CALL. 20.03.2017: [Panel 4 at SBL Annual Meeting 2017] Gods of our Fathers: Restoration, Archaism an
FECHA LÍMITE/DEADLINE/SCADENZA: 20/03/2017
FECHA CONGRESO/CONGRESS DATE/DATA CONGRESSO: 18-19-20-21/11/2017
LUGAR/LOCATION/LUOGO: Boston, MA (USA)
ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions
INFO: call - socamr@gmail.com
CALL:
What are the historical, social functions of the return to ancient tradition – real or imagined – in ancient Mediterranean religions? The re-materialization of the archaic is a familiar phenomenon in a range of Greek and Roman rituals, including the religious reforms of Augustus, Hellenistic archaizing, and the antiquarian enthusiasms of the second sophistic (Alcock 2001; Nasrallah 2005; Spawforth 2011). Theoretical frameworks emphasize the challenges and potential of these fabrications, for both the ancient participants who lived the cultures we study and for the scholars who seek to understand these phenomena. Significant theoretical foundations have come from Hobsbawm and Ranger, who explored the significance of fabricated pasts for the emic realities of national and cultural self-identity (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Linnekin 1991; Babadzan 2000; Briggs 1996). Bourdieu’s work among the Kabyle famously examined how generations of cultural change transformed the ‘pure’ Kabyle house into an object of ‘structural nostalgia’ – simultaneously receding from, and created by, the investigator’s lens (Goodman 2009; McCutcheon 1997; Silverstein 2004). Studies of religion and cultural memory have explored ritual practices through the lens of memory as a social phenomenon (Assman 2005; Galinsky 2016)
This panel invites papers which ground these theoretical questions in specific case studies from ancient Mediterranean contexts, including Greek, Roman, Near Eastern, Jewish, Christian, or Islamic. We are especially interested in papers which employ comparative approaches, and which integrate the study of material and textual sources.
The full CFP with bibliography can be found here. Since the SBL system is closed now, abstracts should be submitted by email attachment as .doc or .docx files to socamr@gmail.com. Papers should last between 15 and 20 minutes. Abstracts (500 words of less) should contain a title and a word count, but should not have any information regarding the identity of the submitter. All abstracts will be reviewed anonymously. Please direct all queries to SAMR at socamr@gmail.com. Deadline for all abstracts: March 20, 2017.