CALL. 26.01.2018: Tacitus' Wonders - Wellington (New Zealand)
FECHA LÍMITE/DEADLINE/SCADENZA: 26/01/2018
FECHA CONGRESO/CONGRESS DATE/DATA CONGRESSO: 27-28-29/08/2018
LUGAR/LOCATION/LUOGO: School of Art History, Classics and Religious Studies, Victoria University of Wellington (Wellington, New Zealand)
ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: Prof. Arthur Pomeroy; Dr. James McNamara
INFO: web - james.mcnamara@vuw.ac.nz
CALL:
Readers have been attracted to the remarkable and wondrous, the admirable and the uncanny in Tacitus. But in order to appreciate what is mirum or novum, we also need to understand the apparently mundane material between the monstra. Tacitus famously derides the praises of new public buildings as a topic more worthy of the daily gazette than illustres annales (A. 13.31.1); his own criteria for selection, however, and his own judgments on what is worthy of note, have often differed in interesting ways from the preoccupations of his readers.
Abstracts (250 words) are invited on the topic of Tacitus’ wonders.
Submissions on comparative material are very much welcome.
Reflection is invited on the consequences of different methods of dividing or reconciling historical events and historiographical representation, e.g. Woodman (1993), O’Gorman (2001), Haynes (2003), and Sailor (2008). In preparing abstracts, it will be helpful to consider the challenge extended by Dench (in Feldherr, 2009), the ‘awkward question’ of whether the much admired Tacitean text ‘represents anything other than itself’. Papers treating the classical tradition, reception and history of scholarship are welcome.
Please send abstracts to James McNamara at Victoria University of Wellington (james.mcnamara@vuw.ac.nz) by Friday 26 January 2018.