***cancelled***

Archaeological Institute of America Hanfmann Lecture

A. Asa Eger, University of North Carolina Greensboro

"The Islamic-Byzantine Frontier: Interaction and Exchange Among Muslim and Christian Communities"

Thursday, April 9, 5:30pm

Campbell 160

The retreat of the Byzantine army from Syria in around 650 CE, in advance of the approaching Arab armies, is one that has resounded emphatically in the works of both Islamic and Christian writers, and created an enduring motif: that of the Islamic-Byzantine frontier. For centuries, Byzantine and Islamic scholars have evocatively sketched a contested border: the annual raids between the two, the line of fortified fortresses defending Islamic lands, the no-man's land in between and the birth of jihad. In their early representations of a Muslim-Christian encounter, accounts of the Islamic-Byzantine frontier are charged with significance for a future 'clash of civilizations' that often envisions a polarized world. I examine the two aspects of this frontier: its physical and ideological ones. By highlighting the archaeological study of the real and material frontier, as well as acknowledging its ideological military and religious implications, he offers a more complex vision of this dividing line than has been traditionally disseminated. With analysis grounded in archaeological evidence as well the relevant historical texts, Eger brings together a nuanced exploration of this vital element of medieval history.

 24th Annual Classics Graduate Student Colloquium, University of Virginia

WARNING: Storm Approaching

Weather, the Environment, and Natural Disasters in the Ancient Mediterranean

Saturday, March 21 

Online: http://classics.as.virginia.edu/2020-graduate-colloquium

Keynote Speaker: Clara Bosak-Schroeder (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Scientific, aesthetic, and religious conceptions of weather events appear throughout Classical antiquity, as the Greeks and Romans attempted to make sense of environmental phenomena. Often, these events were explained as expressions of divine wrath or favor. Storms and natural disasters figured as literary devices, for example to delay narrative action or as metaphors for the cyclic nature of human life. Climate, broadly defined, was thought to determine national character, and weather played a critical role in military expeditions. Recently, scholars have made considerable advances in applying principles of bioarchaeology to the study of the ancient world. Hand in hand with these, theorists working with the tools of ecocriticism envision a humanities broader than humans, accounting for the whole natural world.

The study of weather and its public is particularly relevant today, as the severity of natural disasters increases annually. We face dramatic changes to the environment on a global scale, and the global response to these changes is a contentious and urgent matter. For this conference, we seek academic papers exploring natural disasters and environmental change in ancient Greece and Rome. We also welcome submissions from scholars whose work deals with the broader Mediterranean world, which includes but is not limited to Mesopotamia, the Levant, Anatolia, Egypt, Ethiopia, and North Africa. Some possible topics are:

-Storms and natural phenomena as literary motifs, metaphors, and/or similes

-Archaeological evidence for natural disasters or climate change

-Conceptions of environmental determinism

-The depiction of weather events in visual art

-The role of the gods in determining the weather and cult activity seeking to affect the weather or environment

-Historical consequences of weather and climate

-The relationship of ancient studies to the environmental humanities

-The present legacies of ancient environments

Each presenter will have 15-20 minutes to speak. Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words (not counting notes or bibliography) to Stephen Hill (rsh7bu@virginia.edu) no later than 5pm EST on January 15, 2020. This colloquium intends to be accessible to all, including those with physical disabilities, mental illness, and/or chronic illness. Any questions may be addressed to colloquium organizers Joseph Zehner (jbz9fa@virginia.edu) and Vergil Parson (vgp6fe@virginia.edu).

Janet Downie, UNC Chapel Hill

“Ephesian Space in Imperial Greek Narrative”

Friday, February 21, 5:00pm

Rouss Robertson, Rm. 258

reception to follow

Friends of Classics Talk

Cornelia Lauf, John Cabot University

"Contemporary Curating in Ancient Rome"

Monday, January 27, 5:00pm

Cocke Hall, Gibson Room

reception to follow

Stocker Lecture

Amy Richlin, UCLA

"Plautus on the Beach: Race, Law, and Human Trafficking in the Roman Republic"

Wednesday, January 15, 5:00pm 

Cocke Hall, Gibson Room

reception to follow

Virginia Undergraduate Research Symposium in Classics 

Friday, November 15, 1-5:30 PM 

Rouss-Robertson Hall, Room 245

Reception to follow

Undergraduates: Please join your peers from other Virginia Institutions at the annual Virginia Undergraduate Research Symposium in Classics: 

This year, Virginia Undergraduate Symposium in Classics VI will be hosted by the University of Virginia and sponsored by the University of Virginia Classics Department. Program at http://www.vursic.com/program.html

 Medieval Studies Lecture Series

Aden Kumler, University of Chicago

“Pretium redemptionis: The Price of Salvation ca. 845"

Friday, November 8, 4:00pm

Campbell 160

In the Middle Ages, as today, the concept of "price" played a central role in practices of commensuration and exchange. Grounded in worldly economics, notions of price, commerce, and profit also shaped medieval soteriological thought and practice. Focusing on a series of works associated directly or obliquely with the Carolingian ruler, Charles the Bald, this paper examines the trope of the “price of salvation” in the mid-ninth century. The talk will focus primarily upon how a selection of works of art and discourses framed access to salvation in economic terms, with particular emphasis on how the form of the coin was taken up as a means of grappling with and expressing the incommensurable value of spiritual ransom or redemption.

 Medieval Studies Lecture Series

Elly Truitt, Bryn Mawr College

“Secrets, Scientia, and Statecraft in Thirteenth-Century Latin Christendom”

Thursday, October 10, 5:30pm

Campbell 158

According to thirteenth-century Scholastic philosopher, Franciscan, and polymath Roger Bacon (ca. 1214-ca. 1292), a more complete understanding of natural laws and phenomena could foster both new natural knowledge and wonderful and useful inventions. These were the result of mastery of the branch of knowledge that Bacon termed scientia experimentalis, or knowledge gained through sense experience. Bacon argued that sense experience was critical to understanding the natural world and using that knowledge to intervene in the natural order and serve humanity. Instruments, devices, and processes are central to scientia experimentalis; they are both engine that drives the acquisition of new knowledge and the result of that knowledge. According to Bacon, devices and instruments are equally important to epistemology as to affairs of state, as they enable the acquisition of new knowledge and political advantage. To illustrate the importance and potential of learned natural knowledge combined with experience Bacon repeatedly invoked examples from the history of Alexander the Great and his tutor, Aristotle, drawn from the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum, as well as the corpus of Latin and European vernacular literature on Alexander and his exploits. Bacon’s use of Alexander and Aristotle reveals the interrelation of political power and erudite knowledge in this era, and how they intersected through the cultivation and application of experience and technology.

Archaeological Institute of America Joukowsky Lecture 

Lisa Nevett, University of Michigan

“New Fieldwork from Classical Olynthos (Greece): towards an archaeology of identity” 

Thursday, October 3, 5:30pm

Campbell Hall 158

 Dissecting Cultural Pluralism Lab 

Dan-el Pedilla Peralta, Princeton University

"From Pluralism to Epistemicide: Religions in the Imperial Roman Republic"

Wednesday, September 25, 5:00pm

Wilson 142 

Reception to follow

Dissecting Cultural Pluralism Lab

Katharina Lorenz, University of Gissen

"Powerful Faces, Powerful Methods: How We Look at Roman Portraits"

Tuesday, September 10, 5:00pm

Wilson 142

Reception to follow

"Powerful Faces, Powerful Methods: How We Look at Roman Portraits" unpicks some of the research trajectories along which scholars have tried to understand imperial Roman portraiture. The discussion tracks how far classical archaeology has got in attempting to grapple with the concept of the image as it presents itself in this artistic genre. Specifically, the paper examines the role of biography as an organizational and analytical principle in the emergence of Roman portraiture study as an academic sub-discipline during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; it assesses the impact of those approaches on the field still virulent today; it proposes ways in which engagement with the representational economics of these portraits might align their study with the aims and objectives of current visual culture studies.