CALL. 01.02.2021: A Traveller in an Antique Land: Travel and Traveling in the Ancient World - Online
FECHA LÍMITE/DEADLINE/SCADENZA: 01/02/2021
FECHA CONGRESO/CONGRESS DATE/DATA CONGRESSO: 10/04/2021
ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: Philip Levine; Griffin Budde; James Aglio.
INFO: ancienttravelbu@gmail.com
CALL:
Despite the danger and difficulty of travel in the ancient world, movement from place to place was a fact of life for many. Merchants and soldiers spent much time far from home, while captives and exiles often had no hope of a return. Military adventuring is evident from the earliest times, and tourism was not uncommon under the Roman Empire. As they encountered more lands and cultures, the ancients compiled a large body of scientific and literary writings on the world around them, informed by or in service of travel.
To better understand this important facet of life in the ancient world, the Department of Classical Studies at Boston University invites submissions of abstracts for the 13th Annual Graduate Student Conference, to be held over Zoom.
We invite proposals from graduate students working on the art, archaeology, or literature of any period of antiquity. Possible areas of inquiry include but are not limited to the following:
• Trade (Attic vases in Etruscan tombs, Marine-Archaeological shipwreck data, the Phoenicians in Herodotus 1)
• Pirates (The Homeric Hymn to Dionysus, Telemachus’ welcome in the Odyssey, Sextus Pompey)
• Military expeditions (Caesar, Xenophon, Alexander, Vindolanda tablets)
• Flights into exile (Livia with infant Tiberius, Alcibiades, Ovid Tristia 1)
• Personal travels (Herodotus, Pausanias, Peripluses, Itineraria)
• Impersonal travels (Geographers: Strabo, Ptolemy, and Mela; Ethnography: Tacitus’ Germania)
• Fantastic voyages: travel in fiction (Odyssey, Argonautica, Euhemerus’ Sacred History, Lucian’s True History,
travel in the ancient novel)
• Voyages of the mind: philosophical travels and worlds (Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis, Plato’s Timaeus)
• Reception of travel in antiquity/past as a foreign country (Shelley’s Ozymandias, Yeats’ Sailing to Byzantium,
Cavafy’s Ithaka)
Please send an anonymous abstract of no longer than 500 words to Philip Levine, Griffin Budde, and James Aglio at ancienttravelbu@gmail.com. Presenters will have 20 minutes for their papers, which will be followed by time for questions. Deadline for abstract submissions is February 1, 2021. Selected speakers will be notified by February 15, 2021.