Postgraduate Colloquium of CBOMG– Birmingham university

the 15th Postgraduate Colloquium of the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman & Modern Greek Studies, will take place on May 24th 2014.

This event is an excellent opportunity for research students in Late Antique, Byzantine or Modern Greek Studies to present their current research to an international academic audience at Birmingham. Our keynote speaker will be Dr Maria Georgopoulou, Director of the Gennadius Library (American School of Classical Studies at Athens).

Information en PDF

Colloque — Los Angeles

 Heaven and Earth: Greece’s Byzantium


May 1-3, 2014
Getty Villa in Malibu & UCLA in the Byzantine-Latino Quarter, Los Angeles

This symposium will bring together an internationally renowned group of scholars who will lecture at the Getty Villa, UCLA, and the Huffington Center at St. Sophia Cathedral. Focusing on Byzantine remains in Greece, this symposium foregrounds the important role of this region throughout late antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Early Modern period. Sessions will focus on Byzantium’s roots in antiquity, issues of daily life, interactions with the Islamic world and with Italy, the meaning of icons, monumental art in Mystras and its periphery, and recent archaeological finds in Greece. The symposium will conclude with a film and discussion about traditional village life in Greece.

Speakers include Robert S. Nelson, Henry Maguire, Jas’ Elsner, Anthony Kaldellis, Elizabeth Marlowe, Ioli Kalavrezou, Maria Parani, Demetra Bakirtzi, Father Maximos Constas, Annemarie Weyl Carr, Alicia Walker, Maria Georgopoulou, Anastasia Drandaki, Michalis Kappas, Sean Roberts, Patricia Fortini Brown, Eugenia Gerousi, Sharon Gerstel and Barbara Drucker.

Registration information will appear shortly on the Getty website. For questions about hotels and logistics, email Sharon Gerstel (gerstel@humnet.ucla.edu)

Appel à contribution — Embodied Identities RCAC

Embodied Identities: Figural and Symbolic Representation of the Self in Anatolia
June 7 and 8, 2014

Istanbul, Turkey

This two-day workshop will be hosted at the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, Koç University, in Taksim. The organizers invite the submission of abstracts presenting excavation data relating to identity, territoriality and artistic expression of Anatolian personalities or groups, as well as investigations into the creation and manipulation of identity through material culture. The focus of the first day will be on theoretical and methodological approaches to identity in prehistoric Anatolia, while the second day will be open to papers concerning identity and self at any time period in Anatolian studies.

The main objective of the workshop is to investigate the embodiment of identity markers in literal and representative media; such as mortuary practices, personalization of tools, location of petroglyphs, and changing contexts of settlement planning. The archaeological focus of this workshop will enhance our perspectives on the relations between the self-determination of ancient Anatolians and their material context in Anatolia.

Abstracts of 300 words or fewer should be sent to ehughes@ku.edu.tr no later than midnight on February 10, 2014.

Appel à contribution — Université de Tampere Finlande

Passages from Antiquity to the Middle Ages VI:

ON THE ROAD
TRAVELS, PILGRIMAGES AND SOCIAL INTERACTION

University of Tampere, Finland
6. – 8. August, 2015

CALL FOR PAPERS (deadline September 15th 2014)

The sixth international Passages from Antiquity to the Middle Ages
conference will focus on social approaches to travelling, mobility,
pilgrimages, and cultural exchange. Interaction between society and
space has been a key interest of scholars after the ‘Spatial Turn’.
Nevertheless, larger comparisons between eras and cultures are mainly
missing.

The archetypal journey of Odysseys served as a metaphor and model for
later narrations of travelling. In both Ancient and medieval worlds,
religious reasons were significant motivations for travelling; these
travels confront the traditional idea of these periods as eras of
immobility. However, the challenges of setting out for a journey, as
well as the dangers of the road, were not dependent on the incentive
but rather on distance and other geographical settings, social status
of the traveller, and political climate.

The conference aims at concentrating on social and cultural
interaction before, during and after travelling. What kinds of
motivations were there for ancient and medieval people to get on the
road and what kind of negotiations and networks were inherent in
travelling? We welcome papers, which have a sensitive approach to
social differences: gender, age, health, and status. Actors,
experiences and various levels of negotiations are of main interest,
and our focus lies on society and the history of everyday life, on the
differences and similarities between elite and popular culture, and on
the expectations linked to gender and life cycle stage, visible in the
practices and policies of travelling. We encourage proposals that
integrate the theme of travelling into wider larger social and
cultural contexts.

We aim at a broad coverage not only chronologically but also
geographically and disciplinarily (all branches of Classical,
Byzantine and Medieval Studies). Most preferable are contributions
that have themselves a comparative and/or interdisciplinary viewpoint
or focusing on a longue durée perspective.

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If interested, please submit an abstract of 300 words (setting out
thesis and conclusions) for a twenty-minute paper together with your
contact details (with academic affiliation, address and e-mail) by
e-mail attachment to the conference secretary, passages@uta.fi. The
deadline for abstracts is September 15th 2014, and the notification of
paper acceptance will be made in November 2014.

Conference papers may also be presented in French, German or Italian,
however, supplied with an English summary (as a hand-out) or
translation if the language of presentation is not English. The
sessions are formed on the basis of thematic coherence of the papers
and comparisons between Antiquity and the Middle Ages, thus session
proposals focusing on one period only will not be accepted.

The registration fee is 100 EUR (doctoral students: 50 EUR). For further
information, please visit http://www.uta.fi/trivium/passages/ or
contact the organizers by sending an e-mail to passages@uta.fi. The
registration opens in November 2014 at
http://www.uta.fi/trivium/passages.