Nijmegen)

The deadline for abstracts is 1 March 2010; if you are interested in speaking at the conference, please send in your abstract no later than this date. If you would like to attend as a non-speaking participant, please let me know by sending in the registration form on the website:
 
http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/subjectareas/classicsancienthistory/eventsnews/romanrepublic/


 

The PacRim Latin Literature Seminar in 2010 will be held in Christchurch, New Zealand, at the Copthorne Hotel Christchurch Central, July, 7,8,9. The tariff, if you choose to stay in the Copthorne, is $115.00 per night (no
view), $140.00 per night (park view); the conference fee will be c.$175.00NZ or less, and the topic 'Auctoritas'. Abstracts should be with Robin Bond by the end of February. robin.bond@canterbury.ac.nz

 

 

The History and Culture of the Ionian Islands
The Durrell School of Corfu
16-21 May, 2010
THE DURRELL SCHOOL OF CORFU will host a six-day seminar, 16–21 May 2010, on the History and Culture of the Ionian Islands. The Academic Director of the seminar will be Dr Anthony Hirst (Institute of Byzantine Studies, Queen’s University Belfast), a member of the Board of the Durrell School. The Moderator and keynote speaker will be Professor Peter Mackridge, Professor Emeritus in the University of Oxford. The seminar will take place in the Library and research centre of the Durrell School at 11 Filellinon in the historic centre of Corfu Town.

The seminar aims to bring together experts in all aspects of the history and culture of the Ionian Islands in what is, we believe, a unique attempt to take an interdisciplinary overview of the history and culture of this group of islands whose development, at least in medieval and modern times, is quite distinct from that of the rest of Greece.
The Durrell School invites proposals for papers on all of the following historical periods and cultural topics:


The Islands in Prehistory and the Ancient World
The Islands in the Byzantine Empire
The Venetian period
The French occupations, and the Septinsular Republic
The British Protectorate, the United States of the Ionian  Islands
Union with Greece, and the Ionian Islands since 1864
Globalization and the Ionian Islands


Modern painters of the Ionian Islands
The musical traditions of Corfu
The literature of the Ionian Islands
Science and Industry in the Ionian Islands
The folklore of the Ionian Islands
The material culture of the Ionian Islands
Philhellenism and the Ionian Islands
Cultural presentations of the islands



PROPOSALS (two pages maximum) for consideration by the Board of the Durrell School, together with the author’s CV, should be sent by email to Anthony Hirst (a.hirst@qub.ac.uk), and copied to the Durrell School (durrells@otenet.gr), to arrive not later than 1 February 2010.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION or a more detailed version of the call for papers, please write to Anthony Hirst (a.hirst@qub.ac.uk), to whom all queries about the Seminar should be addressed. For information about the Durrell School, please go to the website at www.durrell-school-corfu.org <http://www.durrell-school-corfu.org> .
PUBLICATION. It is intended that a selection of the papers will be published either in the Durrell School Proceedings or as an independent volume.

 

Workshop: The texts of the medical profession in antiquity - genres and purposes, to be held at the University of Oslo, 16th-18th September 2010

Organisers: Isabella Andorlini (University of Parma); David Leith (University College London) and Anastasia Maravela-Solbakk (University of Oslo)
 
Confirmed speakers: Heinrich Von Staden (Princeton), Vivian Nutton (UCL), Philip van der Eijk (Newcastle), Laurence Totelin (Cardiff), Rebecca Flemming (Cambridge), Ann Ellis Hanson (Yale).
 
We are inviting the submission of abstracts for papers (duration: 20-30 min.) to be presented at the workshop ”The texts of the medical profession in antiquity: genres and purposes” (16-18 September 2010 in Oslo, Norway). The papers may deal with any text or group of medical texts from Graeco-Roman antiquity as long as what is in focus are issues of genre, cross-generic relations and/ or purpose. We are particularly interested in discussions of generic features and classification as well as the purpose of medical texts recovered on papyri. We are also keen on papers exploring the term ”handbook” both within medicine and in comparison with the use of the term for other prose texts.

Please submit your abstract by March 1st, 2010 to:

anastasia.maravela-solbakk@ifikk.uio.no

The Undergraduate Classics Society of Cornell University is pleased to announce a Call for Papers for an undergraduate conference to be held April 9-10, 2010 at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Professor Cynthia Damon of the University of Pennsylvania will provide the keynote address and response to papers.  The conference is open to all undergraduate students currently enrolled in a college or university, and submissions may be on any topic related to the study of Classics (Greek, Latin, classical archaeology, ancient history, late antiquity, etc.).  All presenters will receive housing, three meals, and individual travel stipends of up to $200.

Abstracts should not exceed 350 words for presentations of 15-20 minutes and are due by 1 February, 2010.  Notification of acceptance will be sent by 15 February, 2010.  Please include with your abstract a cover page with your name, address, phone number, email address, class, major and college/university. Do not include your name on the actual abstract as submissions will be refereed anonymously.

Abstracts and questions may be sent by email (as an attachment) or post to:

Stevie Hull
Kai Ta Loipa Undergraduate Classics Club
steviehull@gmail.com
120 Goldwin Smith Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
USA

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Classics and the Duke University Department of Classical Studies present:

The 21st annual Duke-UNC Graduate Colloquium
NEW GRADUATE RESEARCH IN THE CLASSICS
March 19-21, 2010

Keynote speaker: Dr. Christofilis Maggidis, Dickinson College

This colloquium will present current and innovative work by graduate students in the Classics.  We will hold a forum for the presentation and discussion of new insights, critiques, and interpretations by graduate students in the field, in order to embrace and acknowledge contemporary contributions to the oldest discipline in the Humanities.  The colloquium sollicits papers presenting current research on any topic, including but not limited to progressive approaches to the Classics, literary theory, innovative methods of archaeology, feminist perspectives, pedagogy, psychoanalysis, new connections between or within texts and artifacts, and fresh analyses of Graeco-Roman archaeology and literature.

We welcome submissions from classical studies and related fields.  Papers with interdisciplinary approaches or aspects are encouraged.  Our focus is on the presentation and interpretation of evidence from the perspectives of classical archaeology, philology, and literary criticism, as well as classical history and classical art history.  Some funds will be available to assist with travel expenses.

Submit your 500-word (excluding title and works cited) abstract as an email attachment by January 10, 2010 to Ted Gellar-Goad at classicscolloquium@gmail.com.  Include in the body of your email your name, paper title, institution, and email address.  Do not put your name on the abstract itself.  For any abstract questions (but not submissions), or for general questions about the colloquium, please contact Serena Witzke at switzke@email.unc.edu.

The Women’s Network/Réseau des Femmes panel at the Annual Meeting of the Classical Association of Canada, May 11-13, 2010, Québec City, QC: Exploring Equity in Antiquity

In honour of the formation of an Equity Committee as part of the CAC/SCEC, the theme for this year’s panel sponsored by the Women’s Network/Réseau des Femmes is “Exploring Equity in Antiquity.” We invite submissions that explore questions regarding the existence and nature of gender equality in the ancient Mediterranean world. Did equity in the modern sense of the concept exist in antiquity or is the notion of ‘separate but equal’ a more productive way of thinking about the question? To what degree was there equity in private or public spheres in areas such as religion, domestic and family life, euergetism, commerce and trade, creative endeavours (e.g., music, poetry and art) and other spheres of activity? How was gender equity affected by other means of differentiation such as juridical status, socio-economic status, age, or ethnicity? To what extent did these either facilitate or compromise attempts to achieve equity? Contributions might also examine the representation of men and women in literature, mythology and art, as well as efforts by classicists in the 19th and 20th centuries to achieve equity in the area of scholarship (for example, the struggle of female classicists to gain professional recognition).
 
This call for papers is meant to be suggestive rather than exclusive. We welcome papers that consider the theme from a variety of perspectives and sources of evidence (textual, visual, and material).
 
Please submit abstracts 300 words in length by 15 January 2010 directly to the website for the Annual Meeting (http://www.evenements.fl.ulaval.ca/index.php/SCEC-CAC/2010) under the “Proposal Submission” link and indicate that the abstract is for the Women’s Network/Réseau des femmes panel. http://www.evenements.fl.ulaval.ca/index.php/SCEC-CAC/http://www.evenements.fl.ulaval.ca/index.php/SCEC-CAC/2010
 
For general inquiries, please contact Fanny Dolansky (fdolansky@brocku.cafdolansky(at)brocku.ca) or Judy Fletcher (jfletcher(at)wlu.ca).

 



Striving for Victory:
Competition and Rivalry in the Ancient World


The Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia is proud to present their 11th Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference.  The Conference will be held at Green College on the UBC Vancouver Campus on May 08th, 2010 with a keynote address by Dr. Mark Golden in the evening.


Competition is a fundamental force through which the framework of our world is constructed. At times it can be co-operative, with every party working together against their environment; however, in most cases, competition is adversarial, resulting in both victors and vanquished. It is the impetus for change, the despoiler of power and the donor of glory. It can have revolutionary effects, changing the dynamics of entire cultures virtually overnight, or it can be more subtle, affecting a very small part of our world over centuries. Whatever its scope, from the written page to the playing field to the political floor, competition has the power to drive us, to define us and, at times, to destroy us.


The possible fields related to this subject are indeed many, and on the occasion of Vancouver's hosting of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, the 11th annual CNERS Graduate Students' Interdisciplinary Conference invites the submission of papers on themes of competition in such areas as:

  • Sports
  • Ideologies (intellectual, religious)
  • Politics
  • Literature
  • Iconography
  • Culture
  • Warfare
  • Theory (psychological, social, economic)

If you are interested in presenting a paper at the conference, please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words by January 30th, 2010.  Please include your name, institution, degree, specialization, and contact info on a separate form, as well as any audio-visual equipment you may require. Presentations should be no more than 15-20 minutes in length.  All faculties and disciplines are encouraged to apply.


Please send submissions and any inquiries to: ubc.cners.gradconference2010@gmail.com
OR any questions can be directed to our blog: http://cners2010.blogspot.com



Singers and Tales in the 21st Century: The Legacies of Milman Parry and Albert Lord
December 3-5, 2010


2010 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Albert Lord's seminal Singer of Tales, and the 75th anniversary of the death of his mentor Milman Parry, the originator of what has come to be known as the Oral-Formulaic Theory. In honor of the work and continuing influence of these two pathfinding scholars, the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature at Harvard University will hold a conference from December 3-5, 2010, on oral studies and the Parry-Lord legacy at the beginning of the 21st century.


Proposals are invited for papers on theoretical or practical aspects of the study of oral traditions, including but not limited to:

  • The nature of formulaic language
  • Oral prose narratives
  • The textualization of oral traditions
  • Comparative oral poetics
  • Problems in the editing and publication of performative art forms
  • Fieldwork challenges
  • The ecology of genres

Authors should e-mail a one-page abstract to the conference organizer, David Elmer, at delmer@fas.harvard.edu.


Presentations will be 30 minutes in length, and are to be made in English.
The deadline for submissions is February 1, 2010. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by March 15, 2010.



Functions of Roman Memory, University of Texas at Austin.
Research on memory has received increasing attention in both neurobiology and the humanities.
This conference, financed by the Max Planck Research Award to Prof. Karl Galinsky, will be held at the University of Texas at Austin, April 16-18, 2010.  It aims to provide graduate students and junior faculty with an opportunity to examine the role of memory in diverse areas of Roman civilization and to test current methodologies.  Prof. T. P. Wiseman of the University of Exeter  will be the keynote speaker.


Papers are invited on subjects s uch as Roman historiography, social history, art, architecture and monuments, literature, religion, and on theoretical issues relating to Gedächtnisgeschichte. Abstracts of no more than 300 words (for a 20-minute presentation) should be submitted by January 20, 2010, to Dr. Douglas Boin (drboin [at] mail.utexas.edu).  Please include the words ‘Memoria Abstracts‘ in the subject header.

Earlier applications are encouraged and inquiries can be directed to galinsky [at] mail.utexas.edu.
All participants will receive free lodging and a travel subsidy.  Please see the conference blog (http://memoriaromana.wordpress.com) and the project homepage (http://www.utexas.edu/research/memoria) for more information.






Reception and the Gift of Beauty in the Western Tradition Institute of Greece, Rome, and the Classical Tradition, University of Bristol, 8-9 July 2010 Reception has become an important and influential approach to researching and teaching Classical literature, and it has wider implications. By emphasizing the text as object in process, a dialogue between those working on reception theory and gift-theory could help move the discussion on. Research on Classical literature and gift-giving has tended to focus less on texts than on their contexts, but investigating the composition of text as gift as it both gives meanings to and receives meanings from social contexts, artistic and religious practices, and interpretive approaches helps us understand how these texts are composed and received. The aesthetic turn in gift theory is focused by the phrase 'the gift of beauty'.

This conference is being called to explore the claim that the concept and experience of beauty are essential to understanding and creating texts. It will consider how research into texts as gifts of beauty complements the answers drawn from theological, historical, anthropological, and sociological approaches.In Cicero's skeptical consideration of divination, the perception and reception of natural beauty involves the compulsion to respond which is characteristic of gift-exchange: a^?oea^?|the order of celestial things and the beauty of the universe compel me to confess that there is some excellent and eternal Being which deserves the respect and homage of the human race.a^?? As well as the compulsion to reciprocate, gift-theory offers other ideas important to the perception and creation of beauty: difference and delay in reciprocity and the image as gift and return-gift, the sublime and/ or beauty as a^??saturated phenomenon', gift as object and subject and the ambiguity of beauty, etc. Proposals for paps for this conference are warmly welcomed. Topics could include the beloved's appearance as a gift to the lover which is received graciously or objectified, gift-exchange dramatized in differing images of sacrifice or friendship, the perception and construction of a^??decus' as both beauty and glory in evocations of patronage situations or monuments, aspects of excess, decadence, and hyperbole, rhetorical copia and the response to beauty by creating textual beauty, l'ecriture feminine, composition as gift, and beauty and the body, or translation or allusion as modes of exchanging beauty.


Papers should be no more than thirty minutes in length. Please send a 300-word abstract to Stephen D'Evelyn at: giftofbeautyconference@googlemail.com by 1 February 2010. 010.






The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research into Ancient Languages and Early Stages of Modern Languages and the Department of Classical Studies, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic would like to formally announce International Conference on Classical and Byzantine Literature: "Literary crossroads" to be held in 2010 and invite you to submit an abstract for the colloquium.


Conference date and place: September 1922, 2010, Brno, Czech Republic.


CALL FOR PAPERS should be submitted no later than January 31, 2010; early submissions are encouraged because the number of conference paper presentations is limited.


ABSTRACTS
Abstracts of papers to be presented in English, German, Italian or French are invited for consideration by the Conference Academic Committee. Please submit your abstract (up to 200 words) in the attached submission form until January 31, 2010 via e-mail to the following address: crossroads@phil.muni.cz. Acceptance notification will be sent to you until February 28, 2010. A letter of invitation to the conference participants can be downloaded at the following address: http://www.phil.muni.cz/wsvj/home/conference/classical-and-byzantine-literature.


PRESENTATIONS
Individual 20-minute paper presentations will be followed by 10 minutes of discussion.


PROGRAMME
Parallel sessions and panel discussions will be scheduled over four days; papers will be grouped by sessions. The conference will also include a junior session within which PhD students can present their papers. The conference programme will be available on the above mentioned website.


LOCATION
Brno, Czech Republic
More information on travel connections, accommodation, and organization will be provided on the Centre website
(http://www.phil.muni.cz/wsvj/home/conference/classical-and-byzantine-literature)
once it becomes available.


PUBLICATION
All papers will be considered for publication in refereed Conference Proceedings that will be launched in 2011.




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