Memory sanctions and damnatio memoriae, c. 200AD - c. 800AD - 05-06/09/2017, Cambridge (England)
This conference will explore the changing concept of memory sanctions and damnatio memoriae (literally 'damnation of memory') in late antiquity and the early middle ages, c. 200 - c. 800. Traditionally, damnatio memoriae has been thought of as a purely Roman practice signalling formal attacks upon the memory and commemoration of convicted traitors and enemies of the state, akin to the memory purges of modern Communist regimes. Perhaps its starkest contemporary articulation comes in the form of a law issued on 21st April 395 in the wake of a civil war whose supposed instigator, Eugenius, was condemned to oblivion: ‘Let that time be reckoned as if it never was.’ Damnatio memoriae has been widely studied in the Roman world, but almost exclusively as a process of destroying and defacing images and of removing names from honorific inscriptions, that is as a physical and destructive process. Yet the bounds of human memory and the aim of these sanctions stretched far beyond physical memorials. It has been the effort of a number of scholars, including two of the participants in this conference, to broaden our understanding of this damnatio memoriae beyond the current disciplinary strictures under which it operates, and to engage with sanctions against memory in terms of more universal notions of cultural memory and of taboo in human societies. This conference will be the next step in that process.
FECHA/DATE/DATA: 05-06/09/2017
LUGAR/LOCATION/LUOGO: Trinity College, University of Cambridge (Cambridge, England)
ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: Daniel Neary (PhD Candidate, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge) ; Dr Adrastos Omissi (British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Oriel College, University of Oxford) ; Sukanya Raisharma (DPhil Candidate, St John’s College, University of Oxford).
INFO: web - memory.sanctions.conference@gmail.com
INSCRIPCIÓN/REGISTRATION/REGISTRAZIONE: online
PROGRAMA/PROGRAM/PROGRAMMA:
DAY 1, Tuesday 5th September 2017 09:30 - 10:30: Session 1 Chair: Adrastos Omissi Harriet Flower (Princeton University) – Roman Erasure: Strategies and Contexts for Memory Sanctions 10:30-11:00: Break 11:00 - 13:00: Session 2 Chair: Richard Flower Adrastos Omissi (University of Glasgow) – The Memory of the Emperor Licinius and the ‘Foundation’ of the City of Constantinople (324-330 AD) George Woudhuysen (University of Oxford) – Blackening the name of the Emperor Constans Milena Raycheva (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) – 'Regular' and 'irregular' provincial attitudes to imperial condemnation in Roman Asia Minor, 3rd c. AD 13:00- 14:00: Lunch Break 14:00-15:30: Session 3 Chair: Mike Humphreys Richard Flower (University of Exeter) – Remember Where You Put It: Heresiology and Memory Sanctions Rosamond McKitterick (University of Cambridge) – The 'damnatio memoriae' of Pope Constantine II (768-769) 15:30-16:00: Break 16:00-17:30: Session 4 Chair: Peter Sarris Christine Luckritz-Marquis (Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond) – Remembering Scripture, Dismembering Idols: Ascetic Mobilization of the Cultural Logics of 'Damnatio Memoriae' Irene Selsvold (University of Gothenberg) – Forgetting the Pagan past? Remembering and forgetting through material culture in the religious transformation in Late Antiquity 18:30: Dinner DAY 2, Wednesday 6th September 2017 09:30-11:00: Session 5 Chair: Rosamond McKitterick Gerald Schwedler (UZH, Zürich) – Memory Sanctions c. 300 AD – c. 800 AD. Provincialising and Christianising a Roman Practice Kristina Mitalaité (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Paris) – Social memory at the end of the 8th century in the Frankish controversy on images and their veneration 11:00-11:30: Break 11:30-13:00: Session 6 Chair: Chris Wickham Yegor Grebnev (University of Oxford) – Deciding the eternal fate of defeated enemies: politics of posthumous names in early medieval China Philip Wood (Aga Khan University, London) – The West Syrian church and the posthumous reputation of Patriarch Athanasius Sandalaya (745-60) 13:00-14:00: Lunch 14:00-15:00: Session 7 Chair: Caroline Goodson Leslie Brubaker (University of Birmingham) – Concluding remarks: Rewriting history, memory sanctions and the invention of the past