CRASIS Annual Meeting and Masterclass 2024

Call for Papers Annual Meeting/Masterclass 2024

It is my pleasure to announce that registration is now possible for the CRASIS Annual Meeting 2024 on Between Image and Text. The Annual Meeting takes place on Friday 16 February at the University of Groningen. The event is designed to promote discussion and the exchange of ideas about the ancient world across traditional disciplinary boundaries. All are very welcome!

Each year, an internationally acknowledged expert in one of the fields represented by CRASIS is invited to deliver the CRASIS Keynote Lecture at the Annual Meeting.

This year we are honoured to welcome Prof. Jás Elsner (Oxford University) as keynote speaker and he will be speaking on:

'Between Image and Text'

How do we integrate textual, visual, and material sources in the study of the ancient world? We invite participants to reflect on the boundaries between the written and the depicted, to discuss the advantages and methodological complications of engaging with disparate sources, and to consider the impact of research methods and questions on our understanding of words and things. We welcome contributions from various disciplines and subfields in the study of Mediterranean and Near Eastern antiquity, from archaeology to art history, and from literature to epigraphy in the languages of the region.

Programme

09.30-10.00 ---Coffee, tea, and registration---

10.00-10.10 Opening remarks and welcome

SESSION 1: Moderator: Lidewijde Jong

10.10-11.15 Keynote lecture by Jas Elsner (Oxford University): ‘Presence, Absence and the Problems of Comparativity: Archaeological Art History and the Imaginative Restoration of the Lost’

11.15-11.45 ---Coffee and tea break---

SESSION 2 Moderator: Felix Budelmann

11.45-12.20 Cristiano Minuto (University of Naples Federico II): 'As Beautiful as a Flowery Meadow: The Influence of Art on Late Antique Descriptions of The Body'

12.20-12.55     Caroline Bridel (University of Bern): 'Early Christian Iconography: How to avoid “Theological Reading”

12.55-14.00      --- Lunch ---

SESSION 3 Moderator: Mladen Popovic

14.30-15.05   Fanny Opdenhoff (University of Hamburg/Radboud University Nijmegen): 'Text as image. What happened when texts became visible?'

15.05-15.40   Orit Peleg-Barkat (Hebrew University of Jerusalem): 'Herod's Western Palace in Jerusalem – Between Written Text, Archaeological Evidence and Modern Reconstruction'

15.40-16.10     --- Coffee and tea break ---


SESSION 4: Moderator: Bettina Reitz-Joosse

16.10-16.45     Christopher Simon (University of Chicago): 'Est autem signatus ... et inde nomen: Image as (Ancient) Etymology'

16.45-17.20    Luuk de Boer (Groningen University): 'Painting History: Picture, witness and ancient historiography'

17.20-17.30    Closing remarks

Followed by reception, open to all

18.30          Dinner (for registered participants)

Registration

The Annual Meeting will take place in the Court Room of the Faculty of Religion, Culture, and Society (Oude Boteringestraat 38). You can register for the Annual Meeting via this form

The deadline for registration is Monday 12 February.

CRASIS

CRASIS is a platform for the study of antiquity and brings together experts in the Graeco-Roman world and Near Eastern studies —Classical Greece, the Hellenistic world, the Roman Empire, Judaism, Christianity and Islam — at the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society of the University of Groningen and the Protestant Theological University. Its aim is to advance interdisciplinary study of the interplay between culture, religion and society in antiquity.

About the speaker

Professor Jaś Elsner is a Senior Research Fellow in Classical Archaeology and Art at Oxford and Visiting Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago. He is mainly known for his work on Roman art, including Late Antiquity and Byzantine art, focusing on the way art was viewed in antiquity. His research also covers historiography of art and different kinds of receptions, such as ritual and pilgrimage in the case of religious art, literary descriptions of art, and collecting and display of art. In more recent years, his work has developed to encompass a more global and comparative approach to the history of art. He is a prolific writer on these topics, and his book publications include Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity (CUP 1995); Pilgrimage in Greco-Roman and Early Christian Antiquity: Seeing the Gods (OUP 2005, editor with Ian Rutherford); Life, Death and Representation: Some New Work on Roman Sarcophagi (De Gruyter 2011, editor with Janet Huskinson); Landscape and Space: Comparative Perspectives from Chinese, Mesoamerican, Ancient Greek, and Roman Art (OUP 2022, editor).

Information for PhD/MA Students

To participate in the Masterclass, Master students are expected to submit a paper of 3,000–4,000 words. PhD students submit a paper of 5,000–6,000 words. These papers will be circulated among the participants and are therefore to be submitted no later than January 19, 2024. During the Masterclass, the participants will introduce their paper, followed by responses from a fellow student and Professor Jaś Elsner.

For students at Dutch universities, the Masterclass counts as an OIKOS, ARCHON or NOSTER activity and students will earn three course credits (EC) by active participation.

For more information, please send an e-mail to crasis.aws@rug.nl or see the website.