Cultural Encounters in the Ancient Mediterranean

Keynote speaker & Master: Martin Goodman (Oxford University)

21-22 January 2013

The CRASIS Annual Meeting and Masterclass is a two-day event, set up as an informal meeting place for students at PhD or Research Master level, postdocs and senior staff to promote discussion, and exchange of ideas beyond disciplinary boundaries. A keynote speaker is invited to hold the Annual CRASIS Lecture and give a masterclass for (Research) MA and PhD students.

We want to invitePhD and Research Master Students, PostDocs, as well as senior researchers to take part in the second CRASIS Annual Meeting and PhD/MA Masterclass on 21–22 January 2013.

The theme of this year’s Annual Meeting and Masterclass will be:

Cultural Encounters in the Ancient Mediterranean

Although many of us are trained to look at the ancient world from one cultural (or academic) perspective, we are all aware that the ancient world was both culturally diverse and interconnected. This meeting takes as its starting point the impact of encounters between cultures, groups and individuals. It seeks to understand how we should define “cultural encounters” and explore what kind of models we should use to approach these encounters.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of recent theoretical positions including hybridity, métissage, cultural transfer, frontier studies, postcolonialism, entangled or shared histories, intertextuality, multilingualism or rational choice theory? How does our understanding of the ancient world change if we consider the role of cultural encounters in shaping historical development, literary and artistic traditions as well as religious and political systems? How can we trace and value the movements of commodities, texts, religious, or cultural practices, political institutions and ideas over the ancient world? What happened when these were transmitted between very different cultural spaces, and how did the encounters affect the parties involved? What were the mechanisms of these cultural encounters, and what kinds of persons or social forces were responsible?

You may focus on the encounters between individuals and groups, on the wider processes of exploration or colonization of which the encounters were the result, or on the products of these encounters, including literary texts, material objects or systems of belief. You may discuss processes of accommodation, or situations of resistance and conflict. You are invited to explore and (to assess critically) one or more recent theoretical approaches.

We are very proud that this year’s Keynote speaker and Master is Professor Martin Goodman (Oxford University). Professor Goodman is a leading expert on ancient Judaism in its Graeco-Roman context.

DEADLINES :

We invite senior researchers to submit a title and short abstract for a twenty-minute presentation on the first day of the Annual Meeting.

PhD and Research Master Students are invited to submit a topic proposal (500 words) for the Masterclass on the second day explaining their research in relation to this year’s theme.

Proposals for both days should be submitted no later that 31 October 2012.

MA/PhD Students

Once your proposal has been accepted, ReMa students should submit 3000-4000 words essays and PhD students 5000-6000 words essays before 21 December 2012 so that the papers can circulate among the participants. At the Masterclass ReMa students have ten minutes to briefly introduce their paper and PhD students have twenty minutes. After each presentation follows discussion under the expert guidance of Professor Goodman.

We will soon start a local reading and study group in preparation for the Annual Meeting and Masterclass.